Ghosted By God

The air hung heavy with incense and invisible guilt — damp, suffocating, and vaguely floral, like funeral flowers left too long in a hospital hallway. I sat in the third pew from the front—the unofficial “serious Catholic” zone, where the devout, the desperate, and the deeply repressed came to sweat out their salvation in a slow roast of polyester and penance.

The kneeler had assaulted my shins for the third time, and someone behind me was either speaking in tongues or aggressively chewing a piece of Juicy Fruit. In front of me, a baby let out a wail that seemed too spiritually timed to be coincidental, and beside me an old man coughed like the devil himself was lodged in his trachea. I glanced toward the stained glass, hoping Jesus might blink, or shrug, or at least offer a thumbs-up—some divine assurance that we’d all survive this hour without spontaneous combustion or a defibrillator.

Across the aisle, a woman mouthed the prayers with Oscar-worthy intensity—eyes closed and hands raised just enough to be noticed. My guess: retired nun or someone fully committed to being canonized by noon. I stuck to my usual strategy: head bowed just enough to look devout and lips moving just enough to blend in, silently begging that no one would notice I was actually just mouthing “watermelon watermelon” through the entire Nicene Creed.

This was the Catholicism I grew up in—sacred, theatrical, and mildly traumatic. Sundays were a full sensory experience: your itchiest outfit, incense thick enough to start an EPA investigation, and a choir that performed every hymn like it was an audition for Jesus Christ Superstar.  The church wasn’t just a building—it was its own ecosystem. A self-contained universe where the air smelled like wood polish, melted wax, and generational guilt, all circulating beneath stained glass and the ever watchful eyes of Saints who looked mildly disappointed. 

You learned to strategize early: arrive before the bells to snag a seat under the ceiling fan—the true holy spirit. Stand in the back until the next “You may now be seated,” so you could time your pew-pounce just right. Avoid eye contact with the crucifix unless you were ready to feel shame on a cellular level. And under no circumstances should you start staring at the ceiling beams unless you want to spend the rest of the Mass playing structural integrity math and trying to figure out which family would get pancaked first if one gave way.

Everything followed its own weird rhythm: the half-hearted genuflect, the awkward “peace be with you” handshake lottery ranging from clammy limp noodle to accidental bear hug, and the sacred ritual of bowing your head solemnly while secretly planning how many pancakes you could demolish at IHOP immediately  after. 

The priest was halfway through his homily, speaking in that sacred monotone priests adopt when they want each word to sound like it was couriered straight from Mount Sinai. Something about trust. Surrender. The grace of letting go. I heard the words but didn’t feel them. It was hard to when I felt like every part of my  life was unraveling at the seams. Trust felt like a cruel punchline, surrender sounded like giving up, and grace was a concept I hadn’t felt in months.

And yet, there I was. After weeks—maybe months—of avoiding Mass entirely, I had dragged myself back.  Not because I was feeling particularly holy, but because I needed something that felt like certainty. Something that hadn’t fallen apart.

Just as I settled into the familiar arms-crossed, hope-muted posture, the choir began to sing: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Was this a hymn or my internal monologue? The line wrapped itself around my brain and refused to leave. For the first time, church wasn’t a place of answers. It was a place where someone else was finally asking the questions I’d been silently carrying for years: Why does faith feel like shouting into a void and why does talking to God seem like talking to a guy that’s ghosting you? 

Still, I believed. Even when the Bible started to sound more like fantasy fiction than gospel. Even when Noah’s Ark started raising logistical questions (two of every animal? Including velociraptors?). I believed because belief gave pain a plotline. It made your suffering feel sacred. It told me I wasn’t just hurting, I was being refined. That there’s a plan, there’s a purpose, and there’s someone up there watching and keeping score (like Santa Claus, but scarier). That eventually, someday, you’ll understand the twist ending. 

It’s always easier to believe when things are going right. When prayers are answered —the job calls back, the biopsy’s benign, and the guy you like texts you  first. That’s when faith feels effortless, like breathing. You light your little votive candle, write your mental thank-you note to God, and feel like the universe is giving you a wink. But what about when nothing is going right? When you’re still waiting, still hoping, and still breaking in places you were sure had healed? That’s when belief stops being instinctual and starts becoming a decision. It’s not singing hymns—it’s whispering “help’s” into the silence, and bracing for the echo that may or may never come.

Religion, at its core, teaches us a kind of sacred endurance: be faithful, be hopeful, stay the course. When life is kind, that endurance feels like strength and resilience. It holds you through grief, heartbreak, uncertainty—the long nights of not-knowing. In its best form, it’s the warm hand on your back whispering, keep going. A reminder that even if the path ahead is unclear, the act of walking it is sacred.

It gets harder when life stops being kind — when the silence stretches on too long and prayers come back return-to-sender. When you're worn thin from hoping and there’s still no burning bush, no gentle whisper, and no clear sign at all. The patience you were praised for starts to curdle into passivity, the loyalty becomes exhaustion, and you begin to wonder if you’re devoted or just stuck.

