Stigmata

By Macklin Luke

I don’t remember the first time I learned about God. I’d bet most people don’t. What I do remember is Veggie Tales and Hanukkah songs and a single prayer, spoken over and over again, tasting like roses the more I said it: Dear God, let Daddy come home safe.

We didn’t go to church regularly until I was about nine. Come to think of it, I don’t remember going before then, not even once, though I’m sure we must’ve. My mom wasn’t deeply religious back then, but she still had a very strong faith. Told us about how we were all God’s children and prayed for protection for my dad. My dad was in the military and, from what I remember, didn’t believe in God like my mom did. Didn’t pray nearly as loudly, still ate pork when my mom decided she wasn’t going to and neither were her kids. Still, he’d pray with us in the airport before being shipped off; It’d always look like there were little rose petals falling out of his mouth with every word.

Back then, I knew my mom believed in something. I believed in it too, as much as a six-year-old can truly believe in something like that. But when we moved to Arkansas and started going to church regularly, all the official stories were new to me. Jesus and God and Heaven and Hell were foreign concepts. By then I was old enough to start to actually understand what “eternity” meant and the inherent fear that came with it.

I asked God to save my eternal soul in the bathroom stall between lunch and math class. I clasped my hands harder than I ever had. I didn’t say the full, proper prayer, but to me, it didn’t matter what words I used. It just mattered that I’d said them. I didn’t tell my mom for months.

I didn’t keep my secret out of anything malicious. Every time I went to confess, my tongue would get stuck . I’d go to church, play the games before the sermon, drink the watery lemonade in the back, then go home, all while knowing I was saved. Knowing that I wasn’t going to burn forever in hell, simply because I said a few words in a bathroom stall.

***

And in the name of God,

I repent. Grant me forgiveness for the following nigh unforgivable sins:

Talking back to my parents

Cursing under my breath

Feeling jealous of my sisters

Being scared of Heaven

Not being old enough to understand.

I see my wrong doings and beg, Lord,

For Salvation.

***

The only time I’ve ever felt close to what I thought was God was when I was thirteen at a weekend church camp. The other girls my age stayed at a small cabin on our church group leader’s farm. We’d go to church during the day and sleep at the cabin at night. We’d sing worship songs and have nightly confessionals and talk about how our futures will revolve around God.

Along with a heavy dose of slightly toxic purity culture (less of the “cover your shoulders” kind and more of the “boys aren’t as mature so it’s not their fault when they act like creeps” kind), we also had many, many talks revolving around Hell. If there’s one thing I learned from all the years I spent in the church, it was about Hell and all the ways a person ends up there. Sometimes, I’d fester in my own head, thinking of all the bad things I’d ever done and feeling like there was no way I wasn’t going to Hell. I’d imagine rose-scented blood bleeding perpetually out of my nail-hammered hands.

I have never been perfect a day in my life, but church has a way of fueling insecurities—making each sin committed feel like you’ve raked your own soul across burning coals, like God is screaming in your ear if you so much as curse.

During that weekend, surrounded by only the message of God and his teachings and only talking about him, a part of me felt like this was it: even if it wasn’t a joyful experience, this allencompassing feeling of God everywhere is how I stay on the path, how I become a true Christian. In reality, I was just hit with endless reminders about how awful Hell and, by extension, people who actively “chose” Hell (aka, people who aren’t devout Christians) are.

I would feel God the strongest while in the nightly confessionals in the cabin. The youth group leader, usually a college girl or a young mom, would take us into one of the rooms and we’d talk about a sin that was weighing heavily on us or something that burdened us. Girls would come out crying, puffy eyes and wet cheeks, just to wave in the next girl, ready lambs excited for the slaughter. For some, it was cathartic and healing. For me, it was incredibly awkward and suffocating. And so, I lied. I’d make up some trivial problem and sprinkle in fake details, just long enough to keep up the thirty-minute session. Even though they were all lies, I’d leave feeling cleansed, feeling like God was nodding in approval, awarding me a painless crown of thorns. Safe from Hell for another day.

***

In this hour of devoutness

I don’t fear the shadows,

I fear the light that guides them.

A life full of the divine is a life full

Of rose-scented blood, freely-given wounds,

And the endless running from the trumpet

***

And maybe I did get angry, later in life. Maybe I did start to resent the smell of the balcony at church and the cadence of the pastor’s voice and every person that ratted me out for skipping services and the imagined stinging of an endless whip. But most of all, I resented the doubting. I hated the fact that I’d listen to sermons and my brain would catch inconsistencies or things that I didn’t agree with. At sixteen, I prayed for God to answer my doubts with genuine answers, but all I received were more questions. I’d walk around my neighborhood, surrounded by nature, and try to myself to connect with it, begging to see God in its design.

At eighteen, I stopped looking.

Instead, I found connection elsewhere. During the summer after my senior year, I went to the Pride parade in Fayetteville. I said goodbye to my mom and met my friends at the local Mc- Donalds, where we all changed into rainbow-printed clothes in the bathroom, painting each other’s faces and swapping pride flag jewelry. At the parade, I caught a T-shirt and put so many stickers on my skin that I had the weirdest tan lines all summer. Standing on the street watching drag queens and old ladies with their “FREE HUGS” shirts felt like a direct link feeding into my soul. I felt like I was finally free from the bloodless wounds that stank of roses.

Three days later, my mom drove me to Fayetteville to run some errands, and she saw the leftover Pride decorations. She immediately knew where I had gone the Saturday prior. I sat in the passenger seat, shaking like a leaf. Nothing was a greater reminder of God’s absence to me than my mom. I’d look at her, and I’d see someone who loved me shrouded in verses and prayers. She wasn’t angry. She never is when it comes to this stuff. Instead, she was sad. I asked if I ever got married to a woman, would she support me.

She said no.

***

There is a price to pay for anger.

Not steep, or weighty,

But gentleness–that is the cost,

The seeping of all that is patient

And replacing it with burning, endless wrath.

***

I exhausted myself looking for God. I lied to myself, to others, and pretended I felt him when I didn’t. Pretended I was closing my eyes during prayer. Pretended that I went to church or talked to a friend about the dangers of tarot cards. Pretended that I loved God and he loved me, and that I felt that love, all day every day. Pretended my imaginary wounds were self-inflicted and welcomed.

All I felt was tired.

Sometimes, I still think about Jesus’ death on the cross. To be slowly worn down until you beg for an answer. To be tired of the fight. To sink into the nails and the bruises and that all-encompassing hatred, and know you are not coming out of this unchanged. To call out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Sometimes, I see myself there on that cross, pleading. Wholly, utterly human.

***

In my final hour,

I call out.

Broken and bloody, seeking and willing, forsaken and tired.

In my final hour,

I see not hellfire

But simple daylight.

And for me,

That is enough.