vodka and orange juice

to go to church or not to go to church - this is the question that is on my mind right now. is it okay not to go to church? of course no one HAS to go to church. when you belong to a church community, however, one that is as small as my church, your absence is noticed more than your presence (i think).

one of my siblings told me that she would pray for me even though she's having personal issues with god lately. that's awful sweet of her, don't you think? anyway i think i have issues of my own with god lately too. i hardly pray, especially since i have stopped going to morning prayer meetings. i can't go to morning prayer because i have to go to a program at the hospital which is supposed to help me transition from hospital to world. how in the world they think they are helping me do this i have no clue since not much of what we do in this program has helped me so far. anyway, my issue with god happens to be that god seems absent in my life. it feels like god has been absent in my life for a while. of course i pray and i pray well for others. but when i pray for myself, lately, i noticed that i don't have much to say. and whewn i do have something to say, i find that i doubt whether god is hearing my prayers. if god hears my prayers, that should make some kind of practical difference in my life, should it not? well, i don't think my prayers for myself has had an impact on my life lately. so lately, i don't pray all that much.

i want to be able to pray. i want to believe that god cares. studying theology has been bad in a way because i realize that to think of god as a personal god limits god to whatever i am capable of imagining. but if god is not personal...shouldn't god be personal if nothing else? by personal god i don't mean that god is a person but a creator that relates to me in a personal way. maybe that's too much to hope for.

my dad is in denial about me. i mean really he is in denial about my life, how i am doing, who i am and what i do. he just asks if i am okay and whether i exercised, ate, and read the bible. why should this matter? when my dad refuses to accept who i am i feel like i am not being seen. and maybe if my parents can't see me for who i am, maybe god doesn't see me as i am too. i know that there is no good reason or logic behind this thinking but it just is the coninection i make from my parents to god. so i am invisible in all but one sense. i am a place holder for my parent's oldest daughter. i am a place holder for the daughter who always succeeds. even when i'm failing miserably they see me as succeeding in whatever i am failing in, like i said, they are in denial. it's just not nice to ignore me for who i am and to reconstruct me in their minds as someone who is doing well. i am not doing well. i feel miserable. life has no meaning for me. but i must live because i cannot die. that's the story of my life.