Confessions

This is true in my heart.

It isn’t true in reality.

But for my heart to finally embrace reality it has to take what it believes and let it go.

God, I’m sorry, and I give this all to You:

You failed me. A thousand times You failed me. Ten thousand times You abandoned me.

You let me panic for countless nights as a child, sick with fear and nausea. I cried and I cried and I cried and You did nothing. For a year or more and You watched.

It wasn’t enough to beg for mercy at the age of six; it wasn’t enough that I knew how powerless I was, that I had it embedded within my marrow that pain is inevitable and life isn’t fair.

The dark hole in my soul grew so deep I didn’t even know it was there. I knew it but I didn’t. I sensed the edges of it in moments of rage and it scared me.

Because I know there aren’t “good” and “bad” people; there are just people molded by the sum of the decisions they make.

And the pit inside is dark, and it shames me, God, how it shames me, and who knows where its depths lead?

I’m scared to death of what is down there, but it’s a cancer that has to be removed.

And God, You know I love You, but in the depths of my pit, the most shameful thing I can imagine resides, and I can’t believe I feel this way but part of me surely does:

I resent You for the way life is. I love You, but I hate what has happened to me; for the pain in the universe.

It’s flirting with blasphemy and I’m ashamed, but that’s what it is, isn’t it? I hold hate behind my love.

How are You just? What justice?

If the ends don’t justify the means, then how does whatever plan You have for eternity justify this life now?

I have spent my life in denial without knowing it, trying to forget how You abandon me when I need You most, but You seem to keep reminding me.

I have minimized out of necessity the pain from my childhood because I couldn’t bear to relive it, to confront it, so I have convinced myself that a year lived in constant fear and panic was not really a big deal.

I keep asking You to show me that You love me, to show me that You really do care, to give me eyes to see how much You actually cherish me as Your child.

When will Your answer not come in the form of more despair? Is that what You want me to believe?

You know what lies within my pit, and it is the Pain, Death, Bitterness, and Fury refined in the furnace of the complete hopelessness of a child and forged by the perception of betrayal and broken promises of a young adult.

It is the Black Hole from which can be summoned the pure rage to scream, “I HATE YOU!” and suffer all the consequences that would come with transforming into the person I would become.

I own this within me now, fully for the first time, and I’m giving it to You. All the emotions and temptations that fueled every monster, that lie in potential but undeveloped or relinquished in every saint.

I give it to You. Every bitter root, every lie, every condemnation, every blasphemous thought, every temptation, every judgment, every fear, every failure, every disappointment, every resentment, every betrayal, every broken promise, every vindictive urge, every piece of the darkness that is within me either known or unknown.

Heal the scared and trembling boy inside me. Show me who I know in the deepest parts of my being You are.

You are Life, You are Love, You are Faithful, You are True, You are Beauty, You are Peace.

Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me.