Maybe you’ve been there…
Raised with a foundation you didn’t ask for. Sunday school lessons that felt more like obligation than invitation. A version of Christianity that emphasized being right over being transformed.
And at some point (maybe gradually, maybe all at once), you walked away.
Not because you stopped believing Jesus was right. But because the version of Christianity you were handed felt more about control than liberation. More about following rules than actually connecting with God. More about preserving an institution than protecting the wounded.
Maybe you left because the church was toxic. Maybe you left because it felt shallow and you were genuinely hungry for more of God than what you were experiencing. Maybe you wanted depth and got performance metrics instead. Maybe you craved direct experience and got doctrinal debates about things that didn’t seem to matter. Or maybe… it was all of those things mixed together, and you’re not even sure where the hurt ends and the hunger begins.
So you did what felt like the most honest thing: you kept the Jesus you loved and built your own spiritual framework around him. A little Christianity here, some practices that actually resonated there. Meditation. Maybe journaling or breathwork. Books on spirituality that spoke to your soul in ways Sunday sermons never did. Freedom to be your own authority, to trust your gut feeling, to create a path that feels authentic instead of inherited.
It feels like enlightenment.
Like you’ve finally escaped the cage.
Like you’ve graduated from the “kindergarten” of religion into something more evolved.
But what if there’s something you’re not seeing yet?
I’m not going to tell you everything you’ve experienced was false or that the insights you’ve gained were meaningless. That’s not the point. What I am going to share (because I lived this exact journey and came out the other side) is that the framework you’re building might have gaps you don’t notice… until life puts weight on it.
The Foundation You’re Standing On
Here’s what nobody tells you when you walk away from institutional Christianity and start building your own spiritual practice: you’re not starting from scratch.
You’re building on a foundation that’s still there, whether you acknowledge it or not.
Maybe it was your mother who taught you. Maybe it was Sunday school. Maybe it was youth group before you got burned out on performative faith. Someone gave you the basics. That God is personal and knowable. That the spiritual realm is real. That truth exists beyond what you can see and touch.
That foundation is precious. It’s an anchor.
But here’s the thing about taking something for granted. When you assume you can freelance your spirituality without consequence, when you’re so busy curating what resonates that you don’t examine what you’re building on… you end up with something that feels solid but might not hold weight when your circumstances shift.
I’m sharing this not because my story is special, but because I know what it feels like to be mid-construction, fully convinced you’re creating something authentic.
For years, I lived in what felt like spiritual freedom. I kept Jesus. I trusted my intuition as divine guidance (isn’t that basically the Holy Spirit anyway?), mixed Christian language with practices from other traditions, and built a belief system that felt custom-fitted to my soul. I even used my gifts to guide others on their spiritual journeys.
And it worked. For a while.
I felt empowered. Liberated. Like I was finally spiritual on my own terms without all the religious baggage.
Until the Holy Spirit began tapping on my chest with a question I couldn’t shake: What exactly are you building here?
When Your Framework Starts Showing Cracks
I know what it’s like to be mid-practice (fully convinced you’re connecting with the divine) when that persistent discomfort starts making itself known.
Not guilt from your religious upbringing.
Not shame weaponized by church people who want you to come back.
Something deeper. Something that won’t let you keep operating in spiritual territory you have no actual idea you’re in. That quiet voice asking you to reconsider. That growing sense that what feels like freedom might actually be something else.
Maybe you’ve felt it too.
The question isn’t whether your practices “work” or make you feel better in the moment. The question isn’t even whether you’ve had genuine spiritual experiences (I’m willing to bet you have).
The question is: what authority are you actually operating under?
Because the thing about spiritual independence is that it sounds empowering until you realize you’re your own guide in territory you don’t fully understand. You’re trusting intuition that could be wisdom or could be trauma or could be anxiety you’ve mistaken for divine guidance. You’re taking what resonates as if personal resonance is the same thing as truth.
And I wonder if you’ve noticed it yet: the framework that promised freedom has made you the sole curator of your own belief system. Which sounds liberating until you realize that means you’re also the only one responsible when it doesn’t hold.
