I was living in three worlds.
Each one demanded a different version of me.
There was my inner world—
soft but questioning, endlessly curious.
A world where I felt things deeply,
asked the hard questions,
wondered about the stars and the soul
and what it really meant to be good.
This part of me whispered: There’s more.
Then there was my school world—
where I tried to blend in,
not speak too much about church,
laugh at jokes I didn’t fully understand,
pretend I didn’t care when I didn’t get invited.
I was the “church girl” to them.
A mystery. An oddity.
Sometimes respected? Mostly avoided.
And then there was the church world, where I wore a mask—
stiff and suffocating.
Dutiful.
Holy.
Covered.
Quiet.
I had to be on fire for God.
I had to shout Amen until my doubt went hoarse.
I had to smile through the ache, like holiness meant never hurting.
I was splitting myself to survive…
fragmenting into roles just to get through each day.
But the hardest part wasn’t the switching—
it was the weight of the silence.
And the biggest rift, the one that nearly tore me apart,
was between what my heart was saying…
and what the church said it meant.
Because my heart said:
This doesn’t feel right.
These rules make no sense.
Why is curiosity a sin?
But the church said:
Your heart is deceitful above all things.
Lean not on your own understanding.
Doubt is the devil’s whisper.
Die to yourself.
Obey. Submit. Conform.
So I stopped trusting myself.
I gagged my own knowing. Buried it like something shameful.
I thought something must be wrong with me
because I couldn’t make peace with what they called truth.
But somewhere inside…
something kept pulsing:
You were made for freedom.
You were made to ask, to seek, to become—
not to shrink beneath the weight of their certainty.
I was made for Freedom, so are you.
from my heart to yours,
Meagan