I was going to go to the 18-30something "Home Group" put on by a friend's church this evening. But I didn't. I wanted to go to meet new people, to experience something different, and to not spend the night alone in silence again. I do that most every evening, and it gets old.
It's a friendly group, I imagine, from those I have met before. I have friends that would be happy to see me there. So why did I stay away?
The worship. As is common to many groups, they'll have a person or people whip out the acoustic musical instruments and sing worship songs. I would probably know all the songs, too. But I doubt I could sing them honestly. I could sing the words, but I'd have to close my heart to do so. When I open my heart to God, only one things comes out - or perhaps many things, depending on how you look at it. A uniform blend of lonliness, disappointment, rejection, confusion, lonliness, frustration, and lonliness. I prayed, long, hard, and earnestly about what to do about it, acted on what I thought best even though the sheer terror of it nearly overwhelmed me, and far from making everything better, it seems to have screwed up at least three dimensions of me feeling connected to other people. No. Make that four.
When I open up to God, this amalgamation of feelings leaves me close to tears. In worship, in prayer, in anything. I think about God, I'm incapacitated.
I'd like to rebuild a social life, and not be left alone with my thoughts. But if the barrier to entry is a Bible Study in the greet-sing-study mold, I don't know if I can do it. There were times in the past that I could put on a happy face, and I'd like to say that I am taking the high road and renouncing pretending. The truth is I just can't. I don't have the reservoir of not-angst to pull from to sustain such an effort.
And please, please, don't anybody ask me to pray aloud. If I were to do so, I fear I might say what I feel not all the time, but fairly often (edited for innocent eyes):
Dear God,
F*** You
Amen
I don't feel like I belong in church, in that I don't feel like I belong in a land full of those who are satisfied, happy, and singing of the wonderful goodness of God. If church can be a place for those who can't pray the proper prayers, don't really know if they can ever trust God again, and are strongly tempted to go out the doors and never return, that's probably the place for me.
1 comment:
thank you, thank you for your blunt honesty.
oh, how i relate to your distaste for the whole "greet-sing-study mold" where happy masks are an unspoken expectation. just the other day someone was in the church office asking how i liked working here. and because i do actually love working here 95% of the time, i said i loved it. then this person went on to mention how she used to work in a church office and how much she loved that she could "really just be herself there." i thought, "are you kidding me? i never feel more on guard than when i am in this building!"
recently on a sunday morning i was bombarded by 3 separate people immediately following worship with 2 reminders of things i forgot to put in the bulletin and 1 request for more tri-folds in the foyer. i wasn't having a great day anyway, and after that i was almost in tears so i rushed out to the safety of my car and let out my exasperation as i drove home. i decided on that day that as much as i love hollywood, i do not envy celebrities in the least, because it sucks when the general public knows who you are and you can't get away from their demands even when you're not "working." i'm sure you've probably had similar experiences in the sound booth. but alas i digress... i do, for the vast majority of the time, enjoy my job. but there are definitely times when i feel overwhelmed with the task of simply putting on my happy face, just as you said, and pretending everything is hunky-dory. there are times it is trying enough to do it on sundays, but during particularly rocky patches when i am required to do it day after day coming to work on top of that, it can be very taxing indeed.
Following that brief conversation the other day my mind was drawn to how enjoyable it was spending last weekend at the Scottish Games, where nothing was expected of me and I could just relax and "just be myself." (Side note: I'm not sure why I suddenly started using appropriate capitalization...) The guys from the band that we hung out with a little bit are smokers, drinkers, users of profanity... Not the kind of behaviors you're typically going to find in a church setting, and not really the kind of behaviors I am accustomed to being exposed to very often. Yet I am completely comfortable hanging out with these guys (granted it is always for very brief time spans and I generally don't see a lot of these behaviors firsthand). Why? Because they don't expect me to talk or act a certain way. It doesn't matter to them. It's funny how at home I can feel at these sorts of events, where who knows how many of the people around me are "believers" and how many aren't, and how out on the fringes I can sometimes feel when I'm at church(/work).
All that said, I can see the potential drawback in never having to set aside our negative feelings about life, because I think if we get too comfortable with our negativity we can miss out on growth. (And I admit I struggle with this balance sometimes in my thinking.) But I definitely would like to see "church" be more of an environment where people truly could come as they are instead of always sensing that unspoken need to dress up for a masquerade.
Thanks again for your honesty, I appreciate it.
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