Sad Sundays: Staying Home When Your Family Goes to Church

Alicia Wright

If I were making a list of everything I regularly grieve losing to chronic pain and illness, Sundays would be near the very top. All of my adult life, I’ve loved church—the encouragement, the community, the songs that lift my heart to worship, and the sermons that stretch my view of God into something bigger and better than it was before I walked in.

A year and a half after we were married, my husband entered pastoral ministry and has never left it. The church we’re at now has been our home for nearly 15 years, and I love it deeply. Not every season has been smooth, of course, and there were certainly Sundays when going to church didn’t sound delightful. But those moments were brief, and I always knew better weeks would eventually follow. I never imagined a world in which I would go long stretches without attending Sunday services.

But pain doesn’t take into account what we love. It moves through our lives like an invasive plant, spreading its roots and tendrils into every crevice, growing and slowly cracking apart life as we once knew it. My illnesses quickly eroded my ability to walk and to sit upright in a chair for long periods. Several years later, those abilities are almost completely gone.

At first, I learned to make adjustments. I’d sit in a chair for part of the service and then move to a couch in the nursery when the pain grew too loud to ignore. When even that became impossible, my husband brought a couch to the back of the sanctuary, where I could sit with my legs stretched out. It was socially awkward, and it forced me to continually face my fear of being a spectacle, but it worked for a while. Now, though, the nerve damage in my legs is so severe that even walking to and sitting on my “church couch” is too painful. These days, it’s rare for me to make it to church at all. And when I do, it’s in a wheelchair—with the full knowledge that the rest of that day (and often many days that follow) will bring a much higher level of pain at the cost of my effort.

I share these details because that slow slide into loss, then more loss, and then still more loss, is a story many of you know by heart. You recognize both the facts and the emotions that tag along with them—because you’re living it too. If you feel alone in this, let me remind you: you aren’t.

There’s a persistent sorrow in my heart surrounding this particular loss that hasn’t gone away. Early in my illness, I assumed I would eventually adjust my expectations about Sundays. I imagined that if I could go, I’d be happy, and if I couldn’t, I’d enjoy the service online, grateful not to be worsening my pain. But the truth is, I haven’t really adjusted. Some aspects are easier now—I don’t find myself wrestling with as much bitterness as I once did—but the grief itself hasn’t lessened.

Honestly, it’s not the singing or sermons I miss most (though watching them online isn’t the same). Mostly, I miss the ability to love and be loved through the consistent connection with others. I should be clear that this isn’t the fault of my church. I’ve been blessed with many friends from church who have stayed connected as my illness has changed me. Some newer church friends have jumped right into my life even though it’s limited, fitting themselves around my ever-changing schedule as my body behaves like a petulant toddler, deciding when and how I’ll be able to spend time with others.

Some friends visit during the few hours I’m able to be out of bed, sitting in the recliner next to mine in the living room. Others have even come and sat beside my bed on the days I can’t make it to the living room. A couple of friends talk with me regularly on the phone. Others drop off meals, snacks, flowers, or herbal teas when they know I’m in a major flare. One sweet friend often picks up takeout for lunch and brings it to share with me while we catch up together.

I know this type of church is a rare privilege among those with chronic illness and I’m grateful for it. Many of those who live with pain and illness are far less connected—through no fault of their own—and don’t have people in their church willing to bend their lives to meet their needs. I am truly cared for, and that’s a joy I know I don’t deserve. But even so, my interactions no longer flow as freely as they once did. I miss Sunday mornings when I could catch up with friends and welcome newcomers. I miss hosting Bible studies and meals around our dining table. I miss the planned and even impromptu counseling sessions over coffee and Krusteaz coffee cakes. Losing such a large part of my place in the local body of Christ feels like an amputation, and I don’t know if it will ever feel fully healed.

Perhaps the hardest part, though, is sending my husband and children off without me each week. Worship is meant to be communal. Our pastors always remind us not to “forsake the gathering” of believers—and rightly so. God made us for community, and our families are our first community. Hugging my little ones and explaining that I can’t go today because the pain is too great to endure an hour and a half in a wheelchair breaks my heart every single time.

On the rare Sundays I can go, there’s a bittersweet sting in hearing my daughters cheer, “Mommy’s coming today!” as they scramble to call dibs on the seats beside me on my couch in the sanctuary. It hurts because it should be ordinary, and I hate that these days, their experience of church usually happens without their mom. The mom who once helped teach their classes and sang beside them every week has been replaced with a mom who watches the service online, tears often overflowing after everyone has gone.

Whether you usually attend with family or find your community when you arrive, being unable to gather with God’s people because of illness brings deep sorrow. I believe God expects us to grieve when we lose good gifts from Him. If we lose something precious and feel no sorrow, perhaps it was not so important to us after all. But when we lose a gift designed to draw us closer to Him, to help us learn, grow, and love His people well, grief is only logical. We miss “going with the throng…with glad songs and shouts of praise” to the house of the Lord (Psalm 42:4) because that’s what we were created to do.

So how do we approach Sundays when the very place meant to bring us joy instead highlights our loss? Lately, I’ve been trying to echo the psalmist in Psalm 42 as he acknowledges being “cast down” when unable to worship at the house of God. Then I turn to the assurance of Psalm 73:23-26:

“Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

These words comfort my disappointed heart, tugging it back from bitterness and toward a balance of grief and hope. Because yes—the house of God is out there, and I am stuck here, missing it. But God is also right here with you and me. He holds our hand when we sit alone on the very day we were made to be together. And even this body I so often resent is a temple of the living God (1 Corinthians 6:19). His presence is with me always—no matter where “here” is.