One-sided loyalty is romanticized in religion. We’re told to love without expectation, to forgive endlessly, to give without ever expecting to receive,  and to keep turning the other cheek—even when the first one is already bruised and the second is beginning to swell. We’re praised for staying put, for bearing the weight, for waiting faithfully in the face of silence. Holiness, we’re told, is in staying. In suffering with grace. In loving, even when nothing is returned.

Is it possible that theology of devotion becomes a blueprint for our entire emotional architecture? Can that same endurance start to backfire? Can the thing that once steadied you slowly begin to erode you? Is it possible that the one-sided loyalty —the one that teaches us that the holier thing is to stay—no matter how little is being offered in return, can bleed into our relationships, careers, and friendships?

We stay in jobs that drain us dry—where our talent is overlooked and our time undervalued—whispering to ourselves, If I keep working hard, it will pay off. We keep chasing friendships that have quietly expired, where the only reciprocity is our own persistence. We show up, over and over again, to be a soft place for someone who no longer meets us with the same hands, calling it patience and loyalty. We hold on to relationships that feel more like one person plays than mutual stories, convincing ourselves that love bears all things—even as we contort ourselves into shapes that no longer resemble who we are, just to keep the connection intact.

We stay in places that shrink us and excuse behavior that wounds us. And when it hurts, we tuck it away and call it character. We bury the pain, telling ourselves that maybe this is what spiritual maturity looks like. If we’re faithful enough in the struggle, it will count for something on the other side.

But what happens when nothing changes? When the job stays toxic, the friend keeps disappearing, and the partner only takes and never gives? We turn the lens inward and carry the weight ourselves. Because we’ve also been taught that our own suffering is insignificant In comparison to God’s. That he bore betrayal, abandonment, and a brutal death without complaint. And if he did all that with grace, surely we don’t get to crumble over a broken heart or a bad work week.

What if that comparison—between our pain and his—becomes the reason we keep tolerating harm? What if we’ve confused suffering with sanctity? And what if, in trying to be holy, we’ve forgotten how to be whole?

We want to believe that faith makes people better. That belief in heaven and hell—that looming cosmic scoreboard—would inspire truth, compassion, and accountability. We extend grace on credit, assuming others are trying and give them the benefit of the doubt. That they’ll grow, that they’ll rise to the occasion, that deep down they want to be good. Because how could someone look at the stakes—eternal reward or eternal separation—and not at least try?

When you grow up romanticizing endurance, you forget how to recognize harm. You stop distinguishing between devotion and depletion, emotional labor becomes your love language, and disappointment starts to feel like home. And somewhere along the way, your capacity to tolerate pain becomes the measure by which you determine your value. 

You call yourself strong, but strength shouldn’t mean silence. It shouldn’t mean swallowing your needs just to keep the peace. And yet, that’s the story we know by heart: This is faith. This is sacrifice. This is love. You keep pouring when the well is dry, keep bending when it breaks you, and keep shrinking your voice so you won’t seem ungrateful. You ignore red flags, convinced they’re spiritual tests and you stay—not because it’s holy, not because it’s healing—but because somewhere deep inside, it was ingrained in you that leaving means turning your back on God

The emotional cost of sacred endurance is that it can cause you to stop asking for more and start making homes out of less. You begin to believe that love is something to endure, not something that should hold and heal you. That showing up empty is noble and asking for more is selfish. And that giving until you're threadbare somehow makes you more deserving of grace. But grace isn’t earned by bleeding quietly and love isn’t proven by how much hurt you can carry without flinching.

With that being said, even though the lessons from our childhood faith can still echo in our lives—shaping how we love, how we endure, how we measure our own pain—it doesn’t mean they get the final say. Just because we were raised to see loyalty as a virtue, even when it cost us pieces of ourselves, doesn’t mean we have to carry that same weight into every corner of our adult lives—or pass it on to our children.

When it comes to raising our kids, the question isn’t just Do we baptize them? or Do we bring them to church? It’s What version of faith do we hand them? Do we pass along the kind that teaches them to stay quiet in their suffering, to equate love with self-sacrifice, to see endurance as holiness?  Or do we give them a different blueprint—one that leaves space for doubt, sets healthy boundaries, and honors pain without shame. 

Just because Jesus endured betrayal, torture, and death doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to be devastated by a broken heart, a friendship that fades, or a job that drains us. Belief in God doesn’t demand blind belief in everyone else and forgiveness doesn’t mean abandoning your boundaries or your self-respect. Heaven and Hell may very well shape some people’s theology, but they don’t necessarily shape their integrity or the kindness they show. You can be gracious without being a doormat and you can have faith without losing yourself. 

That day in the pew, I realized that Faith isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about having the guts to stay in the room when the questions get loud. It’s showing up to pray even when you’re not sure if anyone is listening. It’s showing up, heart cracked open, anyway.

The lessons that any devout Catholic grew up with—loyalty, sacrifice, grace—still have a place, they just don’t belong everywhere. You can carry them into your faith without letting them sabotage your boundaries, voice, or worth. 

So maybe God wasn’t ghosting me after all. Maybe the silence wasn’t actually absence — it was a quiet space to wrestle with everything I’d been taught, to unlearn what hurt and reclaim what healed, and to finally listen—not for answers, but for the voice I’d been too afraid to hear: my own.