Are You There, God?
By Sarah Viren
The summer before seventh grade, halfway into my two-week stay at a Christian athletic camp in Branson, Missouri, I started writing to God.
We had been raised Episcopalian, and the god I knew from those years resembled an elderly grandfather with bad hearing. I never felt like I could talk to him about, well, things. But the god I met at Christian athletic camp, and the god at the Methodist church that my mom had begun taking us to when we moved to Tampa that same year, was hip and fun—even if he did need a lot of attention.
After I got back from camp that summer, I wrote to him about everything important that happened to me: buying candy at Publix, doing my bangs, turning in my science project, being annoyed by my younger sister, and the distant threat of drugs and premarital sex. But most of the time, I wrote to God about boys: I listed the names of who had asked out whom, who liked whom, who was just a friend, who was more than a friend, who got dumped, who was popular or a dork or cute or, better than cute, “fine,” and—more importantly—who I liked, or loved, as in heart-shape loved, the pre-emoji symbol for middle-school romance.
“Dear God,” I wrote soon after school started that year. “I like this kid named Joel. He seems perfect for me. He’s cute, sweet, nice, funny, popular, but not too popular, not too experienced, he likes me, he’s in Boy Scouts so my dad would like him. He’s pretty good at fighting and he definitely isn’t a wimp. The only problem is that he used to be going out with my good friend Amanda and she still likes him, but he doesn’t like her. But I told him we shouldn’t go out because it would really hurt Amanda and he agrees.”
The next day, Joel and I were dating.
I assured God that Amanda was OK with everything, and then I told him about wanting to go to the movies with Joel, but that my mom won’t let me, and how eventually we went to the Adventure Island waterpark instead, and I was worried I couldn’t wear my contacts on the waterslides and, also, I wondered if he’d kiss me—but he didn’t.
A few days later, Joel invited me over to his house and we played chess and then went to explore some woods nearby.
“God didn’t answer. But I kept writing as if one day he would.”
“While we were sitting in the woods,” I told God, “he kissed me. It was my first French kiss. I kinda liked it, but it was kinda gross. Actually it was gross. He didn’t really do it well, but I guess I really didn’t either. I don’t know if I still like him. Do you know what I mean?”
God didn’t answer. But I kept writing as if one day he would.
“Well, I’m still going out with Joel,” I told him the following week, “but I think I’m going to break up with him tomorrow. I really don’t like him anymore. And guess what Xuan just told me on the phone? She goes, ‘You know he’s a dork, don’t you?’ and I was like, ‘No!,’ cause everyone I talk to thinks he’s cool, but I guess he is kinda a dork. And I know that shouldn’t make a difference to me, but it does. You know? Well I guess you probably don’t.”
The next time I wrote to God, Joel and I were no longer together, and I was going out with a guy named Melvin, who was verifiably popular and who had given me a photo of him shirtless on his waterbed holding a stuffed animal tiger.
“He’s sooooooooo sweet,” I told God in a very long entry about our relationship. “He says ‘I love you’ all the time and he said he’s not just saying it for the hell (sorry about that word) of it, that he really means it.”
A few entries later, I confessed that I wasn’t sure that I loved Melvin back, even if I liked knowing that he was actually popular, and not just maybe-popular like Joel, and so “for once everyone agrees with who I am going out with.”
The problem, I told God, was that dating a popular person had its drawbacks. “It seems like everyone knows me and that everyone is judging me,” I wrote. “Suzanne told Sarit that the only reason Melvin likes me is cause I have big tits, and that all his friends think I’m ugly so he probably thinks I’m ugly but likes me for my tits, which I am almost positive isn’t true. But it still hurt. It hurts a lot.”
“I wish now that God had told me I didn’t have to let myself be shamed.”
I had friends during those years, but God was better than a friend. He was always there. He would never make fun of my nose, like my friend Megan did, or talk about me behind my back, like Suzanne had. He never judged me, and he listened to everything I had to say.
But rereading my journal years later, I wished he could have answered me at least once. I clearly needed advice.
That was the year my breasts grew so quickly a group of boys on the bus started calling me “melons” each morning when I got on. Then, when I didn’t complain, they began grabbing my ass when I passed them on the way to my seat. I smiled when they did that, but not because I liked it. Because I didn’t know how else to respond.
“The bus driver thinks the boys are being too ‘flirtatious’ with me and they’re going to ruin my reputation,” I told God in one entry, “so I’m trying to ignore them, but it’s hard.”
I wish now that God had told me I didn’t have to let myself be shamed. That if anything, those boys should be shamed, that the bus driver should have been shamed for shaming me instead of those boys. Mostly, though, I wish God would have told me that I didn’t have to like boys if I didn’t want to.
Instead, the summer before my eighth-grade year, the youth group leaders at our church gave me a new journal, one called “Growing in Godliness.” In place of blank pages to fill as I chose, this journal included a “moral purity curriculum,” appendices on “accountability,” “masturbation,” and “guidelines for dating behavior,” and small organized boxes in which to briefly reflect on all I had learned or still needed to do in order to make God happy.
For the “What I’ve learned” sections one week, I wrote, “God has feelings and gets hurt when I put something before him,” and inside a “To do” box, I promised to “Pinch myself every time I sin (so I notice I’m sinning and so I stop).”
Some entries still showed the closeness I felt with God in seventh grade, but in most entries, I can see how, starting with that journal—or maybe with the onset of eighth grade—things between God and I had started to change.
“Lord I know I need to flee the evil desires of youth,” I wrote him on a Sunday, “but sometimes it is so hard. I try to hang out with the good people, but sometimes the most interesting people are bad. But I will not do pot. I love you and never want to hurt you.”
“I can see how, starting with that journal—or maybe with the onset of eighth grade—things between God and I had started to change.”
And then the following Thursday: “Lord, I know I don’t follow your commandments always and I am sorry, but there are a few laws—not commandments—that I don’t agree with, actually just one: homosexuality. I think the person can’t help it. Anyways, sorry about that. I hope you can still love me.”
I never wrote about boys in the “Growing in Godliness” journal. Instead, I thanked God for letting me grow close to one of my friends from youth group. I told him how sweet she was and how hanging out with her made me happy. I told him how excited I was to spend the night at her house.
Reading those entries now, I try to remember when I learned that my feelings for that friend were wrong. But I can’t place a specific moment. I just knew it. We all knew it: God would not love us if we were gay.
In my last entry to God, under the “What I’ve learned” section, I wrote “Being a Christian is hard,” and after that, the journal is blank—pages and pages of possible thoughts to share with God that I began to doubt he would understand.
The next year, I got a new journal, and in that one, I wrote for myself.
Sarah Viren, an assistant professor of English at Arizona State University, has authored the essay collection Mine and written for The New York Times Magazine and other outlets. She lives in Arizona with her wife and two kids and no longer believes in God.