Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

I have witnessed firsthand how such a network can perform miracles: a month’s worth of dinners for the mom undergoing chemo, a driveway full of men ready to haul furniture the minute the moving van pulls in, twenty-four hours of prayer and rotating visits during a complicated surgery, fully stocked cupboards for widowers, and hours of free childcare for struggling parents. These are the quotidian signs and wonders of a living, breathing church, and they are powerful and important and real. But to a woman for whom the mere mention of a “ladies’ tea” elicits a nervous sweat, sometimes being plugged in felt a bit like being assimilated. There were rules in this society, particularly for women, and I still hadn’t learned my lesson about avoiding the topic of eternal damnation at baby showers, showers that were now, inexplicably, under my care. I was better suited for leading a Bible study or theological discussion, but those things happened at the men’s breakfasts (because, apparently, only men like theology and breakfast foods), so instead I constructed diaper cakes and mixed punch and listened to women exchange gruesome and detailed birth stories before turning to me to sing, “So, when can we expect a baby Evans?”