Healing Out of Isolation

2020-present has done a number on so many of us

A few weeks ago, Nate and I were slunk into our therapist’s couch, faces toward the setting sun, its light slanting through tall victorian windows and onto the emerald green walls.

We are there for a lot of reasons that aren’t anyone’s business but our own. But we’re also there because we finally grew tired enough of the spiritual flailing we’ve both been doing, often at the cost of the other. You can interpret that however you want, the important thing for you to know is that we have work to do and we’re doing it.

The thing about doing this sort of work, though, is it comes with a near constant desire to be either out of it or through it. Everything in us aches to avoid the discomfort of whatever this is, and wants to return to the old ways of functioning in the world even though we know what we really want is a whole new way of functioning in the world.

One of the tensions for us is around how we functioned for many years [before and after marriage] in community with other people. We led small groups, we led in recovery environments, we did pre-marital counseling with younger couples, other people wanted to meet with us for wisdom and direction and we offered it. When we were single we’ve lived with multiple roommates and when we married, we had young people live in our home with us. We opened our house for holidays and our table for meals several times a week. We practiced the gift of affirmation during birthdays and the gift of prayer during times of indecision and the gift of tears during times of grief.

We were, for lack of a better word, gatherers. We were not the party house, though. We were always the broken but becoming house.

Then some things happened. It wasn’t a big thing, but a series of small things. Small erosions to our sense of calling and selves as gatherers, practitioners of intimacy, basins for grief and suffering. There was an onslaught and in all honesty, it had been held at bay for years, waiting to be unleashed. When it finally was unleashed, it was followed in mere weeks by pandemic lockdowns.

One of my guiding quotes from 2025 was from Bell Hooks, “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation.” I’ve heard others say things like, “If you’re harmed in community, you have to be healed in community.”

The thing about harm and healing, though, is that often both happen slowly. They’re not things we decide are happening or can dictate the time and place of their occurrence.

They just happen. And they happen to us.

We were hurting and then, like so many of you, were thrust into a time of social isolation. However you look back on 2020-2022, with disgust or indignation, self-righteousness or incredulity, the truth is: none of us, not even the experts, knew what to do. We were all doing our best. I truly believe that. I believed that then, even when friends and loved ones were making different choices than I was, and I believe it now, when I look back and wish I could have made some different choices. What is it Kierkegaard said? “Life can only be understood backward but can only be lived forward.”

Faced with the choice between gathering or staying home, practicing restraint or practicing indulgence, we took the more conservative approach (though it’s not lost on me that it was also the more politically liberal approach). We isolated.

We also moved to the other side of the country, worked our fingers to the bone renovating an abandoned house, couldn’t find a church, and faced one of the most difficult experiences I’ve ever faced resulting in the loss of almost all the relationships I formed throughout my twenties and had for half my life.

Good things happened in those years too though, we became detached from church as social security, faith as identity, and certain doctrines as right thinking. We needed isolation in order to detach from the things that hemmed us in before.

But Bell Hooks and others were right, that’s not healing. It’s a part of it, but it’s not finishing it. Finishing it happens when we grow brave again and begin to entrust ourselves to people again, engage ourselves to the lifetime of work that true faith is, and learn to attach healthily without putting all of our hope in people and institutions again.

Winsor Kinkade

Back to our therapist’s couch.

“What if,” he asked us, “part of the work of healing wholly for you two is for you to once again become gatherers?”

Immediately I felt sick rising up in me, tension in my shoulders, and I shuddered. “No,” I said. “I never want to do that again. I never want to put myself in a place of authority again, nor do I want anyone else to put me there either.”

He didn’t say anything right away but then, as therapists often do and I have done myself, he said, “I wonder if it would help you to sit with that feeling this week?”

@keratill

KERA TILL / ILLUSTRATION on Instagram: "Maybe the last years we…

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Never again, I’ve told myself, will I covenant myself to an institution or a constraint of beliefs prescribed by a denomination or parachurch organization or submit myself to a team of male elders or pastors who call themselves “first among equals.” Never again will I wholeheartedly endorse organizations or non-profits without visible evidence of their “long obedience in the same direction.” Never again will I recommend spiritual writers or their books simply because we’re chums on social media. Maybe that seems extreme to you, but apart from all my other objections to the above, I’m also an approval addict and those are all the places I can find it in short-term supply, enough to lure me in and then turn me into an acolyte and I won’t do it again.

