Talking to God

Part of the impediment to me wanting to pray has come from an intense dislike of who I've understood God to be up until this point in my life. It's a relationship largely defined by me making apologies and excuses for him to justify terrible behavior from those who believe in him.

I'm just not willing to do that anymore.

Without trust, he and I have absolutely nothing to talk about. And I've realized that I can't trust a God who doesn't treat me like an equal. That trust is broken, and he and I are fully aware that's the only thing I have to say to him.

I trusted him to be my protector, to be the only one in my life who would never hurt me or abandon me. It's the trust of a child in a parent, where the parent already knows that relationship is completely unsustainable into adult life.

God has hurt me more profoundly than anyone else in my life, in all the times and places I needed him and he wasn't there. For the sake of me becoming an adult, he left me alone. The "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" approach to parenting.

Well, if adulthood is going to be defined by God constantly walking out on me when I need him most and learning how to live without him, what exactly do I need him for?

Maybe there's wisdom in this, in having a relationship with God that isn't based as much on need as mine was with him. But it's a profound loss of closeness and trust I haven't figured out how to overcome. And for now, I can't imagine a time where it's ever going to hurt less.

I wish I had the answer. The closest thing I have to that, perhaps, is the God who truly steps away when I tell him "if this is the kind of half-assed help you're offering, I don't want your help." 

Right now, I feel like that's all I know about God anymore.