Trying to Return to God: A Raw, Honest Confession
I am not writing this because I figured something out.
I am writing this because I finally stopped pretending I was fine.
I believe in God. I always have. That part never broke. What broke was my ability to rest in Him. Somewhere along the way, belief stayed intact while refuge quietly slipped out the back door. This season of trying to return to God has forced me to admit something uncomfortable: I learned how to obey without trusting Him to be my safety.
Most of my life has been shaped by control. Not because I wanted power, but because I needed stability. When you learn early that no one is coming to fix things for you, you learn to fix them yourself. When safety is uncertain, control starts to feel like wisdom. Responsibility becomes armor. Competence becomes survival. Long before I knew it, that survival mindset followed me straight into my faith. Trying to return to God means facing how deeply ingrained that posture really is.
I carried that mindset into my relationship with Him.
I trusted God with eternity, but not with tomorrow. I trusted Him with salvation, but not with provision. I believed He was Lord, but I lived as if I were the last line of defense. And I called that maturity. I called it being responsible. Trying to return to God has exposed how much of that was fear wearing a respectable face.
It wasn’t a rebellion. It wasn’t bitterness. It was exhaustion disguised as strength.
I learned how to carry weight without complaint. I learned how to stay alert. I learned how to anticipate danger, failure, disappointment, and loss. I built systems. I built stories. I built entire worlds in my writing. I analyzed culture. I warned about technology, power, deception, and slow moral collapse. Some of that came from calling. Some of it came from living too long without rest. Trying to return to God has meant sorting out which was obedience and which was fear.
What I did not do well was stop and give thanks.
I focused on what was missing. What hadn’t arrived yet. What God hadn’t fixed. I noticed the gaps faster than the gifts. Even in prayer, I often came with a posture of scarcity. Not angry. Not accusing. Just resigned. As if God were good, but distant. Faithful, but preoccupied. Trying to return to God has required me to tell the truth about how I actually saw Him.
That way of seeing hollowed something out in me.
God, in His mercy, did not shame me for that. He did not rush me. He was patient. Quietly patient. And over time, He has been drawing me back to a truth so basic I somehow missed it while trying to be faithful: rebuilding does not start with effort. It starts with an altar. Trying to return to God begins with worship, not work.
The first thing restored in Scripture is not the walls. It is the altar of praise.
Thankfulness.
Gratefulness.
Acknowledging what is already here.
Not as denial.
Not as optimism.
But as alignment.
I had not been living that way.
I thanked God for the big rescues and ignored the daily mercies. I treated breath like an assumption. Shelter like background noise. Survival like something I earned instead of something I received. Trying to return to God has meant admitting that I confused endurance with faith and grit with trust.
When I finally slowed down enough to see clearly, I realized God had never stopped being good to me. He had been steady while I lived, braced for impact. He had provided food, shelter, and breath when despair had every excuse to win. He had carried me through seasons that should have crushed me. None of that was small to Him, even if it felt ordinary to me. Trying to return to God has taught me that ordinary mercy is still mercy.
This has not been dramatic.
Trying to return to God has looked like letting go of the illusion that I am safer when I am in control. It has looked like relearning how to say thank you without qualifiers. It has looked like admitting that I do not actually know how to rest and asking God to teach me (Matthew 11:28–30). Slowly. Patiently. Without pretending I already know the way.
This is not a victory post. I am not “back.” I am not fixed. I am not resolved.
I am trying to return to God.
I am choosing to stop living from lack and start living from gratitude. I am choosing to rebuild, starting with praise, not performance. I am choosing to let God be my refuge, not just my doctrine. Trying to return to God is not something I have completed. It is something I am doing, one honest step at a time.
There is no neat ending here. No lesson wrapped in a bow.
Just direction.
I am trying to return to God.