Take Me to Church

Church is supposed to be a happy time. A rime of love and friendship combined with intimate worship. For me it has become a place of lies. A place of constant pretending. A place of fakeness and of being fixed.  I recently listened to Hoizer's song "Take me to church" and was deeply alarmed by how much I related. The lyrics state, "Every Sunday's getting more bleak. New poison each week. We were born sick you heard them say it" It pains me to say that this is how it is for me. I have fought for all my life to have a relationship with God. It is a constant battle to overcome my desires and pain and to truly feel unconditionally loved.  I have dreaded writing this post for as long as I have dreaded going to church. For as long as I can remember,  telling my sins led to the church "sharpening their knives'. There is no room to be broken. When someone is broken they are immediately fixed or sent away.  I have never felt loved while broken. I am different than most christians. I am liberal. I am a feminist. I drink and swear occasionally.  I am gay. I have spent so much time trying to figure out how to reconcile these things with Jesus.  I am still understanding what it looks like for me specifically to be a follower of Christ. The closer I get to figuring that out with Jesus the more I see that there is no reconciliation with the church.  Nor is there grace to let me figure it out. My relationship with God has always been a struggle for me but one thing is undeniably true; God wants me. I pray daily that God's voice will be heard through the massive roar of religion.  I guarantee after I post this I will receive calls from people asking me to leave their church/ministry until I am fixed. Don't get me wrong I will never follow (as the song says) "a church of no absolutes, tells me worship in the bedroom". But I am stuck. I believe that God wants and loves me even when I don't feel it. I believe that God knows better than me. I believe that God wants to use me and my passions even when I am at my most broken. But the church is constantly screaming, "you are a sick pervert! You are broken and don't belong here! " and that makes it hard to move. Instead of hearing that God has good plans for you and that He should be guiding your life, we hear that we are gross sick perverts who can not be trusted and have no chance to be happy in any capacity.  Where is the love? Where is Jesus?  Where is the help in the searing pain? Where is the grieving with those who greive? I don't need someone to tear me down or to build me up, I need someone to come and sit with me where I am and love me there.  I will continue to bring Jesus to people where they are but now I am frozen. I am being attacked by both sides while the important human parts of me slowly die as no one is willing to be there with them.

God, please speak to me and all those who feel the same. Bless the scared, bless the outcasts,  bless the broken. Help us to see your love for even those who dispise you. Be who you are and continue to reveal that to us.