The preacher's fist crashes down on the pulpit, wood meeting righteous flesh with a thunder that startles Mrs. Henderson's weekly nap three pews back.
"ARE YOU LISTENING?"
No, because I'm trying to hear.
Down the years, the pulpits grew taller, polished, gleaming under stadium lights.
The preachers traded cloth for custom suits, their churches for convention centers.
And salvation packaged in hardback, $29.99 at the merch table.
Tony Robbins stalks the stage like a motivational messiah, voice cracking with practiced passion. Mel Robbins counting down our transformation. Grant Cardone selling hustle like modern-day indulgences, each secret revealed for just three easy payments.
God, that rush when they speak. When their words seem to split open the universe and pour pure possibility into your veins.
The crowd rising as one, music swelling, conviction burning bright as stadium lights.
For one perfect moment, you're saved, you're changed, you're finally, finally enough.
Then the echo fades, and you're left wearing someone else's salvation like a borrowed suit, sleeves too long, shoulders too wide, fabric that never quite settles against your skin.
*cue Austin Powers swagger*
But here's the thing, baby - you don't need their manual, YEAH! You've already got your own, baby, YEAH! They're trying to sell you yesterday's model, baby, and that ain't you! OK, you're an animal! Yes, there we go. You're a tiger! You're Tony the Tiger! You're grrreat!
(Sorry, carried away, apologies)
Their maps were drawn by hands that never trembled quite like mine. Never bled quite like mine. Never reached for light in quite the same way.
They've never been on my knees at midnight pleading for answers that refused to come.
Never grieved my loss that aches to my core.
Never felt my joy of holding my child in my arms.
Never known that moment when everything you believed shatters like glass, leaving you to rebuild truth from the shards plucked from your savaged flesh.
Never stood in the wreckage of certainty, watching everything you thought you knew burn to ash.
Never had to learn how to breathe again when your grief rips the air from your lungs.
So how can they guide me to what only my heart knows matters?
How dare anyone sell me directions to my own soul?
I've seen homeless prophets speak more truth through broken teeth than all their polished sermons. Watched mothers lift mountains with nothing but love and fury. Felt more holiness in a child's laugh than every hymn ever sung.
You want to sell me enlightenment?
Show me your scars first.
Show me where life brought you to your knees and how you rose again.
Show me what cost you everything and taught you, truly, what "everything" really means.
Don't tell me about your successes until you've shown me your failures. Don't offer me salvation until you've tasted damnation. Don't try to lead me to light until you've learned to dance with darkness.
Your formulas are band-aids on bullet wounds.
Your strategies are matchsticks in hurricanes.
Your certainties are sandcastles in tsunamis.
I don't need your map.
I don't want your manual.
I don't seek your salvation.
My truth was written in a rise and the fall.
In triumph and devastation.
In every moment that tried to break me and showed me just how unbreakable I am.
Let them bang their pulpits.
Let them fill arenas with promises and prophecies.
Let them sell maps to borrowed heavens.
I'll be here.
Learning my own dance.
Writing my own scripture.
Finding my own way home.
When the stadium lights fade
When the last prophet packs his merch table
When the final formula fails
Listen.
That sound?
That's your heart beating its own wild rhythm.
That's your soul singing its own fierce song.
That's your life writing its own holy story.
That's you.
That's always been you.
And no one else can tell you how to read the language written in your own blood.
YEAH, baby, YEAH.