I kept telling myself my foundation was solid. I had Jesus (sort of). I had practices that worked (for managing daily life). I had a community of fellow spiritual girlies and misters who validated my path.
But what I’d built couldn’t bear weight when the real storms came.
And when the storms come (and they will come)… you find out whether what you’ve built can actually hold.
The Paradox You’re Living
Here’s the paradox: walking away felt like life, but what if it’s leading to spiritual death?
Building your own framework felt like strength, but what if you’re actually more vulnerable than when you had the foundation?
That sounds harsh. Dramatic even, I know. But stay with me.
The cross stands as history’s greatest paradox: death became the doorway to life. Hopelessness became the entrance to hope. Weakness became the place to find strength. Defeat turned into victory.
What if the same paradox applies to you right now?
What if the spiritual independence that feels like freedom is actually untethered-ness… and you might not know the difference until you try to anchor somewhere?
When the relationship ends.
When the diagnosis comes.
When the anxiety you’ve been managing with practices spirals beyond what your carefully curated spiritual playlist can handle.
When you realize you’re more isolated now than you were before, caught between the church you left and the spiritual community that can’t offer real answers when life falls apart.
That’s when you find out whether your framework can hold weight.
I learned this the hard way. After walking away from the practices I’d woven into my spiritual life, I spent over a year wrestling with what I’d been building. I studied theology, church history, apologetics. I read the Bible seriously (not as one helpful book among many, but as the actual word of God). And I realized: I had taken for granted the very foundation that could have kept me from drifting into waters I wasn’t equipped to navigate.
What the Cross Actually Offers (That Your Framework Can’t)
The cross doesn’t stand as one option among many spiritual paths.
It doesn’t exist to make you feel guilty for walking away.
It stands as the historical, bloody, scandalous declaration that God did what you couldn’t do for yourself.
And here’s what strikes me most: the cross offers hope without demanding you fix yourself first.
Think about that.
The spiritual framework you’ve built (all the practices, all the inner work, all the “raising your consciousness” or “finding your authentic self”) is still fundamentally about becoming. About earning your enlightenment through the right techniques. About making yourself worthy of transformation through the perfect mix of beliefs that resonate with you.
It’s exhausting.
And honestly? It’s still a treadmill. Just a different treadmill than the religious performance you left behind.
But the cross says something radically different: you can’t fix yourself, and you don’t have to.
Paul (a guy who spent years thinking he had spirituality figured out before encountering the real Jesus on a road to Damascus) put it this way: “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NLT).
Not because you raised your vibration high enough.
Not because you curated the perfect spiritual practice.
Not because you finally got enlightened enough to be worthy.
Because Christ already did the work.
I mean… what?
How does that even work when you’ve spent years convinced that your spiritual progress depends entirely on your effort, on taking what resonates and building your own authentic path?
(I asked that question for months. Still asking it, honestly. Some days it feels too simple. Too free. Too good to be true. But I guess that’s kind of the point.)
The Picture You Need to See
There’s an image that changes everything if you let it: Jesus holding a lamb.
Not a lamb that earned being held.
Not a lamb that proved itself worthy.
Not a lamb that finally got its act together spiritually by mixing the right beliefs.
Just a lamb that’s held.
That’s how He sees you. Not as someone who needs to keep building the perfect spiritual framework. Not as someone who has to prove you’re serious about your path by curating the right practices. Not as someone who has to earn your way back through flawless theology or perfect spiritual discipline.
As someone He’s already holding.
The gap between how you see yourself (as someone who walked away, who should have known better, who’s been building something that might be fundamentally incomplete) and how Jesus sees you (as someone worth pursuing, worth holding, worth loving exactly as you are) is vast.
And that gap is called grace.
Paul again (he understood what it meant to build the wrong framework before encountering truth): “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, NLT).
Everything you’re actually searching for (calling, purpose, transformation that goes deeper than technique, community that doesn’t depend on your spiritual performance) flows from that foundation.
Not the foundation you’re building.
The foundation that’s already there, whether you acknowledge it or not.
The cross.
