07/16/2026
A man sat across from me a while back and said, almost like a confession, that he still prayed sometimes. He said it the way you'd admit to a habit you were embarrassed by.
He'd left the church years ago. Good reasons. He wasn't going back. But he couldn't shake the sense that something was still there, on the other side of all the stuff he'd walked away from, and he didn't have a single place to take that.
That's the part nobody warns you about. You can be done with the building and the rules and the people who hurt you, and still find yourself reaching toward something in the dark.
I told him what I'll tell you. Walking away from the church and walking toward God are not the same direction. A lot of men assume leaving one means killing the other. It doesn't have to.
Last week's piece was about that third path — the one between going back and burning it all down.
Where are you reaching, even now?
In case you missed it: https://ericmillerus.substack.com/p/you-can-leave-the-church-and-still