God only knows.

I'm standing in the bathroom of a posh little restaurant in the city, beyond tipsy, contemplating God.

Because apparently, there's no amount of wine, and no bigger occasion (say, a wedding) that can trump the complete terror I feel in the face of my life.

Hence, the drunk girl bathroom discussions with my friends. If you're a goodie, and always have been, let me explain. Girls get drunk. They convene in the bathroom (this part also happens amongst sober girls). And they spill it like the Oprah show. Unlike sober bathroom talk, this is just a little more ridiculous because there are no inhibitions. So you find yourself saying things like, "I just don't know if seminary is the right direction." In retrospect, I think it's obvious that the possibility of seminary dropped out of the race about an hour before, at the fourth glass of wine.

I can't lie. The situation is a little funny to me. Like an SNL skit. The wine-drunk girl talking about God school. To comfort me, a friend of mine told me that she once tried to minister drunk to a gay man at a bar. Some people probably think these are incredibly sad scenes. I think that, as is usually the case in life, the sadness is cornered with humor. But I'd say the writing is on the wall when you're slurring your way through these conversations. For myself, anyway. If this were someone else's life, I'd tell her she made a mistake, but that doesn't mean that she can't move on. So, please, if you're a drunk bathroom girl reading this--know there's hope.

Here's what interests me: I can't get drunk enough, I can't get far enough away from, I can't overshadow the question. I couldn't in college. And I couldn't this weekend. In that sense, it was a valuable experience. Also a valuable experience: the next morning. I learned that I'm not that girl any more. I can try to force myself into her life. But her life isn't mine.

What then is my life? I wish God would tell me. Because I don't want to ask. I can't lie. I don't want to pray. I don't want to read. I'm having a complete intolerance for Christian music. I'm dreading showing up on Sunday. Wednesday is out of the question. I can't even put on that little "Dare to Dream" pendant, knowing it's connected to His house. The best I've been able to do is ask Him to keep my heart safe through whatever this is.

I realized this weekend back in Chicago that I'm not the girl I was. But am I this girl? Am I this Christian girl? The easy answer is yes, and I'll get to that in future posts. But the easy answer isn't the whole answer.

People seem to hate it when I say this, but my experience is my own: I feel alone. Caught between these two cultures that are, in a lot of ways, really missing one another. Missing what it means to be secular, what it means to be Christian, what is required of each. I feel hesitant to accept advice from my oldest and best friends because they have world views that take them in directions away from the heart of Christ. I'm unable to trust fully the advice of my Christian friends because it sometimes misses the nuance of my loneliness--it treats my feeling as though it shouldn't be, but that feeling just is.

Thoreau wrote that you should "walk confidently in the direction of your dreams," but my heart is so muddled. I don't know what those are. My only real dream is for Truth--is to trust confidently in the heart of the One. To be one with God at ease.

How I get there, and what I spend the rest of my time doing-- God only knows.