On March 15, 2020, I had no idea that I would not attend church in person for another 16 months. July 25, 2021 marked the first time I sat beside Mom in the auditorium since the pandemic began.

At first, I knew I made the right decision to stick with the live stream after my church began holding in person services again with only a modicum of precautions. No vaccine existed. Singing spread the virus even more than normal speaking and breathing situations. Also, quite unfortunately, hardly anyone wore masks. I continued to feel secure in my decision as the weeks and months wore on. So many people who attended my church continued throwing caution, common sense, and compassion to the wind. I could not risk exposing myself in that environment when I had to enter another unsafe environment, in terms of infection, every day for work. With so much statistical manipulation happening in the school district to appease the squeaky wheel parents and politicians, I wanted to ensure that if I contracted Covid, which unfortunately I did, I could prove that I became infected in the school.

Shortly after recovering from Covid, I eagerly received the two, appropriately spaced out vaccination jabs. I thought I would return to church at that time with my immunity fully developed a couple weeks after the second jab. I even told Mom that I would join her that Sunday back towards the end of April. When the day came, I could not make myself go.

Why not?

To answer that, I have to attempt to put into words something complicated and fraught with deep emotional weight. I considered many of the people who attend my church close to family. Then, over the course of the pandemic unveiled their true colors as they ran roughshod over so many others in the name of rights, of personal freedom. I watched in disbelief as so many of them placed their identity in the flag and distorted ideals of a fallible human nation as well as a cult of personality around a man whose words and actions fly in the face of the Scriptural truth they claim guides their lives.

This emotional and spiritual trauma takes time to heal. By returning to church as I now have, I do not declare all the wrongs righted or hurts healed. I think these scars will last a long time. I continue to grieve as I hear of so many church members contracting the virus now, many of them with serious complications, all because they refuse to take the vaccine on the misguided idea that this refusal makes them pro-life because decades ago the research that went into creating this vaccine used stem cells from aborted fetuses.

As many of the words that I have used thus far indicate, I did not return to church because all the problems have been solved. Far from it. I returned because I know I need the fellowship. A few days before I returned, I realized that the longer I stayed away, the harder it would become to return. I also have begun to see a small amount of change in some people who attend my church, a reawakening of hope. As the weeks progress, I will continue to pray. Only God can bring the kind of heart change so vitally necessary.