Discouraged

Ever since middle school, when I started attending the Adventist private school system, I've listened to pastors wail about the number of "young people" growing up in the church and then drifting or leaving in their twenties and never coming back. They wrung their hands, and scowled around but mostly just looked sad and mystified, before looking determined and hopeful out at us young time bombs, who would maybe explode in a fury of rejection or acceptance of Jesus and the church, but more likely quietly fizzle out. But for then, we were still good, still safe, still working through puberty with the roil of emotions that would at least move us along in our search for God. Before our twenties, when we were in great danger of becoming lazy, tired, sedentary in our spiritual lives.

I always felt mostly normal throughout my life and have mostly felt conflicted about it. I'm not drawn towards chaos or instability, and never envied brilliant unbalanced people like some do. I'm mostly all right with being intelligent without genius and hard working without being incredibly driven. But sometimes I feel like I should be the exception, even if I'm not sure I can be. And this is one of those instances. As much as I'd like to be the time bomb that explodes, I don't think I am. I fear I may be the one, the 70% or whatever the statistic is now, that just fizzles.

It's not that I don't respect Christianity, and Adventism in particular, it's just that I am so tired. I'm not leaving the church, but I do feel dead in the water, just treading and not really going anywhere. I accept responsibility for this, no one is to blame directly for my relationship with God, and the state of mine is probably the way it is because I am very often cowardly, only forced into forward motion at the very last second when I have no choice.

But I also feel tired by all the events this school makes me attend. All the worships, vespers, convocations, in which they exhort us to make time for personal devotions and find meaning for ourselves, and I want to scream back at them "PLEASE LET ME, YOU ARE WEARING ME OUT." Because I do not have time, and it kills me that they blame me for that. Yes, I could probably cut back on the time I spend reading books for entertainment, or watching TV or whatever, but I could also be spending the time that you're taking to tell me to go pray TO ACTUALLY PRAY.

Religion and God and spirituality is such a viscerally personal thing, I am so discouraged by this whole situation. It kills me that I can't seem to retain Christianity and I'm just sitting there a lot of the time. I know what to do and don't know what to do. I am both terrified to ask what to do, lest the answer be terrifying, and tired of just sitting around.

Mostly though, I want the personal space from this infuriating institution to work it out, without them worrying over me, without them howling about the young people leaving and then being unable to fathom why being over-parented would lead to the parents being resented.

Southern Adventist University, please calm down and leave me alone for a bit. I hope everything will be fine with me, but I fear that I definitely will not be fine if something about this doesn't change.