Why Your Spiritual Independence Might Actually Be Untethered-ness
What feels like spiritual freedom might actually be spiritual rootlessness.
What feels like finding yourself might actually be losing yourself.
What feels like enlightenment might actually be wandering in territory that promises connection but leaves you more isolated than before.
The foundation you were given (the one you took for granted, the one you thought you could improve on by taking what resonates from multiple traditions) wasn’t a prison to escape.
It was an anchor to keep you from drifting.
The cross offers something better than spiritual independence: it offers surrender to the One who actually has authority. Not authority that controls and manipulates. Authority that transforms and liberates.
And transformation doesn’t come from mixing the “best” of every tradition into something that feels comfortable.
It comes from encountering the One who is Truth. Not one truth among many that you get to choose from based on what resonates, but the Truth that all other truth points toward.
But What About the Church?
I know what you’re scared of.
You’re scared that coming back to the cross means going back to the toxic church. That orthodoxy means accepting abuse. That biblical authority means losing your critical thinking.
I get it.
If the foundation Christians gave you was so solid, why did it produce so much harm? Why did it protect abusers? Why did it prioritize control over compassion? Why did it make you feel like you had to perform rather than actually know God?
Those are the right questions. And honestly? A lot of what happened in those churches wasn’t actually Christianity. It was tribalism wearing Christian language. It was empire-building using Jesus’s name. It was wounded people creating systems to manage their own anxiety and calling it “biblical authority.”
The cross stands outside all of that.
It existed before the institutional church. It’ll exist after every dysfunctional congregation crumbles. It’s the thing the church is supposed to be built on, but too often, we’ve built around it instead.
And yes, there are churches that get it right. Imperfect, messy, full of people still learning… but not toxic. Not abusive. Not interested in controlling you. They exist. I found one after fourteen years of wandering, and it changed everything. But even if you never find the right church community, the cross is still standing. The invitation is still real.
The cross isn’t asking you to go back to dead religion.
It’s inviting you forward toward the real Jesus. Not the one the church distorted. Toward real freedom, not just a different set of practices you’ve curated. Toward grace that actually transforms instead of just making you feel temporarily better.
The question isn’t whether the foundation you were given was perfect.
The question is whether it’s true.
And if it’s true, then everything you’ve been building might need to be rebuilt on something stronger than your own authority.
What This Actually Looks Like
(This is the part where I’m supposed to wrap this up neatly, but I can’t. Because I’m still figuring it out too.)
The cross is still standing.
It’s been there the whole time, waiting for you to stop building long enough to see what it’s actually offering.
Not shame. Not control. Not religion.
Freedom. Transformation. Grace you don’t have to earn.
A better foundation than anything you could build yourself.
If all you can manage right now: Just say out loud, “I’m not sure my spirituality is holding, and I need help.” That’s enough. The cross meets you there.
If you want to read but feel overwhelmed: Don’t start with the whole Bible. Pick one Gospel (I’d suggest Mark; it’s short and fast-paced). Read it like a story, not a textbook. See if Jesus is different than what you remember. There’s something there about God drawing people to Himself that might change how you see your whole journey.
If you’re not ready to read: Ask one honest question out loud to God. Not to “the universe.” Not to your “higher self.” To the actual God who created you. See if He answers. (He might not answer how you expect. But He answers.)
If you want community but can’t face church yet: Find one person (just one) who takes Jesus seriously without taking themselves too seriously. Someone who can talk about faith without weaponizing it. That person exists. Ask God to help you find them.
If you’re wondering what “surrendering to the cross” even means: Start by admitting you don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t have to commit to everything right now. You just have to stop building long enough to look at what the cross is actually offering.
Maybe it starts with recognizing that the quiet discomfort you’ve been feeling isn’t your religious upbringing trying to control you.
It’s the Holy Spirit inviting you home to something more solid than what you’ve been building on your own.
The cross isn’t asking you to abandon your questions.
It’s inviting you to bring them to the One who can actually answer them.
And that changes everything.
If you don’t have a Bible, you can read it free online at Bible Gateway (I recommend the NLT translation).
