Hey, God.

uh...You're supposed to say "hi" back now?

Hello?

*sigh*

Look, I know that things have kinda...sucked...lately. And I know that's my fault. I'm a person and imperfect and all of that. I'm sorry.

Ok, so I'm not REALLY sorry. Not in the "I hereby repent of all my wickedness and shall sell all of my belongings and move to deepest darkest Africa to pray for the pagans" sense of the word.

I'm not even sure what sense of the word I DO mean it; come to think of it. It's just...the thing to say when you're friends with someone and haven't talked in a long time. And, well, we haven't really talked, so, You know. . . .

Are you even there, or am I talking to Your answering machine? My dad's there, isn't he? He's listening to this whooooole thing and laughing at me.

Maybe he's missing me? Cuz I really, really miss him, God. I miss him like . . . like there's no description.

Every time I try to talk to You these days, he comes up somehow. And that hurts. So, uh, that's kinda why I haven't been talking to You. If I don't think, junk doesn't come up, and so it can't hurt.

At least not perceptively.

Until now, when I find my heart so simultaneously hardened and eroded that I don't recognize it at all and it scares me.

Where did the hope go?

Where did love go?

.....where the heck did YOU go???

GOD!!! ABBA!!!! I'M TALKING TO YOU DOWN HERE, DO YOU EVEN CARE?!

*pants*

That's an honest question. I'm not saying it to be cliche. I mean it. Do You care? Do You give a flying fig?

I cuss sometimes; does that horrify You?

Does that guy horrify you?

Are you horrifiable? Maybe horrify isn't the right word, but it's what's in my head right now. It seems that's the reaction I get from people who claim you.

Well, actually, it's the reaction I expect to get. Lots of them don't know. A few of them just look at me like I'm the little lost sheep. Poor silly Naomi, went astray and found a briar patch. Tsk tsk. Let's pray her out of it, boys and girls.

Yeah, pray me out of this while you stay in your happy little bubble of nonreality, where your love is ineffective because it bounces back in your face off the spring loaded smiley faced trampoline walls you build. Pray harder, everyone, because that version ain't gonna cut it this time.

Ew. Ok, God, I really am sorry about that one. Bitterness is something You don't appreciate, that much I know. And it's not supposed to grow in me. I don't think I knew that was there....at least, not like that. Yikes.

.....the artifice has gotta get to You too, though, right?

Now and Then

The thought that the person I was 3 years ago would be horrified by the person I am today is something that's been on my mind quite a bit these days. Since I haven't really been able to explain it satisfactorily to people who ask me what I mean, I thought I'd write it out and see if that helps.

The me of three years ago was at enrolled in a yet to be accredited conservative Christian college. She was convinced that God brought her to the east coast from the midwest for reasons yet to be revealed and that loving a guy who didn't love her was her calling in life. The me of three years ago was something of an emo drama queen sometimes. Three years ago, I was working on the campus of the college I attended. I continued working there because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to find - or handle - a job anywhere else, even though I was entering upper level course work in a government policy degree and attaining the highest GPA I'd ever achieved at that college. Three years ago, I was striving for independence. Rescue Squad was nonexistent in my world and I drove around in an Oldsmobile.

I knew a grand total of...zero...nonChristians. My world was a safe little bubble all wrapped in pretty paper.

Today . . . I still have emo drama queen tendencies, but they tend to drive me up a wall, so I crush them rather than embrace them. No longer attending or working at the conservative Christian college, no longer convincing myself to be in love with someone (though there are a host of questions in that area of my life right now that I'm just sort of mulling over) Government is something I hiss at and avoid like the plague. My grades while pursuing a degree in nursing are better than any I got while studying policy. I drive a Dodge and Rescue Squad practically owns my soul.

The me of today counts people who don't love God among some of the most amazing individuals she has the privilege of knowing. And they're PEOPLE to me, not projects, or things to put on a prayer list.

I think that's the thing that would rock the world of three years ago me more than anything else. That, along with the fact that the shiny paper got shredded, the bubble was popped, and reality doesn't look anything like the distorted gauzy picture we paint from behind the plastic stained glass of modern Christianity. Life is tough out here -- but it's ALIVE.