late night rant...

I can't sleep. I dislike when this happens. Especially on a Saturday night, good thing I got someone to teach Sunday School in my place tomorrow. I don't think I will be a very happy camper come the morning.

I feel like there's so many things racing through my brain and I have no one that I can talk to about them. Most of it involves the church. I'm so angry with the church! And I have been for some time now. I'm just so sick of pretending, of plastic people who hide behind a mask every Sunday morning. What I am about to type out is a vent. Forgive me if I sound bitter, it's because I am.

GOD created mankind to be relational. First and foremost with Him but also with fellow man. I really believe that, correct me if I am heretical. But we aren't alone in this world, we are connected. GOD created us to be in fellowship with one another, obviously when sin entered the world that was messed up though. Now we live in such an induvidualistic world. We think of ourselves all the time and we do whatever we can to maintain our 'privacy' and put up walls to the rest of the world around us. I mean think of it, mp3 players, iPods, Nintendo DS, they all cut us off from people around us. And we do it in the church too.

Maybe it isn't the same for everybody (I really hope it's not) but my typical Sunday looks something like this...I wake up and look through my closet wondering what will be acceptable to wear. By acceptable I don't mean appropriate I mean that I wonder what I can wear that people won't judge me for. I never do that on any other day of the week, I wear what I am comfortable in. But for some reason on Sundays I feel like I have to step it up a few notches and wear things that I normally wouldn't wear because its "church approved". Then I go to church and I sing the songs, I listen to the announcments and then comes my favourite part, prayer and praise time.

The prayer requests are never personal. Never. It's always for someone else in the family, or a family in town that we know is going through something hard or different events that the church is having. For a while I would shake things up and throw in something personal about myself and what I was going through. Not all the time, just every few months or so. I could tell it made people uncomfortable and I stopped after I realized that even when they prayed for my request it was made into a generalization for everyone in the church and not just me, what I was going through.

Then comes the sermon. No comment.

I'm so tired of being angry and bitter. It's hindering my relationship with GOD and it's hindering my relationships within the church, but I don't know who I can talk to about it that will actually listen. I don't know how to make things better.

I suppose first I have to start with me and fix my attitude. It's bad. But it's so hard, every Sunday the cycle starts again and I leave church either bitter or very, very sad.