How many hours had I been at this tonight, barely able to get through an evening compline without my throat closing up and my head wandering away from the prayers I was supposed to be reciting?
I stilled, my eyes vaguely aware of the icons arranged on the table. Seeing nothing but smears of color. Golds and reds. The muted blue of the God-bearing Theotokos.
I rose, stepping closer, my knees on fire after boring into the unrelenting wooden floor for so long.
The Byzantine face of thePanayia,the Virgin Mary. Her glorifying gaze trained on her infant son so that our focus might be drawn to Him as well.
Saint John the Baptist, holding his own head on a platter.
My namesake, Saint Constantine, the Machiavellian and probably irreligious emperor of Byzantium, depicted with his mother, the faithful Helen.
Tonight, I struggled to see past the paint on gessoed wood canvas. To see them as anything more than two-dimensional art. These were the faces of history. The faces of wrongdoing and deathbed confessions. But the experiences in these histories gave respite and comfort.
Comfort I was grasping for, yet unable to find.
My chest heaved as I tried to force it over me.
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled.
Fuck it.
God needed a different prayer from me. I needed to approach Him more plainly. Without following centuries-old scripts—services and prayers I loved under ordinary circumstances but lacked all meaning here.
What good was reciting a service when God and I were slipping away from each other tonight?
The bed creaked as I sat. I let my heavy shoulders fall forward, surrendering to the nothingness of the inevitable.
I could no longer expect Him to wait for me. I’d strung Him along, biding my time, chasing degree after degree, always putting His will second to my own selfish urges.
It was enough that I was saved from a life of misery and ruination. Saved, so that I didn’t inflict my family with further despair and pain, and given this new life where I could celebrate His mysteries and beauty and proclaim them for others to see.
God. Forgive me. I said I’d be your priest, but…celibacy, my life lived completely alone…I don’t understand your will. I hate your will for me. But I submit to it.
I waited for the peace. Closing my eyes, meditating on the shush of the rain, I let myself feel the utterrightnessof this decision.
It didn’t come.
Submission was supposed to be fulfilling.
I was supposed to be content.
Instead, my resignation was a vast hollowness inside my body. My bones crumbling as all flesh was stripped away.
Resignation, not submission.
My bones were troubled.
My body sagged under the weight of it. The lack of support.
I fell onto my side on the bed, curling my legs up into a fetal position.
There was a certain freedom that only came after reaching the lowest point of despair. There was no further down to sink.
I’d sunk all the way to the sea floor, bounced off the sand, and now I could simply float until my lungs filled up and I lost myself in the church.
I’d been so fearful that this was where I had been headed all along. Now that I’d gotten here, it had an anesthetic taste.
My eyes stung as tears built but wouldn’t flow. I’d never felt so separate from my Creator. Ripped away and set apart from His creations.