Kristen Neighbarger’s new release, Breathing Again: Finding Peace While Navigating Faith Reconstruction, takes the reader on the author’s journey of an abusive, hurtful church community in which she grew up through her path of courage to discover biblical truth. Her words express the impact of those early childhood and teen years that resulted in the development of performance-based, people-pleasing choices devoid of the truth of biblical grace, mercy, and love. Constantly striving to be good enough to earn Christ’s love was an exhausting way of life creating negative mindsets and emotions.

Ultimately, her immersion in what she describes as “toxic theology” weaving itself into every aspect of her life from her fundamentalism culture resulted in a public implosion that upended her belief system and every relationship in her life. What she wasn’t expecting was how this embarrassment led to a sense of freedom.

Kristen’s life prior to this led to more than a few poor choices based on her religious culture and what it taught and also left out. She began the journey of deconstruction with the help of therapists to dismantle the teaching that was flawed to seek the Jesus of grace, love, and truth.

Her story of this journey lets the reader see the ups and downs of her quest to then reconstruct her faith foundation and belief system as she began to read and study the Bible for herself. She invites readers who may have had their own experiences of spiritual or religious hurt or abuse to consider their own journeys. Each chapter of the book includes questions and statements to reflect upon and tools Kristen discovered to help bring healing and freedom one breath at a time.

In one passage in the book, Kristen outlines what freedom looks like as she reconstructs her faith foundation:

“My God loves me just the way I am because He made me on purpose for a purpose. As I’ve said before, and probably will say again another ten times, there is nothing I can do that will separate me from His unconditional love, but also, there’s nothing I can do to make His unconditional love greater either. He’s not going to love me more because of my successes, just like He won’t love me less because of my failures. True freedom, friends.”

Kristen has also written a companion workbook for those who would find that tool helpful in looking at their own wounds or abuse. 

It’s not easy to look at hurt or abuse that happens in the context of a church community. We expect more in our experiences there to be safe places but it’s then that Kristen reminds us of this truth:

“While God is the theoretical head of the church, the reality is that it is still run by man, and it is undoubtedly going to be flawed. Every single church will have flaws because every single person has flaws. I have to discern what flaws I can live with, just like I have to choose what flaws are deal breakers for me.”

You may be blessed to be in a faith community that is nourishing you with solid biblical teaching and loving grace-filled fellowship. If so, this book may be surprising to you but if you have had some level of hurt or abuse in your church or religious community you may find this book a helpful tool to help you heal and rediscover the freedom and hope Jesus wanted for you to know.