Today I feel like a university student who just got his PhD and then found out the only jobs available are fast food.
That may sound dramatic, but it is the closest image I have.
I spent years becoming a priest.
Formation.
Discernment.
Paperwork.
Study.
Prayer.
Ordination.
The yoke.
The fire.
The promise.
The terrifying beauty of being trusted with something holy.
And then?
Nothing.
No parish.
No congregation.
No chapel full of wounded people needing bread.
No great unfolding.
No clear road.
Just me, standing here with all this formation, all this calling, all this ache, all this sacramental hunger, and nowhere for it to go.
It is humiliating in a way I do not know how to explain.
Not because fast food work is beneath anyone. Work is work, and people survive how they survive. I respect that. That is not the point.
The point is the mismatch.
The point is being prepared for one thing and finding no doorway into it.
The point is carrying a fire no one seems to need.
The point is having hands consecrated for blessing and feeling like they are mostly being used to hold broken pieces of a life that will not stop breaking.
Today I am frustrated.
Overwhelmed.
My mind is racing.
Everything inside me feels loud, but nothing moves. It is like a thousand thoughts are running in circles in a locked room. I can see what needs doing. I can feel the pressure of everything. But I cannot seem to make myself move in any clean direction.
Because underneath all of it, there is this huge hole where God used to be.
That is the part I keep coming back to.
The hole.
I know God is around.
I am not saying I see nothing of Him.
I can see Him in nature. I can see Him in the trees, in water, in weather, in the fierce honesty of the land. I can see Him in the way the world keeps breathing even when I feel like I cannot. Nature still carries some trace of Him that the Church has not managed to ruin.
But inside me?
Inside me there is a void.
A crevasse.
A deep split in the soul that opened when this dark night began.
It feels like something cracked underground, and now I am walking around above it, trying to act normal while the earth beneath me is hollow.
People see me functioning.
They see me talking, joking, making plans, helping Mom, dealing with repairs, thinking about moving, trying to be practical.
But inside, there is this canyon.
This absence with edges.
This place where God used to feel warm and close and communicative.
This place where prayer used to land.
This place where I used to feel chosen, held, directed, loved.
Now I stand at the edge of it and call down.
Hello?
Are You there?
What is the deal?
What did I do?
And sometimes I hear something far away. Not enough to hold. Not enough to rest in. More like a family member calling from another state with a bad signal. I know the relationship is real. I know love exists somewhere. But I am still standing here needing a hug, and the voice is too far away to warm me.
That is a terrible kind of loneliness.
It is not atheism.
Atheism would almost be cleaner.
This is worse.
This is knowing God is real enough to miss Him.
This is seeing Him in nature but not feeling Him in the old room of my heart.
This is being surrounded by signs of God and still feeling godforsaken inside my own chest.
Scripture says:
“My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.”
— Psalm 42:2
That is where I am.
Thirsty.
Not peacefully thirsty.
Not poetically thirsty.
Thirsty like cracked ground.
Thirsty like a man standing beside water he cannot drink.
Thirsty like a priest standing near an altar behind glass.
And I am tired of pretending thirst is noble.
Sometimes thirst is just thirst.
Sometimes longing is just painful.
Sometimes the dark night does not feel like purification or growth or some mystical process I will one day appreciate.
Sometimes it feels like being stripped of everything that made me feel loved and then being asked to keep going anyway.
I know the mystics wrote about this.
I know there is language for it.
I know St. John of the Cross walked without light or guide except the fire in his heart.
But today the fire feels buried.
Today I do not feel like a mystic.
I feel like a man with too much training and nowhere to stand.
A priest with no parish.
A child with no hug.
A soul with a crevasse running through it.
A person trying to keep going while his mind races over the same impossible ground.
And maybe this is part of the truth too:
I am angry because I believed the calling would become a road.
I believed if God called me, then God would make some kind of way.
Maybe not an easy way.
I was not expecting easy.
But a way.
Some place to pour the blessing.
Some place to offer the bread.
Some people to serve.
Some visible sign that the fire had a hearth.
Instead, I feel like I am holding a degree no one will hire.
A vocation no one can see.
A priesthood that has become invisible labor.
A promise that still burns but gives no instructions.
And I do not know what to do with that today.
So this is not a triumphant post.
This is not me tying a ribbon around the void and calling it grace.
This is me telling the truth from the edge of the crevasse.
God is still in the trees.
God is still in the water.
God is still in the wind.
God is still somewhere in the bones of creation.
But inside me, there is a hole where His warmth used to be.
And I am standing there with my collar, my anger, my racing mind, my exhausted heart, and my stubborn little ember of hope, asking:
What now?
What am I supposed to do with all this calling?
What am I supposed to do with all this hunger?
What am I supposed to do with hands that remember the altar?
I do not know.
Today, I really do not know.
But I am still here.
Still frustrated.
Still overwhelmed.
Still looking for God in nature because that is one place He has not gone completely silent.
Still standing at the edge of the crevasse.
Still calling down into the dark.
Still listening for anything that sounds like love.