Sarah Bessey has a complicated relationship with the word “deconstruction.” Not because she rejects the idea, but because it sounds too tidy—like something that happens in one clean break, followed by a quick rebuild and a triumphant return to normal. That’s not how it works.
“The longer you live into what you hope and believe about God and the world,” she says, “the more you realize this is something you keep doing. It’s not a failure. It’s the shape of faith.”
Bessey knows what she’s talking about. The Canadian author and speaker has spent more than two decades publicly wrestling with evolving belief, theological unlearning and what she calls “the wilderness”—a disorienting but sacred place where old certainties fall apart and new ways of experiencing God begin to take root. Her latest book, Field Notes for the Wilderness, is just one piece of a much larger, ongoing conversation she’s been helping lead for years: a conversation for Christians who are no longer sure where they fit but aren’t ready to give up on faith altogether.
When Bessey first entered the wilderness, it wasn’t doubt that overwhelmed her. It was loneliness.
“I didn’t have a framework for it,” she says. “The answers I was given just stopped working. And I didn’t know if that meant something was wrong with me.”
Raised in a charismatic tradition that emphasized victory and positive confession over lament and questioning, Bessey learned early to suppress hard emotions. Even admitting something as benign as a cold was discouraged.
“You’d have to say, ‘I’m coming down with a healing,’” she laughs. “No baggage there at all.”
That kind of performance-based spirituality might offer temporary certainty, but when real life breaks in—grief, injustice, theological dissonance—it doesn’t hold. And when it all falls apart, what remains is often a pile of loss: the loss of a faith that once felt certain, the loss of community, sometimes even the loss of self.
“You think you were building your house on rock, and then suddenly it turns out it was sand,” Bessey says. “And it can feel like everything disappears at once.”
But what she discovered, slowly and painfully, is that the wilderness isn’t just a place of tearing down. It’s also a place of discovery.
“There’s always something to unlearn in order to make room to learn something new about the love and goodness of God,” she says. “And sometimes you even learn it for the first time.”
This experience isn’t rare. In fact, Bessey believes it’s becoming a central feature of modern Christian life—particularly for those raised in the church.
“So many of us who find ourselves in deconstruction were the true believer kids,” she says. “We were the youth group leaders, the ones who went on mission trips, who signed the pledges. And yet we’re the ones asking the deepest questions now.”
Still, in many churches, the idea of questioning your beliefs is treated as a threat. Bessey hears it all the time—pastors warning that deconstruction is dangerous, that it might lead people away from God, that they’ll leave the church altogether.
Her response? “What if this is actually an invitation?” she asks. “What if it’s not the end of belief but the beginning of a deeper, more honest one?”
That doesn’t mean there’s no risk. She acknowledges that some people do walk away. But she’s more concerned with the fear-based responses that make people feel like liabilities just for being honest.
When Bessey was in the thick of her own spiritual unraveling, one voice stood out. It wasn’t from a pastor. It was her dad.
“He told me he wasn’t afraid for me,” she says. “He said, ‘If you’re genuinely seeking God, I trust you’ll find what you’re looking for—even if it looks different than what I’ve known.’”
That kind of trust, she says, can be transformative. And for those walking alongside someone in the wilderness, it’s more powerful than any argument or apologetic.
“Be the calm voice,” she says. “Not the one who panics or tries to fix it. They’re already panicking. They need someone who’s not afraid.”
The people who helped Bessey most weren’t experts. They were curious. Steady. They didn’t offer spiritual blueprints or try to rush her through grief. They simply stayed, asked good questions and let her be exactly where she was without pushing her to get somewhere else.
But even with support, the wilderness still demands something most of us aren’t taught to practice: lament.
For Bessey, learning to grieve what was lost—without minimizing it, spiritualizing it or rushing past it—was one of the most important and most difficult parts of the process. She believes it’s also one of the most neglected.
“We forgot how to tell the truth,” she says. “But you can’t numb your anger or heartbreak and expect to experience healing.”
Scripture, she points out, is far more honest than most churches. The Psalms are filled with rage, grief, disillusionment. The prophets rage. Jesus weeps.
“There’s room in the biblical tradition for your fury,” she says. “If we’re not making space for that in our churches, then we’re not telling the whole story.”
So is everyone destined for a season like this?
“I don’t think anyone escapes the invitation,” she says. “But not everyone says yes.”
Some wilderness seasons are loud and dramatic. Others are quiet and slow. Some come early. Others arrive in your 60s. But the idea that spiritual maturity means staying the same is, in Bessey’s view, the real myth.
“There’s going to be growth. There’s going to be change. That’s how faith works.”
The wilderness may not come with road signs, but it does offer something else: the presence of God that isn’t dependent on certainty or performance. A love that doesn’t disappear when everything else does. A faith that holds, even when it breaks.
“The love of God is consistent,” Bessey says. “Even when everything else changes. Especially then.”
