“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”
— Psalm 13:1, NIV
I feel numb.
That is the word today.
Not peaceful.
Not calm.
Numb.
Like there is still a flame in me, but it has been locked inside a glass box with an alarm on it. I can see it. I know it is there. I know there is still fire somewhere inside me. But I cannot touch it. I cannot warm my hands over it. I cannot get close without something in me screaming danger.
The flame is there.
But I cannot access it.
And God, I am tired of living like that.
I am tired of seeing what should be alive in me and not being able to reach it.
I am tired of knowing I was created with love and still feeling like I have spent most of my life apologizing for the way You made me.
I trained myself for years to ignore being gay.
To minimize it.
To make it smaller.
To push it into a corner.
To act like my own heart, my own body, my own way of loving, my own creation, was something I had to manage carefully so Your people would not attack me.
And Lord, Your people have attacked us.
Queer people have been mocked, bullied, preached against, assaulted, abandoned, beaten, killed, and told that the hatred aimed at us was somehow holy.
Your people beat the hell out of us with a book of words, while ignoring the Word made flesh.
And most of the words they use against us are not even Yours from the mouth of Christ.
They are selected, sharpened, lifted out of context, and turned into stones.
I need to say this carefully.
The hatred does not come from You.
And I will not blame Jewish people for what Christians have chosen to weaponize. Jesus was Jewish. Mary was Jewish. The apostles were Jewish. The prophets were Jewish. The Scriptures Christians misuse were born from a people and a covenant that deserve reverence, not scapegoating.
The wound is not Jewishness.
The wound is Christians taking ancient purity codes, old fears, bad translations, selective readings, and cultural panic, then using them to crucify queer people while claiming to defend Christ.
That is the wound.
That is the sin.
That is the blasphemy.
Because how do people claim to follow Jesus while making whole communities afraid to exist?
Why would You create a person like me, Lord, and then allow me to live so much of my life in fear?
Fear of being found out.
Fear of being preached against.
Fear of being laughed at.
Fear of being touched wrong.
Fear of being hated.
Fear of being unsafe around people who say they love You.
Why?
Why create queer children and then allow churches to become places where those children learn shame before mercy?
Why let Your name become the sound that makes some of us flinch?
Why let the ones who claim You turn Your house into a courtroom?
I do not understand.
And I am tired of trying to make it sound gentle.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
— Matthew 27:46, NIV
I know that verse.
I know Christ said it.
But today I feel it in my bones.
Why have You forsaken me?
Why allow me to carry this body with its illnesses, its problems, its exhaustion, its diagnoses, its limits?
Why let me follow Your word for a good portion of my life, try to do the right thing, say the right things, offer helping hands, ruin my life at times to help others, and then still leave me standing outside in the cold?
I am not asking for a reward.
I am not asking for a plaque.
I am not asking for applause.
I am asking for small things connected to Your mission.
A way to serve.
A place to offer the Eucharist.
A physical building or some path toward one.
A people to care for.
A door that opens.
A road that does not vanish under my feet.
And instead, I keep feeling shut out.
Cold.
Confused.
Running in circles with a calling in my hands and nowhere to put it.
Why call me to be a priest and then give me no place to priest?
Why put the hunger for the Eucharist in me and then let the altar stay behind glass?
Why give me a flame and then lock it in a box?
Churches are emptying.
Pews are emptying.
Congregations are shrinking.
Buildings are closing.
People do not seem to want priests in their houses.
People do not seem to want Mass.
People do not seem to care anymore.
And yet, somehow, the evangelical charlatans get stages, lights, buildings, money, influence, crowds, private jets, microphones, and political power.
They preach hate.
They sell fear.
They turn Jesus into a brand.
They get rich in Your name while caring more about money than mercy.
And those of us who still want the Gospel, who still want the Eucharist, who still want to love the hell out of people, who still want to continue Your mission — we are left standing in the cold.
Why?
Why does false fire get a cathedral while real hunger gets a locked door?
Why do the loudest and cruelest get platforms while the wounded ones are told to wait, trust, pray, hope, forgive, and keep going?
Faith.
Hope.
Caring.
Patience.
Love.
Yes, yes, yes.
I know the words.
But today they taste like sawdust.
Today I want to ask You plainly:
Do You care for us?
Do You care what is happening to Your people?
Wars.
Famine.
Strife.
Sickness.
Disease.
Cruelty.
Climate destruction.
Children harmed.
Queer people hunted.
The poor crushed.
The sick ignored.
The earth groaning.
Your creation is being destroyed, and Your people are being destroyed, and still heaven feels quiet.
We cannot do this alone.
But I am beginning to become fairly certain that we are on our own.
That sentence scares me.
But it is honest.
I am beginning to regret my decision to be Christian.
I am beginning to regret following Your word.
I am beginning to regret loving You.
I am beginning to regret becoming Your priest.
Not because I stopped loving You completely.
That would be easier.
I regret it because I still love You and it hurts.
I regret it because I thought love would become a road.
I regret it because I thought calling would become clarity.
I regret it because I thought if I gave myself to You, You would give me some way to serve that did not feel like begging for scraps outside a locked church.
I regret it because the hole where You used to feel close is enormous.
And I do not know how to live with it.
“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”
— Isaiah 42:3, NIV
I need that to be true.
Because I am the smoldering wick.
I am not a bright flame right now.
I am smoke behind glass.
I am a priest with numb hands.
I am a queer child still wondering why God’s people hated what God made.
I am a soul starving for the living God while surrounded by people who use His name like a weapon.
I am tired.
I am angry.
I am ashamed of how close I feel to walking away.
I want to come back to the table.
I want to continue Your mission.
I want to love people.
I want to believe Your Church can be more than this.
I want to believe Your word is still bread and not only a blade in the wrong hands.
I want to believe You have not abandoned me.
But today, Lord, I cannot reach the flame.
I can only see it through glass.
So I am asking You:
Open the box.
Or break the glass.
Or sit with me beside it until I can feel warmth again.
Because I do not know how much longer I can keep staring at a fire I cannot touch.
I do not know how much longer I can keep calling this numbness faith.
I do not know how much longer I can keep standing outside the locked door saying I trust the One inside.
Lord, if You are there, answer.
If You are silent, come closer.
If You are hidden, leave me some sign that I have not been abandoned.
If You made me, help me stop hating the parts of myself Your people taught me to fear.
If You called me, show me where to carry the flame.
If You still want me as Your priest, do not leave me locked outside the altar.
And if all I am today is a smoldering wick, then do what You promised.
Do not snuff me out.
Not today.
Not like this.
Not while I am still trying to find You through the glass.