Where are You, God?

I'm trying to find God.

More specifically, I am trying to find a place in which to worship. So, in layman's terms, Puff and I are "church shopping."

 

And to be quite honest, I totally hate it. Shopping for a church is almost as bad as shopping for bathing suits or purses or shoes. Shoot me now.

Here's the deal... Puff was raised uber-Southern Baptist and I was raised a lapsed Catholic. So he's used to spending his entire Sunday at church with potluck suppers and Wednesday night choir practices. Me? Well, I'm used to watching "Criminal Minds" on Wednesday nights and staying in my pajamas as long as humanly possible on my weekends. He knows the prayers and the songs and pays attention to sermons. I sit there for an hour thinking about grocery shopping or cutting my toenails. Puff comes away with some sort of message and fulfillment from a service. I come away singing "la la la la, and the holy ghost" as annoyingly as possible during the car ride home.

Although there was that time we started the car in the church parking lot and a rap song came blaring out the open windows. Or the time after that when Puff reached over and touched me inappropriately as we were driving away. Or the time I snuck out to the bathroom during the service to eat fruit snacks and text Kimhead. Maybe we just aren't meant to be church-goers.

To be flat out honest, I'm only partaking in this entire charade because Puff seems to be anxious to find us a place to belong, meet people, and get involved. Oh, and my shrink told me to.

I'm not anti-church or anti-religion. I do, in fact, believe in God. I'm just at a point in my life where I find myself rolling my eyes at lots of little bits of organized religion. Like my grandmother's priest telling her that he couldn't baptize Bimmer since we didn't have a Catholic wedding. Or other churches bashing gays for no reason. Or even others acting elitist and entitled. I'm just frustrated with the process. I like immediate results. I want to walk into a church and have it be full of nice people, relatively similar in their ages and interests, where the priest/pastor is cool and open-minded and doesn't ever go over an hour.

Church shouldn't seem like a chore. But right now? It feels like I am being forced into it.

My shrink has advised me to seek spirituality in my life and my marriage... to help save both from falling to pieces. She says right now, in this very dark time in my life, that I need it more than ever. But it's also the time I am opposed to it more than ever. And not being able to logically wrap my mind around a solution? Yeah, that's driving me batty. I will say that my favorite part of any service/mass at any church we've visited, is the time in the Catholic church where I have time to pray myself. Not guided or in a group. No, I like that when I walk in, I kneel and I pray. And after communion? I pray. It's the closest I feel to connecting to God, because I lead the conversation and not someone else.

 

It's also where I get to ask forgiveness for my sins. And since those are dripping off me, I like to have an extra few seconds to throw those out into the universe.