My faith in God is too important—and too fragile—to do all of that again.

But. (And this is a bit but.)

But I do believe in good people doing good work. And I do believe that people coming alongside one another and doing good work together is what will heal our land and usher in a renewed earth and world. I believe in the Good Light of God going out through the voices and pens and hands of the people made by God. And I don’t want to give that up. Harmed in community or not, people are imago dei, the image of God, the beloved likeness of the maker of the universe. And I can’t deny that. To deny that is to deny God.

I am learning to find and build community in new ways. Sometimes harder ways. But also, I think, healthier ways.

• I’m not leaning into approval—mine or theirs—but wholeness, asking the question: is this a space where I can show up wholly me and they can show up wholly them?

• I’m not leaning into hierarchy, but mutuality, asking the question: is this a relationship where we both feel a generous spaciousness around our beliefs, practices, history, and future?

• I’m not leaning toward a persistent feeling of guilt or shame that showed up in many of my relationships before, but instead asking the question: is this a friendship where I have abundant grace for them and they for me?

• I’m not limiting hospitality to a place (namely, my home) but asking the question: can I be a human who embodies hospitality in my person and who enters into the hospitality that others offer in their persons?

And whether we ever become the gathering place again or not, I am still gathering all the breadcrumbs I can find when faithful people around me drop them. I am not hoarding them for myself anymore, but spreading them again behind me for you and you and you to find.

As we continue to detach from empire and institution, we still see the goodness and value of the work of Christ-bearers in the world, and in our participation with them/their work.

I wanted to share some others who are dropping breadcrumbs behind them for the rest of us. The prophetic people crying out in the wilderness. The ones who help remind me that even when so many have given themselves over to mammon and the empire of FOX news-TPUSA-Christian nationalism or Name it, Claim it, health and wealth capitalism, there is still goodness growing:

• Jon Guerra: The Kingdom of Jesus has played an embarrassing amount of times on repeat in my ears and on our speakers while I meal prep every week.

• Parker J. Palmer: Every year for the past six years I’ve read Let Your Life Speak. It is always on my desk, within reach. It has been balm and salve, vision and hope.

• Sarah Bessey: I’ve read Sarah for sixteen years and she still compels me toward the person of Jesus. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been ready to hang it all up and then she writes something that reminds me of Jesus and his tenderness and strength, and I’m in again.

• Jason Upton: When I was 22, I worked for a charismatic non-profit worship organization and we toured with Jason for a few weeks. I lost track of him for years and then found him again when he released his Table Full of Strangers I & II albums. Those albums carried me through the past decade. He is the real deal.

• Barbara Brown Taylor: Her entire oeuvre has been a companion to me, especially in recent years. Learning to Walk in the Dark and Leaving Church especially.

• Madeleine L’Engle: How could I not mention Madeleine. More so every year I grow older. Her words are still teaching me, compelling me, grounding me, stirring me. Especially her lesser known stuff.

• Fernando Ortega: I spent some time with Fernando during a weekend retreat years ago. He was the realest person there and that’s saying something. I will never forget his practice of vulnerability with Nate and me. His voice is the soundtrack of my faith trajectory.

• Scott Erickson: Scott is one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram. Not just for his art, but for his candidness around faith and doubt especially. He has been a helpful reminder that there are good men doing good work in the world still.

• Austin Kleon: Austin might be the sleeper here, he doesn’t wear his faith on his sleeve online. But I am so encouraged by him and his consistent faithful work in the world. His encouragement to just do art has been what I’ve needed over the past few years.

• Krista Tippett: I rarely listen to podcasts but when I do, I listen to OnBeing, and I have never, ever walked away unnourished.

• John Green: John is another one who doesn’t wear his faith on his sleeve, but he is a person of faith who wrestles with science, politics, belief, and shows his work. And I think that’s brave.

I’m curious, who has dropped some sustaining breadcrumbs for you?

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1. One can hope…