For most of my life,
someone else held the ruler
and told me how to measure my soul.
Forty plus years
of sermons that sounded like God
but felt more like fences.
Stand here.
Don’t cross that line.
Smile like you believe it.
Then I watched the church
that taught me those rules
collapse under the weight of its own hypocrisy.
The pulpit cracking first.
Funny how loud a sermon can be
until you notice
the man preaching it
doesn’t live inside his own words.
That’s when the unraveling began.
Thread by thread
I pulled their fear out of my faith.
Their control out of my conscience.
And what was left
was quieter
but somehow more honest.
Now the air feels different.
Like the first deep breath
after stepping outside
of a building with no windows.
Turns out,
life wasn’t meant to be lived
under a man’s interpretation
of a rulebook he doesn’t follow.
It was meant to be lived
wide open.
With curiosity.
With compassion.
With the freedom to ask questions.
And somewhere in all that rubble
I found something unexpected.
Peace.
The kind that finally lets
a man
be himself.