I grew up going to church: this beautiful, massive church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina:

About six pews back from the front on the right belonged to Brunstetter. At a certain point, church started making me angry. Uncomfortable? It felt like within those walls, I could not be myself. I can’t really blame this on the church itself, it was also definitely teen angst and the fact that I just REALLY needed to get to Party City and open its doors by noon so that ALL of  the parents in the greater Triad Area could drop $400 on a first bday party their kid would never remember. They will not remember how the plates matched the cake, parents, or also that both matched the Hats.

As I got older, and I was no longer required to go, I just stopped going, and shoved my love for the music, and my simultaneous longing and odd disgust for how vulnerable the whole experience made me feel, into some crawl space in my mind. But lately, more than ever, I’ve been feeling the lack of it, so finally, finally, twelve years later, on my own accord, I went, testing out this non-denominational, multi-ethnic congregation that meets Sundays in a lovely historic theater center in downtown LA. After I arrived, It was basically seconds before I burst into tears. I felt like I had come full circle. To come back to church on my own accord, because I’d been missing it, felt perfect and right. I’ve realized I’ve been over – thinking it. Church is an hour and a half a week to step outside yourself, reflect, acknowledge that your problems are small, to be reminded of kindness, and to give thanks. I’ve been trying for years to fill that space with running and bloody mary’s and novels and dresses and bacon and farmer’s markets and the thing is — at least for me — I just can’t.