I have a complicated relationship with Christianity.

Not with God.

With Christianity.

And I think there is an important difference.

I grew up believing that faith was almost like an insurance policy against catastrophe. Pray hard enough. Live right. Give your heart to God. Be a good person. Follow the rules.

And somewhere along the way, I absorbed the idea that if I did all of those things, God would protect me.

Then life happened.

Really, really hard life.

There was a time when I sat beside a sick child and prayed until I didn't have pretty prayers anymore.

There was no eloquence.

No perfectly folded hands.

No carefully selected Bible verse.

There was just a terrified mother asking God why.

Why me?

Why him?

Why this?

And somewhere in the middle of one of the hardest seasons of my life, someone from the church said something to me that changed the way I would see Christianity for years.

Maybe I had done something to piss God off.

Maybe that was why my son was "defective."

I don't think I have ever completely forgotten those words.

Because when you are already drowning, you don't need someone standing safely on the shore explaining all the reasons you deserve the water.

That hurt me.

Not just because of what was said about my child, but because it came wrapped in religion.

It came from someone who believed they understood God well enough to explain my suffering to me.

And for a while, I confused the people speaking for God with God Himself.

I walked away from church.

I stopped listening to Christian radio. I stopped doing devotionals. I stopped trusting people who seemed so certain they understood God better than everyone else.

And if I'm being completely transparent, traditional church is still complicated for me.

But here's the strange part.

I never stopped believing in God.

Even when I was angry with Him.

Even when I questioned Him.

Even when I didn't understand Him.

Even when the people carrying His name hurt me.

Somewhere underneath all that anger, disappointment, confusion, and grief was still this tiny little thing that refused to die.

Faith.

Maybe that's what Jesus meant when He talked about faith the size of a mustard seed.

Because sometimes faith isn't standing on a mountaintop declaring that God is good while everything in your life is beautiful.

Sometimes faith is sitting on a hospital floor completely shattered and whispering, "I don't understand You, but I'm still talking to You."

Sometimes faith is being pissed off at God and still directing the anger toward Him because somewhere deep down, you still believe He's listening.

Sometimes faith is questioning everything you were taught and discovering that underneath all the rules, expectations, fear, and religion, there is still something there.

Sometimes that's the mustard seed.

And maybe that is enough.

My faith looks different now.

I am open-minded.

I have people in my life who believe differently than I do, and I love them exactly where they are. I don't need every person sitting at my table to agree with me about God in order to have a seat there.

I don't believe loving someone requires me to convert them.

I don't believe asking questions makes someone faithless.

I don't believe doubt scares God.

And I certainly don't believe I was appointed to stand at the gates of Heaven with a clipboard deciding who belongs.

Sometimes I look at the way Christianity is presented to the world and wonder how we managed to make a God described as love look so unwelcoming.

We have drawn so many lines.

Believer. Nonbeliever.

Saved. Unsaved.

Worthy. Unworthy.

Good Christian. Bad Christian.

Us.

Them.

And somewhere underneath all those labels are human beings carrying stories we know absolutely nothing about.

People who are divorced.

People who cuss.

People with tattoos.

People battling addiction.

People questioning everything they were taught.

People who haven't stepped inside a church in twenty years.

People whose lives don't fit neatly inside the version of Christianity they were handed.

People who love differently, think differently, live differently, and believe differently.

And I refuse to believe that loving those people threatens my relationship with God.

If anything, loving people without requiring them to become more comfortable for me has strengthened it.

Jesus didn't tell me to love my neighbor after I investigated whether my neighbor deserved it.

He just told me to love my neighbor.

And maybe I'm not what some people picture when they hear the words "Christian woman."

That's okay.

I have spent enough of my life trying to make myself small enough to fit inside boxes other people built.

God knows who I am.

He knows every ugly part.

Every doubt.

Every angry prayer.

Every mistake.

Every time I've questioned Him.

Every time I've screamed at the sky.

Every time I've crawled back.

He knows the woman who can have a mouth on her and still pray over somebody in the middle of the night.

He knows the woman who can sit across the table from someone who believes absolutely none of what she believes and still love them fiercely.

