i had to pay tithes to avoid being kicked out

i am typing this on my phone so sorry if the formatting is weird. this is also very long.

so two sunday’s ago (jan 26) my church’s finance lady gave us receipts for what we gave in 2024. mine was in the mid $600 range while my sister’s and mom’s were 1.1k+. i immediately hid mine but unfortunately my sister still asked me how much mine was. i told her and she said that it should be higher. my mom said the same thing and something about “not wanting me to curse her household” i made told them that maybe it didn’t process my payment (i pay digitally) and that’s why. i told them i would talk to the finance lady.

after that i was afraid the entire church service that they would figure that the reason my receipt was so low was because there were some sunday’s that i wasn’t giving tithes or offerings at all. i’ve been saving for a car and to pay my rent which, quite literally takes up 90% of my first paycheck (i get paid twice a month) every month. saving up when most of your paycheck goes towards rent and food, gas, etc. is hard. i’m sure my family would be understanding of this if i was still paying tithes during this struggle and probably say something along the line of “god is gonna give me increase”. but since i was skipping out, they probably won’t listen.

i debated just coming out and telling them after church that i was skipping out and i don’t believe in god anymore and that i’m not religious or christian in any sense but i remembered that my mom cares more about her religion than her own family and would not hesitate to kick me out if she felt ‘god compelled her to’. this also made me fearful and i spent the entire service trying not to cry at the thought of being kicked out and homeless. i realized that i have nowhere to go because i live at home, i have no car, and not enough money to get my own place. i also live in the middle of nowhere and there are no nearby hotels, inns, or motels, and all my friends live far away. i would have nowhere to stay. i texted a friend during service and he said that it would be crazy if i got kicked out and that i should get a hotel. i told him why i couldn’t and decided to just tell the pastor the truth about me skipping and where my faith lies. which would’ve probably been very traumatic for me. losing my faith in general has been. it’s led me to hurt myself, have a lot of anxiety, made me depressed, i’ve even contemplated ending my life because of it.

after church, i chickened out, and decided to only tell the pastor that i was skipping. i told him that i was trying to save for a car and pay rent so that’s why i skipped. which is true because i have a lot of financial anxiety that makes it hard for me to spend due to thinking that i’ll never make the money back and that i never have enough saved. i also decided to send the church $630, which is a rough estimate of how much i missed.

i still told my mom and sister that it was because the website wasn’t processing me sending the money and my mom kept asking me how much money i sent. i avoided her questions because i’m afraid that if i tell her and tell her the truth, she’s gonna get upset and kick me out but i’m so tired of acting like i believe what she does and wasting my money. it's getting to the point where i don't care if i end up homeless at this point. i just want to be free of this.