I’ve thought for a long time about creating a space like this, and I think I’m finally ready.
My name is Carl Huttenberger, and Light Heals began as the title of a book I’m writing about my own journey through faith, identity, loss, religious trauma, healing, and ultimately discovering a relationship with God that became deeper and more authentic than the one I thought I was losing.
The book isn’t finished yet. I’m hoping to have it completed by the holidays.
But somewhere along the way, I realized I didn’t want to wait until the book was finished to begin this conversation.
Because there are people walking through this right now.
There is someone beginning to question things they were once certain about.
Someone sitting in church feeling completely alone.
Someone afraid that asking difficult questions means they are losing their faith.
Someone carrying shame because they have spent years believing that something about them makes them unacceptable to God.
Someone who has already walked away from a religious community and is wondering what comes next.
And there is also a parent, spouse, child, sibling or friend watching someone they love go through all of this and wondering how to understand them without losing them.
Light Heals is for all of them.
And maybe it’s for you.
I want to make something very clear from the beginning.
This is not about the right church and the wrong church.
I’m not here to tell anyone where they should worship, what denomination they should belong to, or that everything I once believed was wrong and everything I believe today is right.
This is my story.
For much of my life, faith was at the very center of who I was. And in many ways, it still is.
But there came a time when faith, identity, family, expectations, fear and my understanding of God collided in ways I wasn’t prepared for.
I didn’t handle everything perfectly.
There are things I wish I had understood sooner. There are things I wish I had done differently. There are people I wish I could have spared from pain.
That’s actually one of the reasons I’m doing this.
Maybe someone else can do better than I did.
Maybe someone standing at the beginning of their own dark season can learn something from someone who has already walked through one.
And maybe someone who loves them can understand a little better what is happening on the inside.
In the weeks ahead, I want to talk openly about things we sometimes have difficulty talking about in religious spaces: doubt, certainty, shame, belonging, sexuality, scripture, changing beliefs, family, marriage, religious trauma, forgiveness, grief, authenticity — and Jesus.
Especially Jesus.
Because one of the most important things about my story is that I didn’t emerge from all of this believing that God wasn’t real.
Quite the opposite.
I discovered that underneath many of the things I had been afraid to question was the God I had been searching for all along.
A God of grace.
A God who wasn’t frightened by my questions.
A God who didn’t require me to pretend.
A God who could meet me in the darkness.
And a God who made room for me.
That’s where the name Light Heals comes from.
I have learned that darkness isn’t always something we can avoid. Sometimes life takes us directly through it.
But darkness doesn’t have to have the last word.
This will be a place for honest conversations about what happens when faith gets complicated — and about the healing that can happen on the other side.
Some weeks I’ll write.
Some weeks I’ll sit down in front of a camera and simply talk with you.
Eventually, I hope to invite other people into these conversations too.
I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t want this space to pretend that I do.
I simply have a story.
And after keeping parts of that story inside for a very long time, I’ve come to believe that perhaps the reason to tell it isn’t because my story is extraordinary.
It’s because someone else might recognize their own story somewhere inside it.
If that’s you, I hope you’ll stay.
And if you love someone who is walking through something like this, I hope you’ll stay too.
We’re going to talk about some difficult things here.
But we’re always going to keep looking toward the light.
Because that’s what I’ve learned:
Darkness may be part of the journey.
But it does not have to be the destination.
Light heals.
— Carl