ALSO...I'm not trying to write this to diss Christianity or religion or whatever else you may think is offending in this story. I'm just wrote it because I wanted to write something convicting and emotional.
That is all.
-JaneThe little analog clock on Stephanie’s bedside table ticked solemnly as she wept, mucus covered Kleenexes piled in her lap. She leaned her head down as she choked on the curses she tried to release from her dried-out mouth. Right below her pudgy left knee was the picture of her father, Reverend Jack Miller, standing in front of a church that looked more like a cement sports arena than a chapel. He had his hands held out; his wrinkly palms faced the baby blue sky. Printed in large, bold lettering was, “Skyline Ministries: A Path to (After)Life.”
Jack Miller had once again tried to send his daughter a plea to turn to God. Ministry reminders, Bible passages, and inspiring messages arrived in the mail every other day, and Stephanie, with all her conflictions, could just not stand it any longer.
She tried to understand why he kept on sending her all these things about Jesus and church, having enough faith to believe she would turn to Christ one day. But as life churned on, becoming a Christian became an even bigger impossibility.
Stephanie balled the picture into a crinkly sphere; her thick fingers grasped around it. Weeping even harder, she tried throwing the ball in the white waste-basket at the far side of the bedroom, but the paper pitifully landed four feet away from her on the plush carpet.
The trash can was empty. Stephanie felt empty. And in an act of frustration, she clambered over to her work desk. The crying had let up but salt water still soaked her pale cheeks. She delicately unfolded the picture and turned the paper over. Picking up a Papermate and staring at blankness, she finally sighed and began her letter.
Dear God,
I used to believe in you. If you were any part human, I think that would make you feel better, but of course you’re not. I don’t even believe you exist. Some sad person made you up thousands of years ago so he or she could feel better. They imagined creation because no one wants to believe we came from dust and they imagined the second coming because no one, no matter how young or old, loves the idea of dying. Nature’s unfair though. We’re most likely related to apes and one day none of us will be alive. Worms will be sucking up our nutrients, and the last pieces of us will be fertilizer.
But God, and I’m just going to get right to it right now, why should I believe you live? Because you’re the one and only? Because my radical, televangelist father thinks you are? I have a theory that if you were, you would have helped me by now, I’m sure of it. I’m buried in a heap load of shit, to be frank. My situation has me literally begging down on my hands and knees and I want things to get better, I mean who wouldn’t? But they never do. They never fucking do. Here I am God, thirty-six years old, drowning in a pool of my own blood like some kiddy who decided to venture off into the kiddy pool without his mommy and didn’t know how to swim! Wouldn’t you give me one fucking good thing? Once? After all these years of my hypocrite father spitting out things at me like, “God will provide,” or “He works in mysterious ways.” Well, you know what Jesus Christ? You haven’t helped! And you haven’t provided!
Stephanie tried to add some extra exclamation marks to her last sentence, but her hands were already shaking. A line of sweat clustered on her brows. A cry was imminent in her throat, and in the next second she bubbling like a baby. She leaned over the paper, head tucked in her folded arms, tears staining those newly formed words.
