Finding a Path Through Mid-Faith Crisis

Have you ever experienced a “mid-faith” crisis?   Catherine McNiel walks us through.

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Finding a Path Through Mid-Faith Crisis

By Catherine McNiel

To me the Wisconsin farming town I grew up in felt larger than life. From the ancient water tower at one end to the expansive forested park at the other, I knew every road like the back of my hand. The Tastee Freez we biked to for ice cream cones served the best soft-serve (chocolate dipped) I could imagine. The tiny library held old musty books, and the equally musty theater played second-run films, but each was my portal to the universe.

My memories began here. This was home in the way only a small community you were born into can be. It was the most important place on the planet.

So, when my pastor-dad was fired from the church he had served, when they decided to erase our family rather than allow us to transition, it didn’t just affect employment. It took away my world. What would have been a major but survivable destabilization in a different line of work (or a more compassionate church) turned into layers of upheaval for us.

The recital I’d worked on for months was scheduled during that time, and when my mom called for the details, she was told I was no longer invited to perform. Everyone felt it would be best for my family to keep out of sight until we had left for good. I was twelve years old, and I was uninvited from my own piano recital.

For a long time, I was so, so angry and hurt. Broken into pieces. So very untrusting. So vigilant, for in addition to the upheaval of the past and present there was this question: What else might happen to end the world?

To say my childhood church’s treatment of my family impacted my faith in God, my relationship with the church and with Christians, and my understanding of Christianity is a huge understatement.

The only thing more real and certain to me than the trauma I experienced at the hands of the church is the slow, gentle work of God’s healing presence in my life. But it took long, long years and more before I could even begin to see it.

When I entered college, this new season in a new place felt like a chance at rebirth, a way to learn who I was outside of my family and the weight of our narrative. This was a gift, an invitation to open myself up intellectually, spiritually, relationally.

For the first time, I started dabbling in real friendship. I remember being stunned one day when a new friend actually stood up for me. Why would she choose me at the expense of other relationships? I thought. Why would anyone choose me? That was when I finally found the courage to tell my story for the first time. I did it little by little, one friend at a time.

In this slow way, I allowed myself to be cracked open, not only by human friends but by God, who began coaxing me out of my protective shell. At first, I kicked and screamed in response to that coaxing. But God was so vividly in front of me, like a cloud by day and a fire by night, pointing me forward. I at last began to yield. To come out of my hiding place.

There were moments—fleeting ones, but miraculous, life-changing ones—when God even convinced me he had been with me all along. I remember one night in particular when I held years of devastating pain and stubborn hatred in my hands and heard God ask me to let go of it, to set it down and let him replace it with forgiveness. I didn’t have words to express how hard I fought that night. But I surrendered eventually and began the long walk toward restoration.

Like the unpasteurized milk and long skirts of my farming-town childhood, there’s very little left of my faith from “before.” Everything I have now, I wrestled over and fought for in the “after.” My faith was built atop all this, after all this, with the knowledge of all this. My faith exists at all because God met me in suffering and doubt. What else is there to be threatened by?

Adapted from Mid-Faith Crisis by Catherine McNiel and Jason Hague. Copyright (c) 2025 by Catherine Lynn McNiel and Jason Lester Hague. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com

Catherine McNiel is a chaplain, author, editor, and speaker searching for the creative, redemptive work of God in our ordinary lives. She lives in the Chicagoland area with her husband, three children, and one enormous garden. Catherine holds an MA in human service counseling and is finishing a Master of Divinity at North Park Theological Seminary. She is the co-author, with Jason Hauge, of the newly released book, Mid-Faith Crisis: Finding a Path Through Doubt, Disillusionment, and Dead Ends. Her previous books include Fearing Bravely, All Shall Be Well, and Long Days of Small Things, which was an ECPA finalist for New Author. Connect with Catherine on her website.