Always critical...

There are some things I find difficult about the church structure. And I'm always hesitant to say anything about it (even though this blog would suggest otherwise) because I really don't want to be the one who sits on the outside and tells the inside how to do its thing. But there are two things a few pastors seem to do that I've noticed a lot lately that just lose me.

1. Rehoming animals.
This one, if you know me at all, is kind of obvious. If somebody rehomes a dog, I immediately begin to question their person. To discard a dog is to discard a soul. It's to actively participate in the emotional scarring of an individual. It's also to throw that individual you've scarred onto somebody else.

Sure, life as a pastor is rough. I don't doubt it. But how many pastors these days say church comes in fourth on the priority list?

1. God
2. Wife
3. Family
4. Church

Seems to me that a dog would fit in #3. And not only is the emotional scarring of the abandoned dog significant, the negative lessons it teaches your children and those around you about loyalty, unconditional love and frankly, the elderly are also very important.

Dogs, I think, are a gift from God to show us what unconditional love looks like. They're meant to help us understand how to give sacrificially and how to put aside the events of our day and love wholeheartedly as if that were all that mattered.

Something about a pastor rehoming a dog, especially an elderly one, makes me question whether he knows love at all. How can he teach the love of God when he has no respect for the love of a dog? I'm serious too. Dogs don't need much and as they grow older; they need less and less (albeit more in vet bills sometimes). To abandon a faithful friend as they enter into their older years where they require compassion and the fulfillment of trust is just cruel. It's blatantly unloving. And somehow, I still hold pastors above regular people in that sense. They should love more. They should strive to love harder and fuller than the rest of us.

And really, if you foresee a pastoral life in your future, don't get a dog if you can't prioritize properly. Be responsible.

2. One-sided communication.
In another lifetime, I joined a pet forum on the internet. At the time, I was pretty sick and couldn't really do anything with myself, so I decided to try to help people with their dogs online. When I first got there, there were about twenty threads updated every day. It wasn't that many in spite of the admin's bloated membership number.

Once in a while, somebody would post a thread with some obscure medical issue that nobody knew anything about. They'd be upset and you could kind of tell by the tone of their post that they'd be sitting there waiting for a response. And I won't hesitate to say that a couple times after I was made more aware of those empty threads, that person was me. I remember asking how to train Jemma when she overreacts in a very negative way to any sort of correction. At the time, she had really low estrogen too, so that contributed to her submissive upset. Nobody answered. I remember feeling hopeless and a little bit rejected.

All that to say, I quickly learned that people just want an ear most of the time. They don't necessarily need all the answers but they do want somebody to hear them and just be there. And on this forum, it was a little bit of an extreme because of the panic that sets in when somebody we love is afflicted with something we can't figure out, but on a lower level, this happens everywhere with everybody in every situation.

A commenter on that forum who appeared out of nowhere one time, commented that this Prin person (i.e. me) had a "sickness" whereby she'd answer everything. And I did. I tried my best to answer all the threads nobody would answer, even if just to push it back up to the new threads so somebody with actual answers would see it.

When I left that forum a few years ago, the daily thread count had risen from the twenty or so when I'd arrived to around 120. And it's not just because of me. Other people started doing the same and it became a really caring forum. People listened. They tried to help. It was great.

I still try to do it now, in my daily life. I try to hear when somebody just needs an ear- although sometimes, it's hard not to offer unsolicited advice. I've been told that somehow, people feel they can open up to me and say things they wouldn't otherwise say out loud. I love that. I love the privilege of people letting me in.

Pastors have that privilege built into their role. People open up. People want to be heard. People want direction or at the very least, understanding.

A pastor has to reply. Has to. I understand schedules are tight and pastors are pulled every which way, but still, there has to be a way, even if that way is finding a volunteer who will help you sort through your email or phone messages or other requests. You have to answer.

Nothing makes a person feel invisible quite like being asked, "How are you?" and being shut down during the reply. Sure, in some parts of society, people ask that question without meaning, but a pastor is supposed to care. And worse still is the next time the person is asked the same question. How do you answer a question to which the asker has already expressed no interest in hearing an answer?

You just stop answering. You shut down. You build a boundary between you and your pastor and that boundary makes the relationship superficial and uncaring. It makes it so that you and your pastor will never become more than acquaintances who exchange meaningless pleasantries.

And I honestly don't think any pastor goes into ministry with that kind of goal for personal relationships.

Answer the emails. Answer the phone calls. Learn to communicate so that your replies are thick and juicy and the interaction can be short and fulfilling.

Learn to communicate so that, as tight as your schedule gets, nobody feels left behind.

Learn to communicate.

Because really, who cares if you give three hundred talks and write seventeen books this year when nobody (as far as I know) has felt true community from a book? Or even a lecture? Who cares when none of those words you put out makes anybody feel loved? Who cares when all the effort you put into those endeavors is not felt at a level of personal connection?

Stop putting effort into things that seem big but do nothing for the people you love or are called to love. Who cares if the biggest pastor in the United States thinks your book is great when your most loyal church member's life is falling apart and you're just not there? Who cares if other pastors lift you up when you slap away the hands reaching out to you?

It's the little things that count.

On secrets...

I've been thinking about secrets lately. I'm not a very secretive person and as such, the life dramas I get into tend to be of a different nature than people taking issue with me as a result of some inconsistency or omission on my part.

But secrets and misunderstandings wherein both parties lack forgiveness and empathy tend to be the main driver of television and movies on the whole, and I find that sad. It's sad because even if you know what's going to happen, even if you see it coming the entire time you're watching and you know how it'll end, so many people do it in their own lives anyway, as if they are somehow immune to being outed.

In truth, they are immune, for the most part. In this society where everybody talks and nobody listens, you can say pretty well anything, truth or not, and very few will take notice. Even fewer will notice when something has been omitted. We're all very busy in our lives, right? Too busy to reply to emails, too busy to return calls and too busy to worry about whether or not those in our entourage are genuine.

We've stopped caring also because even if those in our entourage are found to be disingenuous or blatantly devious, we can just discard them, as loyalty these days is scarce, if at all existent.

But the thing is, Matthew chapter 9 says this:

3 And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” 4 But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? 5 For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? 6 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.”

And Matthew 12:25 starts in a similar way as verse four above. So if the Bible is true and Jesus is God and Jesus hears thoughts, then what of secrets?

There's endless talk about how the Bible says we should or should not live, and yet, openness seems so frowned upon among Christians I know.

When a pastor asked me a few weeks ago how I was doing and if I was involved in a church, I took my time answering. I could have gone two ways: I could have answered no, but I'm still looking, or I could have answered honestly. I chose to do the latter.

I explained things from the perspective that from all I've learned through the teachings of my favorite pastors, there is a distinct difference between living in sin while living a life of repentance and living in sin knowingly all while refusing to change anything about it. I am living in the latter.

I'm living with my boyfriend now, as of May first. We're not married. We do plan on getting married eventually, but we're not engaged either. And God only knows how often even the best laid plans fall through, in spite of all the wishful thinking.

So there it was, laid out as text on a screen, honest and in an effort to state where I am, how I'm doing, why I'm not in church without making excuses for myself.

And I know most people these days- Christians or not- wouldn't really see the sin in living with one's boyfriend before marriage if marriage is intended, even if there is a strong statistical possibility of dissolution. (That statistic is much higher for people who live together prior to getting engaged.) But the difference here is that I know it's not what God intends. It's the knowledge that creates the problem here. It's what makes this rebellion against what God intends for me.

While I don't repent and make my boyfriend move out or marry me immediately, I do pray a lot. I pray that God would make of my mistakes godliness and guide me to what He intends for me anyway, even if I trip on my own feet the entire way. I pray it because I want to know what it feels like to have what God wants for me, even if I'm too cynical, controlling and distrusting to allow it and plan it for myself. I want to not be wrong about the outcome of this. I want this guy to be the guy I commit to forever because we find ourselves in this situation already and because that is the only way to honor God through this blatant rebellion. If I refuse to repent by going backwards and undoing things that have been done, then I will repent by moving forwards toward what will hopefully make this right.

But I digress.

My point is, I was open and honest and didn't get a reply. Maybe my email got lost. Maybe. Or maybe he just didn't know how to respond.

But I find myself protecting the Christians I know from me. I find myself censoring myself, not for my own protection but for theirs, as if somehow they believe that their own faith is so fleeting that to be touched by the sin of another individual, however minor or major, will be the end of their own relationship with God.

How well do you trust God if those around you have to keep themselves secret in order to protect you? Does it imply such a strong lack when even the people around you see it?

But what of these secrets? If I had told the pastor everything was fine and I was still on the hunt for a church where I'd fit in, cleverly omitting the part where very few gospel-centered churches would allow me to fit in in my current circumstance, what would that serve? Is he better off for it? Am I better off for it?

In this society where nobody is listening anyway, what difference does it make? I could have just as easily not even replied.

But you can't compartmentalize truth. You can't compartmentalize honesty. It's either your everything or it's nothing at all. Ultimately, there are no secrets from God.

So really, what difference does it make? It depends on where your heart is, I guess.

Something's not right...

One of the "versions" of Hell that was explained to me at some point was the idea that Hell isn't a flamey pit of intolerable heat for eternity but an absence of God. On the other hand, Heaven would be where we get to see the big picture. We get to stand with God and learn what all this was for.

If that is the case, then atheists would have their way. Upon dying, they would simply die, as they tend to predict, and that would be it. No afterlife, no judgment, just an eternity dead. That eternity, of course, being spent apart from God without ever knowing what this life was about and without knowing the essence of who God is.

But if that is the case, that would imply then that those who spend their lives believing but come up short of salvation would endure a more painful eternity without God because they would know that God does indeed exist. Not only that, but they would have faced Him for judgment and the Bible tends to say that being in the presence of God is something we just are not equipped to handle because He is simply too great and too Holy.

Also, if that is the case, it would imply that God is not enough. It would imply that even if we'd know God upon our earthly death, the real benefit of Heaven would be to finally have the answers to the questions we'd spent this entire lifetime asking.

So then what is Heaven and what is Hell? Or do we have the right to know as Christians? Because shouldn't God be enough? Shouldn't we be focused on Him anyway, rather than projecting the outcomes of our curiosities onto the future to appease our worries and falsely stifle the unknowns?

What if only God knows what happens after this? Shouldn't that be enough? Shouldn't we trust Him enough?

Romans and I don't get along. (Still.)

Romans 9:1-3:
1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

The ESV study Bible says this about it:

Paul suffers from great anguish because his Jewish kinsmen are unsaved (see also 10:1). Indeed, if it were possible, Paul might almost choose to be accursed (to suffer God's punishment in hell) so that his fellow Jews would be saved (cf. Moses in Ex. 32:30–32). But he knows this would achieve nothing, for none but Christ could be any person's substitute to bear God's wrath.

So let me see if I have this right. Paul would sacrifice himself such that his fellow Jews would be saved but that would be futile because only Jesus can do that. Right? But being that he wrote that in Romans, which was written after Jesus' crucifixion, doesn't that mean... that... Jesus already did that? Or was what Jesus did not as good as what Paul would have done had he been the one sent to be the sacrifice?

You know what I mean?

Why, by human standards, does it seem through this passage and its ESV explanation that what Jesus did was incomplete? Why didn't Jesus sacrifice Himself so that all of us could be saved?

And if He did, why doesn't Paul believe it?

On not deciding how or when God will show you things...

I suppose I should blog here once in a while. I think about it all the time. I just don't know what to write. I'm in a period of reflection lately, far less studying, falling behind in all the sermons I used to keep up with. But this time is different than usual. Most of the time, when I go through periods of withdrawal from God and from passionate learning, it's some sort of rebellion. This time, it's not. This time, it's more of a wall I'm hitting but through circumstance as of late, I might actually get through it.

See, there is a boy who is quite fond of me. But the whole situation is unsettling because of a post I wrote here a while back about God loving me. I won't go back and read it because I don't want to affect my memory of it for the sake of this post, but the way I remember it, I wondered why I expect God to take it all away from me all the time. Why would a loving God, who wants to see me smile once in a while, always be threatening to take everything I love away?

And so there's this boy and no matter how hard it is to admit it, I adore him. And I do know that it's all in God's hands and God could very well take it all away from me at any moment, but I know we'll be ok, regardless of what happens. I know that I am a child of God first and everything else comes second, if at all.

But I also know that it is so hard for me to trust.

And I can't help but wonder how God feels about all this because I haven't ever smiled this way. I haven't ever had somebody love me this way. And all the other times in the recent past, I remember having to shut my God off before interacting and this time, I don't. He isn't a Christian, though, but does appreciate my perspective. He lets me talk about God and he actually listens and feeds off my passion. In the land where angry atheism reigns, it's really amazing to be able to talk openly with somebody I love about the God things. So for once, my interactions feed my faith rather than put it on the back burner.

But there is this trust thing. Does God really want me to be happy? Isn't that a frivolous thought? Don't we grow more in suffering? Don't we look to God more in pain?

Sometimes, rainclouds are necessary for life, but when they break in the dark of night and reveal the stars, we find God there also. And I do have to trust that God does want me to see Him in the stars and the things of beauty and the feelings of awe. And I have to trust that God might also want to teach me to love Him more through bonding me to another person to my utmost human ability. I have to trust that I am not certain that my life will be spent as some sort of modern day, first world martyr. It is not a certainty as much as anything else is.

Why would God take away everything I love to test my love for Him, when it's my sadness and brokenness that I cling to most?

When he hugs me, I look different. My eyes change and I see myself as he describes me. I don't see the sadness I thought was me. I never realized how much I'd come to rely on something that is actually supposed to be temporary as my baseline for existence.

I wasn't depressed. I mean, I may have had instances, sure, but on the whole, I was doing alright. But I had so little trust in God's love for me that the only good things I ever expected were the ones that never left my imagination. And while it seems terribly sad to never expect anything good in one's own reality, I am eternally grateful that my imagination never dulled. I thank God for that.

And so now, this man, this absolute figment of my imagination, who seems to love me so perfectly, becomes reality and in doing so, is teaching me to let go of my fear of God a little and embrace the kind mercy and love of God a little more.

Even though so many seem to take that for granted, it always feels like one of the hardest things for me to grasp.

On mixed metaphors, parallels and the anthropomorphism of God...

Everything happens for a reason. People always say that, but usually, they mean it in the future, as if at some point eventually, things will make sense and without this particular event, other important events might not transpire in its wake. But when I say it, I mean it now. It's like how we're taught in high school English classes how authors of books write deliberately, choosing names that are symbolic in some way, times of day that are pertinent to the mood of the story and so on.

I have no idea what will happen later and to chalk something current up as a lesson for later irks me. It's like that other saying people have, "It'll be ok." Man, I hate that expression. That's all it is, really- an expression. Because you have no idea what will happen and have absolutely no assurances that it actually will be ok.

I remember failing a test one time, and I knew I'd failed it just because I didn't even answer enough questions to pass had I gotten them all perfectly right. And I came out and told a friend of mine that I'd failed it and she answered, "Don't worry. It'll be ok. I'm sure you'll pass." And I looked at her and said, "No, I'm telling you I failed." And she just kept reassuring me. I didn't get it. Facts are facts. I failed. There was no reassurance in the form of a potential for passing to be had. The only reassurance was that maybe the prof would alter the grading scheme overall and give this test less weight or something like that.

But I digress.

Everything happens for a reason.

And I used to sit in traffic every day for anywhere between forty-five minutes and three hours and the whole time, I'd listen to sermons. Well, sometimes, I'd listen to music, but I tend to listen to the same songs repeatedly and after a while, it just gets irritating (don't ask me why I don't just change songs...), so I'd end up back on the sermons. They're always different. And I quickly became overloaded with thoughts and newly learned things which stirs up the passion in me.

But lately, I've been working from home and trying not to drive anywhere and when I do drive, it's been so long since I listened to music that hearing the same song over and over doesn't irk me. And so I've fallen ridiculously behind in the sermons, which kind of sucks because I do miss the passion that was stirred up every time an awesome pastor would tell it like it is and I'd have the heart to listen.

Today, I found myself shattered. But not the usual shatterings that I ramble on and on about on my other blog. This one was different. Over the course of a regular conversation with a boy I'd been talking to a bit more lately, he said one word, in context obviously, and that one word shot my guard up so fast that I felt it. It spooked me so quickly and abruptly and completely shut me down. One word.

And the word?

Picnic.

I won't get into the context or anything, but it had absolutely nothing to do with me anyway. It wasn't like I was going to a picnic or I was invited to one in any way or anything of that nature. It was independent of me, but the important thing was my reaction to it. That one word took away every ounce of trust I had had in an instant. Every ounce of idealistic hopefulness too.

But everything happens for a reason. I got into my car because that's what I do when I need a breather, and I threw on a sermon. It was a relatively old one, but I'm so behind that it's new to me. And so my favorite theology pastor started talking in the sixteen or however many speakers my car ridiculously has and the first thing he talked about was how he was asked to preach but he's terrified of public speaking. He wouldn't give in to the shackles of fear, he said. And so there he was, standing up there in front of a crowd and speaking out of my pajillion speakers a month and a half later too. About fear.

Timing is everything.

I have to paraphrase because the more I start and stop my ipod, the shorter the sermon gets and I'm far too lazy to turn on my desktop and wait a half hour for it to finish doing what it does to warm up. I hope I don't get it too wrong...

At one point, he said something like, "Life is a river but it doesn't flow toward God. It flows away from God. [...] And if you lift your paddles, you drift downstream." Apathy creates drifting. Complacency. And he said he doubted that there were many people who actively decided to harden their hearts to God, but that's this sort of process that happens when you just stop paddling and bit by bit, let go.

But I think I am one of those "not many". If I am drifting away, because I know I've stopped paddling, it's not passive for the most part. It's angry and deliberate.

He went on to ask why we'd go back to these inferior things when Jesus is better? What Jesus gives us trumps all. Why would we choose to pursue other things, even minor distractions, instead of Him?

And I think of my anger and that's what it's about. I know what God wants or I know the basic idea anyway, but I just don't believe it. And that's what I figured out today, after being shattered by fear. My fear and my shattering were the result of me drowning in mistrust.

God's word that shuts me down is heaven. I don't believe it. No, that's not entirely true. I don't believe in it for me. And I don't know what it is exactly, whether it's an actual place or just being with God or getting to see the full picture to finally understand why we had to endure all this, but somehow, whatever heaven is, I don't mind not finding out. I don't expect to get to heaven, and more accurately, I expect not to.

So why would I paddle so hard?

I love that God loves me now. I love that He loves me right now, in my not-so-perfect state, without me having to tidy up my person and my life to impress Him first. And I do hope that God will love me forever, but I guess I don't trust that He will. Maybe I'm one of those vessels He'll use to draw other people to Him without me actually knowing Him in the end. Or maybe it's something else that I'm unaware of, but what it comes down to is even if I believe that God picked me and beat me with a sledge hammer so that I'd finally see Him, I still don't believe that we're in this for the long haul.

And so I stop paddling. And I still love God, and I still see Him everywhere and in everything. But I'm not worth the effort.

What the boy's word meant to me was that I was an insignificant one of many. So I stopped paddling towards him too, but the parallels between the two situations made me more aware of how much I still project my feelings of being unlovable on God too.

It's so hard to pray for me still, both prayers from others and me praying for myself. It makes me so uncomfortable. I am ok with being a sort of tool for some sort of purpose without actually knowing God in the end, not because I don't want to know God, but because I expect Him not to want to know me, but if He could at least use me so I could serve some sort of benefit somehow, then that's ok.

And suddenly, God is every person and in particular, every man, who has ever crossed my path. Especially the men.

My God is the great God of the universe, and I don't give Him more credit than that.

But everything happens for a reason in this story. I've often wondered how books, especially ones on controversial subjects can have multiple authors. I co-authored a blog for a while and when they'd change some minor formatting things in my posts, it pissed me right off. And here I am, struggling to equally co-author this life with God, trying to piss Him off enough so He'll leave so I can run this show alone. I mean I'm the Princess of this story, right? Nevermind that I wasn't there when they handed out the names.

But at the same time, as the pastor said, "If you want cement to harden, just stop stirring," I know that even before I let God happen in my life, I did stop stirring many times and God stirred for me. When I gave up, somehow I kept going. When I was completely trapped, somehow I got set free. And now I know it was God. It was God stirring my cement when I was determined to let it harden.

But I still don't trust Him. I don't trust anybody. I love people with all my person, but they can't love me back, not even God.

And so I hold up my paddles, look up to God, shrug and say, "I just can't do it," and let go, drifting downstream until I become invisible...

... secretly hoping He'd keep stirring my cement anyway.

On failing the "stuff"...

I'm angry at God lately and I couldn't figure out why. I don't understand why He couldn't have laid out this faith thing in such a way that it fit every day life a little more easily. Instead, though random conversations with random people, I get to hear constant reminders about how absurd Christianity is and how ridiculously thoughtless its followers are.

Can you have God without the religion?

In theory, yes. But then if you believe in Jesus too, you get into the part where you ask yourself how it is that you know who Jesus is? You know Him through the Bible and the Bible preaches the structures and doctrines of religion.

I can't help but wonder if we're in a third era of the Bible. First, you had the sort of angry God full of rules part, then you had the redeemed by Christ part which negated most of the rules so people had to live differently than they were before under the rule of the angry God, and now we have this part. It's the post-Jesus, post-Bible era. It's the part where we've learned not only how not to live a life focused on appeasing the angry God, but also to take the new relationship with God through the sacrificing of Jesus for granted.

And I'm not sure that the way to fix that, the steps to improve this situation, are to revert to the practices of faith written in the Bible. We're not those people. We're not the ones who prioritize rules and decorum over God. Instead, we're the ones who seek constant freedom without realizing that it's from God. We're the ones who run away from God by excessively loving the gifts He's given us. We're the ones who actually love God already, but refuse to call it that.

As time progresses, I feel like I am losing my faith simply because I can't follow the rules. (And yes, "won't" substitutes nicely there, but I'm implying a stronger and more beligerant "won't" based on the fact that if I try, I doom myself to failure every time. Same goes for the rest of this paragraph.) I can't go to church. I can't read my Bible extensively every day. I don't look forward to the textbook slash ritual aspects of what to me is simply religion and not God.

Yes, we have to learn and yes, we need community. But what if our community is in a different form than the ones depicted in the Bible?

If nobody in my circles would set foot into a church by their own will, how is Jesus using the church to draw people to Him?

On the other hand, if we live in such a way that we can find way to integrate God into every thought and every action throughout the day, such that He becomes like breathing or any other unconscious function of the body, then we will end up presenting a picture to the world of a life with God that is actually doable and reasonable.

But maybe that's lazy. Right? Not going to church, not being bound by the rituals of religion, not forcing yourself to read chunks of the Bible every day, sitting at home listening to sermons in your pyjamas... It's laziness, right? It shows a lack of appreciation for God. But on the other hand, forcing yourself to do all those things shows a lack of appreciation for God's grace also. And really, if you believe in an almighty God of the universe who knows your thoughts before you think them and who chooses who has faith and when, then wouldn't said God be able to guide you to a rich knowledge without the religion? Couldn't He pepper our lives with situations that reveal to us our heart and the nature of God? Couldn't He move us in some way to get us to see His character?

If God chooses somebody in some sort of religious desert to have faith, then wouldn't said person have all the tools necessary to have faith and to know God? If the great God of the universe didn't account for the absence of resources when He chose this person, then He's not really a great God of the universe afterall.

So yeah, I am lazy. And I asked God to help me with that. But in the meantime, why shouldn't I be able to love God wholly and feel God with me? Why does it depend so heavily on the "stuff" and not the heart?

But then, if I read the Bible, Jesus basically says that- it is about the heart.

Then why do I feel like I'm constantly doing it wrong?

So I am angry at God. He created a situation wherein He'll love me unconditionally provided I do the "stuff". He explained what real love was in Luke ch 6 in the sermon on the mount, a pure and selfless love, and then made it all meaningless if I don't wedge myself into a pew every week for an hour of false love and false community torture.

Don't get me wrong- maybe your church is your community and you love the people there. That's great for you. But I don't feel at home in church, even in my favorite ones. It feels forced and contrived and entirely unnatural for me. And the fact that I've been made aware that the love often stops when you stop attending the church, that it doesn't transfer into real life, doesn't help. Sometimes, it does though. Sometimes, Christians do actually love people, regardless of circumstance. And in those situations, it reinforces in me that the church is apart from the building, that the community is my own and the knowledge of God can be shared rather than learned from a textbook all the time.

All I know is that if God knows who I am, then He'll know how I express my faith and when I need help with it. And He knows where my heart is. And He feels me struggling. And all I need is exactly that- to know that He's with me and to know that He knows me. If I can keep that, then I think I just may be alright.