My tears have stained the carpet.
I first noticed them right after, as I stepped on the dampness while on my way to a kleenex.
Now I step gingerly around them as I skirt through the hall, I scoop the popcorn kernels that shoot from the stove to be seasoned by the salty carpet, I kneel to that location and collect my tears there instead of a bottle. I can’t trample them; it’s too vulgar, it dishonors the sanctity of that moment, of what happened.
No one else can see the tears, but they haunt my hall in glaring reminder of the day I lost myself. Or found myself and lost my god. I’m still unsure.
It’s funny how when someone questions their entire belief system, the safest place to go with the questions isn’t the church or the christians or the religious. It’s the skeptics, the open-minded, the sinners. They can take the uncertainty and confusion, the very things that scare the church into answers, so many answers; of ignoring the big bad emotions, and acting from faith and trust, or being a false convert or backslidden or at best spiritually immature.
And I’m still bleeding where you cut me, but I’ve already forgiven you.
Did everyone see this coming?
The “I told you so”s scream so loud, and I just want to scream over them, “No, this is me, I’ve always been here, why couldn’t you see, please see…”
Why does authenticity sometimes mean being wrong? How does character sometimes mean lying?
I wonder how many times God will listen to the prayer “Don’t give up on me!” before He thinks this is ridiculous and that prayer can’t be my continuous failsafe for a life of doubt.
I like to think, to hope, that God draws closer in these moments than the moments of blind faith. I’m sure that’s the politically correct answer, but it’s all I can hold on to right now. That somehow those tears absorbed into the carpet can still be scooped into His bottle to one day have Him pull them out and reminisce about all the doubts and fears and how He was there through it all, orchestrating everything surrounding my fumbling faith.
And I’ve stopped bleeding, but I just can’t forgive you.
