Katie Hoerster

“As Brené Brown puts it, “I went to church thinking it would be like an epidural, that it would take the pain away . . . But church isn’t like an epidural; it’s like a midwife . . . I thought faith would say, ‘I’ll take away the pain and discomfort, but what it ended up saying was, ‘I’ll sit with you in it.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“Struggling with faith is normal. Journey and pilgrimage have become powerful words for me for describing the life of faith. I have come to expect periods of unsettledness, uncertainty, and fear to remind me that who I am, where I am, and what I think do not define reality. Facing and then truly being present with my experiences along the way help me remember that my experiences at any moment are not the entire journey—including those periods where God is distant. I have come to believe that periods of struggling and doubt are such common experiences of faith, including in the Bible, that something is meant to be learned from such periods, however long in duration they might be.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“In the company of these friends, questions and doubts were met with sympathy, not fear. No one felt the need to correct or understand or approve. We just listened, and it was sacred.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
― Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC