Dear God,
I'm angry at you tonight. And I think being angry makes perfectly good sense. My mother is obsessive compulsive, bipolar and right now struggling with a skin disease all over her body. My sister is in rehab, and miserable towards me very often. I no longer wish to be living here, nor to be doing the work that I'm doing. And I am only getting by sometimes through perseverance, through grace.
I feel like I fucked up my life by going to NYU and taking on loans my second year. I'll be in debt over 30,000 and climbing for years. Sometimes all I can see is the down side, the deprivation, and my so-called mistakes.
What was funny about tonight's candlelight service was that at first I was enjoying it. I was inspired by the Christmas music and reveling like others in the congregation. But when the pastor, Rev. Brewer, got on the pulpit and started talking in his usual sensitive, loving, surrendering, submitting, open, vulnerable, generous peaceful voice about opening ourselves to the love of God, I found myself wanting to choke him. Because right now life is hard. It feels like the way I'm surviving from day to day is just by building a thick skin.
I don't blame God for what's happening to me now. I don't. But I also don't claim there's a purpose to it, or a reason. I believe God can help us make something good out of the situations we find ourselves in. And I do believe in submitting. But I also think that for a savior, he falls far short of my expectations on a regular basis. It's like that Tori Amos song, "God, sometimes you just don't come through."
In this season, the thing that gets to me most is the talk of Jesus as Savior. I think that title is the most annoying one of all of them. I can accept Son of God, but Savior at times annoys me even more because I don't see the evidence of his salvation. I think I've seen it in the past, but lately in my life, I have not seen it. Maybe that's the first part of the problem- my separation from the evidence. There may be some good evidence of where God's grace has indeed saved people. I wish somebody would show me the evidence.
I said it once before when I was living in DC, struggling with my faith. There was a song that came on with the lyric, "What I need to see is Jesus in the real world." Lord, give me eyes to see and ears to hear where you are making a difference, not just in charity but in justice, not just in words but in deeds, and not just in hope but in change. For I am impatient, justifiably so, given my short life. Give me reasons to believe, besides beautiful music on Sundays. Show me that that homeless man I see on 42nd Street every morning is going to be fine, and that predatory lending agency will be shut down. Show me your justice. And yes, please make me a channel of your peace.