Exile Reckoning

I don’t know exactly what the Israelites felt in the desert. We’re taught their wandering was for disobedience, and there is truth there. It seems exile might be easier to swallow when disobedience resides with one there. The exile I have experienced is different — it’s the slow, quiet kind that happens when people you call family close doors instead of making room for the very things that could widen their tents. It’s when the promises you believed in outlast the patience you have left to believe. It is not only a geography; it is a long, lonely season in the body where your name is known but your seat is never saved.

I’m writing this because I am tired. As the calendar moves toward 5786, I don’t want to cross the threshold pretending things are grand. I’m not here to be dramatic, nor am I here to be merely transparent — I’m here to be vulnerable. There is a difference. Transparency shows the wound and names it. Vulnerability throws it on the altar and lets light in. I have reached the end of my ability to keep hoping without speaking.

We watch the news and lament the state of the nation like it is an object lesson we are studying from a safe distance. But the measure of our society is not “out there.” It’s here. It’s close. It’s personal. It’s in the church. It’s in how we treat one another as the Bride of Christ. We shout about rescue and revival while quietly canceling the very ones called to deliver it.

This is for the ones who have been faithful in seasons without reward. For the pioneers who were told: just keep waiting, keep stewarding quietly, keep holding on — your time is coming. And so you have. You’ve scrubbed floors you were never meant to clean. You believed the prophecies. You rehearsed the assignments. You gave up what most people cannot imagine giving. You sacrificed more than you thought you could — and you did it without complaint. You did the work in faith. You learned to wait. And you find yourself waiting still, wondering if the wait will ever become anything more than a rock in a hard place.

So you keep scrubbing floors. You keep serving. You keep obeying. And like Cinderella you wait for the stroke of midnight, the carriage ride, the glass slipper, the prince. But what if the shoe never fits? What if the prince never arrives? What if he takes the shoe meant for you and forces it on another foot, or tosses it aside altogether? What if you never even get to try it on? Then the fairy tale turns into a flaming question: when the promised vindication doesn’t come, what then? For many of us that question is not theoretical — it is the daily ache under our ribs.

We were taught to expect room: that eventually someone would notice, pull out a chair, engage with our story, maybe even hand us a microphone. Instead, we’ve had doors slammed in our faces. We’ve been told we are too much, too different, too dangerous — and those words travel through church networks faster than mercy ever does. We have watched brothers and sisters whisper while lives slipped away on the other side of their closed doors. We have watched rumor, fear, and petty protectionism become the operating system of communities meant to reflect heaven.

I will be honest: the hurt is deep. I’ve let it sit. I’ve chosen silence, because it seemed best not to say anything. Just carry it quietly. Lay it at the foot of the cross. And yes — emotion is not evidence of unforgiveness, it is evidence of humanness. Bitterness is born when we refuse to forgive. God knows my heart: I will not walk in offense, unforgiveness, or bitterness. There’s no time to waste on any measure of evil.

Even so, I have given. I have abandoned safety, steadiness, even my home because I believed God called me to a certain work. I walked through loss, through grief, through carrying ministries not my own because I believed in what God could do through sacrifice. I was faithful. I stayed. And when payoff came, it wasn’t grace that met me; it was cold suspicion and rumor. Ministries whispered slurs and demonic labels. Colleagues decided my presence was risky. My private practice dwindled. One day I was seeing thirty clients a week; the next, I was learning how to budget for silence.

I will name the real things: my first husband, Timothy Wayne Keeling, was murdered thirty-four years ago. Blood was spilled into my story, and that kind of loss changes you forever. It did not disqualify me; it marked me with fire. His legacy became fuel for the call of God on my life, a reminder that time is short and souls matter. If that kind of history — if that kind of cost — is treated as a reason to silence someone, then we are living by a standard that is not Christ. The church should be the place where wounds are redeemed, not where the wounded are dismissed.

And this is not only my testimony. Others were told to wait for the moment when the room would finally be cleared for them. Others left everything to help build someone else’s dream and ended up discarded. Women and men have had their reputations stripped by whispers. We claim to live by resurrection, and yet we practice lynching by gossip.

Here’s the harsh truth: cancel culture started inside the church. Assassination culture didn’t begin on a college campus last week. We’ve been assassinating each other in the Body for decades — deliberately taking out those who carry something of worth for political, ideological, or financial reasons tied to human kingdoms we’re trying to build in God’s name. We invented tactical shunning, theological hit pieces, rumor mills. We perfected the art of withholding chairs — saying “there’s no room here,” or “that seat is reserved for another” — forgetting that the one we shunned may have been the very person God sent to save three thousand lives that day. And we dare think we know better?

Then we act shocked when the world takes the same tool and wields it more ruthlessly. If we cannot mirror grace to each other, what hope do we have to mirror it to a broken world?

In less than a month we will go to Texas and hold six services in a park because God said. We are simply being obedient. When doors shut, you learn to build altars outdoors. When institutional rooms close, the wilderness still has room to grow you.

Then in early April, we will return again to Texas. And yes, I wrestle with that return. Not because I dislike it, but because humanly it feels like retreat. Yet here is another truth: the wilderness has taught me how to write like no other season. There is a fierce productivity in exile, because when you have little to no platform, you learn to steward the words God gives you as fire.

There is also beauty in other places. Roatán taught me what the American church is forgetting: you get up and you meet the needs of your neighbors. You don’t perform holiness for reputation; you serve because the person beside you is hungry. There’s a humility there that stateside believers often lack. I long to spend more days there because the work is simple and true: meet the need, feed the child, open the door.

If you are reading this and you have been given room — if you have empty chairs at your table, if you have influence, networks, and a voice in the places that matter — then make room for those who have been waiting. Not later. Not after you’re convinced they’re safe or convenient. Now. Invite the ones with radical, new imagination. Listen when someone says they’ve been called to something different. Let your fear of losing an audience be smaller than your fear of missing what God might do through someone else.

If you are the one who waited: lay down the shame. Stop letting the lack of affirmation become your identity. You are not less because the room was stubbornly closed. You are not uncalled because someone else could not see your face. Get your words out. Put it all on the table. Don’t give up. This is why I am writing this — to throw what’s inside me into the light so the dark stops swirling around it. If you are like me — tired and raw and ready to scream and still somehow hopeful — then speak. We are no longer in an age where we can quietly wait for an invitation. Bring your own chair. Pull up a seat. Lives depend on your awkward willingness to BYOC.

To my brothers and sisters who talk behind closed doors: ask God to break your taste for rumor. Ask Him to give you the courage to open a door and the humility to stay at a messy table. The Kingdom is not advanced by protecting territories. It is advanced when we steward what we have for the sake of others.

So what do I want? I want accountability — not excuses. I don’t want applause; applause won’t heal a city. I want space — real, tangible space to labor in what God has entrusted. I don’t need to be proven right; I need to see lives saved. If you hold the keys, if you have authority to swing open a doorway for someone who has been faithful in the dark, then for the sake of your city and for the sake of the Kingdom, do it now. This may be the very hour when what they carry is the difference between survival and awakening.

God, break us of our small hearts. Break the systems of rumor and fear that strangle Your Bride. Give room where there is none. Raise up tables with chairs enough for everyone. And when someone walks up with their own chair, may we make room for the plus one. Replace our protectionism with courage for risk. Let those who have been in exile hear the trumpet — you were born for this. Amen.

If you want to use this, put it in your voice. Put your name to it. Use the truth in it as license to call people home — or to leave what’s been killing you. Either way: don’t let exile keep you quiet.