My Last Prayer to God

Dear Jehovah,

They told me you were merciful. They told me you were just. They told me you listened, so I hope you’re listening now. Because I have questions, Jehovah.

I folded my hands like the Elders told me to, clenching my fingers so tightly my knuckles turned white—like they were trying to hold onto faith that was already slipping through them. I whispered your name into the dark, hoping you’d whisper back. Still, I wonder if my prayers rot before they reach you.

They said you know all things. So tell me, did you sit on your golden throne, watching as they spoke your name like a shield and wielded it like a weapon?

Was it the sins of our ancestors? Like the children of Egypt drowning in the Red Sea for a Pharaoh’s hardened heart? Were we collateral damage in a war we never asked to fight? Was my father’s belt the flood and my mother’s silence the ark, and you only saved the ones you thought worthy?

Tell me, Jehovah; was I not worthy?

I was ten when I learned that faith has favorites. I tried to be good. I tried so hard, Jehovah. I memorized the scriptures. I knocked on doors until my knuckles bruised. I let them say your name over and over like a lullaby, and still, you never tucked me in. You watched my father raise his hand, not in praise, but in punishment. You saw him paint my skin black and blue, and you let them call it discipline.

Is that what you did, too? To the Israelites? To Job? Did you beat the faith into them like my father did to me? Or did you just turn your face away, like the Elders did when my mother begged for help?

I sat in that Kingdom Hall with my dress pulled past my knees, spine straight, mouth shut. I listened when they told me Eve ruined paradise, that Delilah was a temptress, that women must be silent and submissive, but I never asked why. They stood at the podium on the stage, preaching about sin with hands that reeked of it, telling wives to submit, telling daughters to obey, while they built kingdoms off the bruises in their own homes.

They broke their vows, and the congregation called them righteous. They broke their children, and the congregation called them strong.

Tell me, Jehovah; why did you let your name be spoken in the mouths of men who would use it to cage us? To silence us? To make us feel so small, so afraid, so unworthy of love that we mistook fear for devotion?

I questioned you when they preached about love, yet spat out hatred. When they said “hate the sin, not the sinner” but looked at queer people like they were already burning. When they said we would perish when you separated the sheep from the goats; cast away, condemned, for something as simple as love.

And I was scared, Jehovah. Because I knew, deep in my chest, that if they ever found out, they would look at me like I was already lost. They would call my love an abomination, they would tell me you turned your face from me. And I needed to ask you, did you?

Did you turn away when I first realized that love did not come to me in halves, that my heart did not stop at the borders they built for it, that I could look at a woman the way they told me only a man should—and feel nothing but the holiness of it?

Did you look at me with the same disgust I saw in their eyes? Did you write my name on the list of those who would never make it to paradise? Or did you weep, knowing what they would do to me in your name?

I cried out to you when I prayed myself to sleep in tears, when my father’s hands carved silence into my skin, when my mother’s eyes were the only quiet place I could hide, and even those turned to glass when she looked at me. I asked you, Jehovah, where were you?

I don't know if you were listening, but those same men who said they spoke for you beat their wives. They cheated and they sinned, yet they sat in the front row every Sunday as if they weren't wearing the bruises of their own hypocrisy. I’ve seen them. I saw their children flinch. Their wives had downcast eyes, as if looking up might get them struck down. I saw how the Elders wept for a disfellowshipped brother but left a battered sister in silence, because this was “all God’s plan.”

I saw it all, Jehovah.

And I was only a child.

They told me you were love, but your house was filled with fear.

They told me you were just, but justice never made it past the podium.

They told me you were listening, but you never answered.

And yet, part of me still believes in you. Or maybe just in the idea of you, because believing you let this happen is too much to bear. Maybe you are real, but you’re nothing like the God they preached about. Maybe you’re not listening, or perhaps you only hear the voices of men. I am fifteen and I still don’t know if that makes you absent, or just indifferent.

Or maybe you did answer, and I just didn’t recognize your voice. Maybe your voice was in the wind through the trees when I sat outside to escape the screaming. Maybe your touch was in the warmth of the sun when I couldn’t feel safe in my own home. Perhaps you were there in the small kindnesses, in the cracks of a broken foundation.

Or maybe you weren’t there at all.

So tell me, are you listening now? Because I don’t know if I’m praying or accusing. I don’t know if I want answers or silence, because what kind of father watches his children suffer and calls it love? I don’t know if I still believe it, but I think you owe me an answer.

In God’s name we pray, amen.