When the Church Doors Feel Too Heavy to Open

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." - Matthew 11:28 (NASB)

I remember standing in the parking lot of my childhood church last spring, keys in hand, unable to move toward those familiar wooden doors. The weight wasn't in my legs—it was in my chest, where disappointment had settled like concrete. The last time I'd been inside, someone had told me I wasn't "surrendered enough" when I shared my struggles with depression.

Maybe you know this feeling. The place that once felt like home now feels like a performance hall where you've forgotten your lines. The songs that once lifted your spirit now sound hollow. The people who once embraced you now seem to speak a language you no longer understand.

Henri Nouwen wrote, "The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection." Perhaps the heaviness you feel isn't God's disappointment in you, but your own disappointment in a system that promised easy answers to complex pain.

What if the very weight that keeps you from those doors is exactly what God wants to meet? Not your polished faith, not your theological correctness, not your ability to fake joy—but your authentic struggle, your honest questions, your raw exhaustion.

The Matthew passage doesn't say "Come to me, all who have it together." It specifically calls the weary, the heavy-laden, the ones who can barely drag themselves another step. Your spiritual fatigue isn't disqualifying—it's an invitation.

Maybe today, instead of forcing yourself through doors that feel too heavy, you sit in your car and breathe. Maybe you tell God exactly how tired you are of trying to be the Christian you think you're supposed to be. Maybe rest looks different than you thought it would.

Those doors will still be there tomorrow. But today, maybe you find God in the parking lot, in your honest exhaustion, in the space between leaving and arriving. Sometimes the most sacred ground is the place where we stop pretending and start breathing again.