Ecclesiastical Fatigue Shames Unique Life Path Acceptance.

source: Hilda Furacão

The first time I said His name, I whispered it like an apology. It trembled out of me, not in faith, but in thirst — a hunger with no mouth.

I was taught He was light, but no one warned me that light could blister, that it could burn skin raw before it ever warmed the soul.

They told me I was chosen. Special. A daughter of obedience, a vessel of something holy. So I bowed, I covered, I silenced the parts of me that hungered for more than praise.

They never said He was watching like a blade watches soft flesh.

I tried to be good. I folded myself into verses, wore scripture like silk too tight — elegant, suffocating. I sang the songs. I smiled through the sermons.

I swallowed doubt like sacrament. But still, He didn’t come. Not when I wept behind bathroom doors. Not when I choked on my own name in a room full of men telling me how to love Him.

So I thought maybe if I gave more — more silence, more skin, more surrender — He would meet me halfway.

But He only came in pieces. In warnings. In punishments. In moments that looked like love but never were. He came through other people’s hands. Through their rules. Through the bruises I wasn’t allowed to call bruises.

And still, I stayed.

I told myself He was testing me. That love required fire. That devotion meant destruction. That maybe, if I let Him hollow me out long enough, He’d fill the space with light.

Instead, He left it echoing.

There were days I thought I felt Him. In the hush between storms, in the ache between breaths. I thought maybe I was chosen to carry a darker kind of love. A love that bled. A love that bowed until the spine broke. A love that made you disappear.

He was never cruel with fangs. No, He wore velvet. Softness that suffocated. He never struck — He waited. Waited until I offered my own throat.

I used to think I wandered because I was broken. Because I failed Him. But the truth is — I ran because I was still alive. Because something inside me screamed when I called pain holy. Because I remembered what love felt like before they renamed it obedience.

Now, when I say His name, it tastes like rust. Like rain on old stone. I don’t pray the way they taught me. I don’t kneel to be loved. I speak to Him — if He’s still listening — in the language of ruin.

I don’t ask for salvation anymore. I ask for softness that doesn’t threaten. For silence that holds. For a God who won’t love me just because I bleed easy.

If He answers, let it not be with rules. Let it be with wind. With warmth. With the sound of my own voice finally returning home.