Are Your There God? It's Me, Aimee.

Are you there, God? I’ve always assumed so. And it’s curious to consider how I have looked for you and talked to you. Prayer was introduced to me as expressions of gratitude before a meal and my last connection before falling asleep. What would happen if I didn’t “pray my Lord my soul to take” if I died before I wake?

How did I ever go to sleep after contemplating that I could die before I wake?

You were also the God I asked to bless all my family members and friends each day. You were the one who heard my inner thoughts, whom I petitioned as a preteen, teen, and young adult. You saved my father’s life and got me through wearing a back brace in middle school. I lost sight of you a bit in my own anger and sense of justice after my parents’ divorce. But you came for me.

You came for me when I was definitely not looking for you, and it was real. My whole body and soul knew it was you and that you were real—overwhelming, real and good and beautiful.

So, I started looking for you—in church, in the Christian bookstore, and on the Internet. Along the way, I confused looking for you with being a good Christian. I think a lot of us have, not wanting to be a bad Christian, of course, or even a mediocre one. And we learn that we are being transformed into your likeness, so we want that to show in goodness. But we’ve got our own ideas about what a good Christian is. We think it’s so simple, all right there in your word. Measurable. We’ve been working on the secret formula for centuries, and the church tells us how to belong. I long for that belonging. I talk to you about it. You know.

And yet it has been elusive to me. I’ve given others this little light of mine so that I don’t have to be responsible for it myself. Leaders, they are called. And boy have they tried to blow it out. I’ve stirred up trouble with my curiosity. I’ve been shown the door. Even after leaving the spaces I was in, they still keep my name on the list of those God does not love. Not a good Christian; not even “inside the faith.” The new spaces I try to enter are better in some ways, and yet it is as if I am on the outside looking in. Are you there, God? It’s me Aimee.

My prayer life has changed too. All the ways that I’ve been taught in my growing into adult Christianity seem transactional and performative. The theological words that I used to speak feel like a costume. I’m back to digging up my inner thoughts that seemed so intimate and with you. Like you were showing me myself.

I’ve looked to the Internet far too much for you—to find the community and answers that I could not in church. To share my own voice as well—to join in. But I hardly can look anymore. It’s not that there aren’t some fabulous people reaching out on social media; I have some wonderful friends there. I’ve found real connections and people sharing resources and much needed critique. But there’s so much noise about how to be a good Christian. And who is good and who is bad. I easily get distracted and

I long for real communion. I long for encounter.

And for church to be a place where we not only find you in the stories of Scripture, but in our own stories. Where we can dig them up and share them with one another, discovering you hanging out in our secrets. Because, God, I think that is where you are.

Are you there, God? I almost caught up with you the other day on my walk. You left me that feather to find and I knew you were there. And I saw you at the Market over the weekend when that woman walked by and I could tell her stomach was hurting. I saw you behind her face and we talked. When I get into my car after a good hike with a friend, I know that we have communed with you as well. And that hummingbird that flew right to my window and hovered, looking right at me. She had a message of some sort from you. You are teaching me to look for you. You are.

Are you there, God?, our beloved childhood storybook character asks. It’s so grounding, so real. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like you are. I can lose you and mistake you for another kind of god. And I lose myself then, too. It’s me Aimee. It helps to say it to you, God. Because you know her and can show her to me. And you are right there with her. I find you together. The question is a reminder.

Anyway, you were with me through those tumultuous years of adolescence, helping me transition into early adulthood. I’ve stumbled, crashed and burned, and find myself both with many treasures and much dross to sift through still. I’m transitioning life stages again, and yet finding my thoughts, questions, and wonders from early Aimee life all the more valuable. I think my prayer request mirrors that little character Margaret:

“Don’t you think it’s time for me to start growing, God?

If you could arrange it, I’d be very glad.

Thank you.”