Sunday 23 March 2008

where to?

So maybe by talking it over and over and over again, I will get more clarity on my own thoughts. I think. I don't know. Maybe by asking and talking and listening, I can define more clearly if this impulse was merely that - or something more.
I turned up in church this morning, and it didn't feel like Easter. It felt as if there was a bitterness in my soul. I don't know if I was upset because I felt I was being side-lined. I don't know if I was upset because... just because. Or maybe I'm just being stressed about Monday. So I was being grumpy. (Not an unusual feat or fact).
But song turned to tears, I don't know why, which is hard on me because I can usually shut out emotions and turn off the tap. Most times. And in the midst of it was this thought - that it was time to leave this church.
I don't know why. I don't know where to.
But I feel that it's time to move on.

But I'm afraid to. I don't know why. Maybe it's because when I finished with TARC in KL I was quite certain that I was to come back, and to come back to the church. I was quite sure that my place was to be in this church, with the Creative Arts. In the Worship Team.
Now I'm not so sure.
I don't know if it's because I'm being "overworked", if I am pushing myself too hard, or if I'm feeling guilty at the lack of results and/or lack of overall needful effort. I don't know if I'm being upset at the fact that I try, but it fails, or I try, but am told I am not needed. I don't know if I am taking offence at what that pastor said / implied last week. I don't know if in some ways I am still affected by my father's resignation, or if I am taking offence on his behalf, or if I feel in some ways overburdened by it. I don't know if this whole problem is because I feel that everyone is on their tippy-toes about me because of my father and the resignation, as if I am someone they need to guard and protect, and make sure I am not hurt (and yet they still inflict hurt). I also don't know if this is just some backlash to the realisation of the fact that I have never and probably will never fit in. That the ideas and interests and lifestyles of those around my age are dissimilar from mine and will probably never even touch in any sort of tangent.
I feel as if... people are expecting me to act a certain grown-up way and do certain things, while at the same time putting me down as a child, and taking away those opportunities offered earlier.
There are too many why's and if's in the consideration, and I think I will never be able to come to a single lucid explanation of my impulses and my fears, my desires and my hopes.

What I do know is this: I will probably never truly be able to be myself here. There are too many unspoken expectations that I have to deal with, both from myself and from the church. I feel that I have no room to grow, maybe because of the way I see myself in connection with the church, or maybe because... I don't know. I feel as if all the walls that I had taken down whilst in KL have been re-erected where they stand, maybe even further in.
What I don't know is this: if it will ever truly be different anywhere else because of the way I was made, because of the way I always react, and because of who I have gradually come to be.

There is the hope though, that just as CF & Metro Tab made me a different person than the one I am becoming, that maybe a change will reignite something that should be there.

Maybe church will somehow again become something more than a responsibility and a burden and an expectation and a guilt.

The question now is: where to, and when?

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