Anguish

Have you ever find yourself sitting alone in church, and it's only in a moment of honest self-reflection that you realize what you must look like to other people?

I am in a deeply painful, vulnerable, and sensitive place with my own faith right now. I don't like the place/role that has been decided for me as a woman. And the anguish on my face, I realized for the first time, was visible to everyone else.

They can see that I'm not okay, that I'm not happy, even if they don't understand why. My anguish is not a secret.

It takes a lot for me to even go to church anymore. It comes with so much labor with other people and the stupid things they say and do. I can't deal with listening to the youth make gay jokes. I can't listen to the high councilman say that pain isn't real and that there's "no such thing" as being damaged. I can't listen to the sheltered ramblings of privileged people.

I can't do the labor of reinterpreting, recontextualizing, and trying to forgive anymore. I'm tired of giving correction for people who never engage in meaningful self-examination of their own behavior, because they're so obsessed with everyone else's sinfulness.

I feel like every time I show up, it's like sticking my hand in a blender, and I have no choice but to wait and see if someone else is going to turn it on this week.

I'm tired and sad, and everything I've internalized keeps telling me to just go, to just keep trying to make things work. And every time I leave because of some nonsense, I just end up more sad and angry.

I don't know what I need. I just know I don't have the strength to get myself out of where I am. I've been waiting on God, and he's just not showing up. The answer is always the same. 

"Just keep going. You're where you're supposed to be."

Needless to say, God and I have a very different interpretation of what is a livable and doable for me. And I'm tired of him and everyone else making that choice for me.

"Either help me or go away."

That was where I was during the sacrament today.

We talk so much about why we should never disappoint God with our words and actions. I was never taught what to do when God disappoints you.

And at this point, I don't know that I care to learn.