He knows the woman who doesn't always feel comfortable inside a church but somehow still finds herself talking to Him in the car, in hospital rooms, in the shower, beside her children's beds, and in the quiet moments when nobody else is watching.

My faith isn't polished.

It isn't pretty.

It doesn't always look like Sunday morning.

Sometimes it looks like survival.

Sometimes it looks like questions.

Sometimes it looks like anger.

Sometimes it looks like sitting beside someone the rest of the world has judged and saying, "There's room beside me."

And if you don't believe in God at all?

There's room for you too.

One of my best friends and I can sit across from each other and absolutely roast one another over what we believe.

I believe in God.

They don't.

Neither one of us is sitting there secretly waiting for the other to become enlightened enough to finally agree.

We laugh.

We disagree.

We love each other anyway.

Imagine that.

Because I don't need you to believe what I believe in order to love you.

You can be an atheist.

You can be agnostic.

You can believe in something completely different than I do.

You can be angry with God.

You can be searching.

You can be absolutely certain there is nothing out there to search for.

Pull up a chair.

I've got a spot for you.

Because something interesting happened to me after religion hurt me.

I didn't build higher walls.

I didn't become self-righteous.

I didn't decide that because someone once used God as a weapon against me, I needed to pick that weapon up and point it at somebody else.

I built a bigger table.

Maybe that's one of the greatest things my broken faith ever taught me.

I don't have to understand you to make room for you.

I don't have to agree with you to respect you.

I don't have to approve of every decision you've ever made to recognize your humanity.

And I sure as hell don't need to check your beliefs before deciding whether you're worthy of kindness.

There are no belief requirements at my table.

No dress code.

No purity test.

No theological entrance exam.

Bring your questions.

Bring your doubt.

Bring your Bible.

Bring your complete disbelief in the Bible.

Bring the pieces of yourself somebody once told you made you unacceptable.

Just bring yourself.

Because I know what it feels like to wonder if there is room for you.

Maybe you're gay.

Maybe you're straight.

Maybe you're divorced.

Maybe you've been married three times.

Maybe you've never set foot inside a church.

Maybe you left one and swore you'd never go back.

Maybe you pray every morning.

Maybe you think prayer is ridiculous.

Maybe you're covered in tattoos, carrying trauma, dropping F-bombs, questioning everything, and still somehow holding onto a mustard seed of faith.

Come sit down.

And if you don't have even the mustard seed?

Come sit down anyway.

You don't need my God to have my love.

That's between you and Him—or, from your perspective, between you and absolutely nobody.

We can even laugh about that part.

Because the church hurt me.

People carrying the name of Jesus hurt me.

And for a long time, I confused what they did with who God was.

I don't anymore.

People failed me.

God met me in the wreckage.

Not always with answers.

Sometimes just with enough strength to make it through another night.

And maybe that's why my faith doesn't scream as loudly as it once did.

It doesn't need to.

It has roots now.

I don't need everyone to believe what I believe.

I don't need to win an argument about God.

I don't need to prove that my version of Christianity is better than somebody else's.

I just want the people who cross my path to leave knowing they were loved.

Especially the ones who have been told they aren't lovable.

Especially the ones who have been told they don't belong.

Especially the ones standing outside the church wondering if there could possibly still be a place for someone like them.

There is a place beside me.

You don't have to clean yourself up first.

You don't have to believe exactly what I believe.

You don't have to pretend you aren't angry.

You don't have to hide your questions.

You don't even have to know what you believe yet.

Sit down.

I'll make room.

Because hurt could have made me bitter.

It could have made me build walls.

It could have turned me into the kind of person who needed to decide who was righteous and who wasn't.

Instead, it made me understand exactly what I never wanted another person to feel when they encountered my faith.

Unworthy.

Unwelcome.

Unlovable.

Too broken.

Too different.

Too far gone.

So I chose something else.

I built a bigger table.

And if my faith has taught me anything after everything we've been through together, it's this:

I would rather love someone so radically that another Christian thinks I'm doing it wrong than make another broken person believe they are too far gone for God.

My faith may only be the size of a mustard seed some days.

But after everything that tried to bury it, the fact that it's still growing feels a whole lot like a miracle.

And if you're looking for somewhere to sit while you figure out what you believe—or whether you believe anything at all—

pull up a chair.

There's still room.