What If You Struggle to Draw Near to God Because You Felt Let Down?
Why You Love God but Still Hesitate to Get Close
There were moments in my life where I loved God…
For a long time, I wondered why there felt like a quiet distance in my relationship with God — even though I loved Him.
I’ve realized it wasn’t a lack of faith.
It was a survival skill.
When you grow up learning that being chosen is conditional, you don’t stop believing — you just stop fully opening. And eventually, you begin to relate to God the same way.
You pray, but you stay guarded.
I’ve been reflecting on seasons when I expected God to show up in a certain way — and He didn’t. And I’m finally learning to separate God not meeting my expectations from God being absent.
Trusting Him fully felt harder than I ever knew how to explain.
Not because I walked away.
Not because I stopped believing.
But over time, something in you learns to hold back.
I’ve been reflecting on how experiences of being let down—by people, by circumstances, by life itself—can quietly shape how close we feel safe getting with God.
And the more I sit with that, the more I notice a pattern.
There’s a way people show up when they learned early to question whether they were chosen.
Not because anyone ever said it out loud,
but because absence has a way of teaching things words never did.
People don’t stop loving.
They don’t stop believing.
They just stop bringing all of themselves.
When you’ve experienced abandonment—especially early—you learn how to measure what you give. You share what feels safe. You hold back what would hurt the most if it confirmed the fear you’ve carried quietly for years.
There’s something about only giving what you’re willing to lose.
Just enough to be safe.
And the hard reality underneath that is this:
a deep-rooted belief that maybe something about you wasn’t enough.
Most of us learned that before we ever had language for it.
Some of us learned it in childhood.
Some of us learned it through trauma.
Some of us learned it simply by growing up without someone who was supposed to be there.
I want to pause here for a moment—because there’s something about growing up without a parent that stays with you.
Even when you don’t talk about it.
Even when you think you’ve made peace with it.
Even when life looks full now.
There’s a quiet weight that comes from missing out on the experience of being chosen.
Not chosen later.
Not chosen after proving yourself.
But chosen simply because you belonged.
When that kind of absence is present early on, it doesn’t always show up as anger.
Sometimes it shows up as a question that lives deep inside you,
What was it about me?
And most of us don’t walk through life without feeling the effects of that question.
It shapes how we love.
How we trust.
How close we allow ourselves to get.
Not because we’re broken—
but because we learned early how to live without something we were supposed to have.
And without realizing it, that way of relating doesn’t stay confined to just people.
It finds its way into our relationship with God too.
I think about this often.
Because when something painful happens and there’s no protection, no explanation, no one stepping in… a question forms.
Not loudly.
Quietly.
Where was God?
Most people never say that out loud.
They don’t need to.
Instead, they adjust.
They still pray—but they hesitate.
They still believe—but they stay guarded.
They still show up—but with part of themselves held back.
And I truly don’t think this is because people don’t love God.
It’s because somewhere along the way, they felt let down by God.
Disappointment started to feel personal.
So, trust becomes careful.
Many people in this space genuinely struggle with trusting God—not because they don’t want to, but because something shifted the moment they felt let down.
For some, it was a moment where God should have been there.
For others, they never fully had the opportunity to trust God at all—because their understanding of safety and consistency was shaped long before they ever knew Him.
For a lot of people, unresolved abandonment doesn’t just turn into anger at God.
It turns into distance.
Because if a parent was never there…
If care felt inconsistent…
If love felt conditional or confusing…
It’s easy—without realizing it—to wonder if God relates to you the same way.
And when that belief goes unexamined, it quietly shapes how close you allow yourself to get.
And this is often how that distance shows up.
Loving God doesn’t always mean leaning fully.
Belief can still be present…
surrender, not so much.
Worship still happens—but drawing near can feel harder.
There’s a wall there.
And a lot of the time, we manage that wall by focusing on image—
how we look,
how we show up,
which version of ourselves feels safest to present.
Over time, we condition our lives around that image.
We learn how to function.
How to perform.
How to appear “together.”
But true worship requires vulnerability.
And vulnerability asks us to risk being seen without the mask.
That kind of exposure isn’t something all of us feel comfortable offering—
especially when we’ve learned to survive by wearing a version of ourselves that feels safer,
and exposing what’s underneath feels like a risk we’re not sure we can afford.
Not because we’re unwilling.
But because abandonment taught us how to survive.
And what if the place you’ve kept guarded isn’t disqualifying?
What if it’s the doorway?
Not to shame.
But to a deeper kind of intimacy—one that doesn’t require us to prove our worth.
For me, this started early.
Abandonment didn’t just hurt—it taught me to question my worth. It planted a belief that maybe I wasn’t chosen, that something about me wasn’t worthy enough for people to stay.
Eventually, that belief reached into my relationship with God.
Because if the people who were supposed to be there didn’t choose me, I quietly wondered how confident I could be that God fully did.
I didn’t stop believing in Him.
I just learned how to believe while holding part of myself back.
Not out of rebellion—
but out of fear of being let down again.
And I think this is the part we don’t talk about enough.
The hardest part isn’t always what happened.
It’s what we concluded because of it.
When abandonment happens early, the mind looks for meaning. And without guidance, the heart fills in the blanks.
If no one chose me, maybe I wasn’t worth choosing.
If no one stayed, maybe I wasn’t worth staying for.
If love felt inconsistent, maybe I had to earn it.
Those conclusions don’t come from defiance.
They come from a child trying to survive.
And over time, they quietly shape how we relate to God.
We don’t stop believing He exists.
We just don’t expect Him to respond personally.
We lower expectations.
Manage hope.
Call it wisdom.
But sometimes it’s just disappointment wearing grown-up language.
What we experienced as loss,
God was already working through.
What felt like abandonment,
He was using to shape resilience, discernment, and depth we couldn’t have gained any other way.
Not because the pain was good.
Not because the absence was justified.
But because God is the kind of Father
who can take what was meant to harm us
and weave it into something redemptive.
Scripture tells us that all things work together for good
for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
Not because all things are good.
But because God knows how to use what was broken.
Even the things we never wanted.
Even the moments that changed us.
Even the disappointments that shaped how close we felt safe getting.
And sometimes the work God was doing
wasn’t about stopping the moment—
it was about staying with us through it.
Holding us. Keeping us. Protecting something in us that would matter later.
If abandonment taught you that closeness comes with uncertainty, then of course you learned to hesitate.
But what if God isn’t threatened by that?
What if the part of you that hesitates isn’t sinful—just wounded?
God is the kind of Father who meets people in caves, in silence, in grief, and in unanswered questions. A God who doesn’t rush people past pain just to prove a point.
You don’t have to rewrite your story to be accepted by Him.
You don’t have to pretend the wound didn’t shape you.
You’re allowed to bring the questions and the faith.
The hesitation and the desire to be close.
The guarded places and the longing for intimacy.
If you’ve been keeping God at arm’s length, maybe ask yourself gently:
Not “What’s wrong with my faith?”
But “What did my heart need that it never received?”
Healing doesn’t always look like suddenly trusting again.
Sometimes it looks like staying long enough to discover
that closeness doesn’t have to be earned.
You don’t have to force yourself to believe God will show up everywhere.
You just have to notice the places He’s already meeting you.
Even now.
The OutLoud Collection
