My father in Heaven,
I cannot believe I would write a story like this in my lifetime. I never imagined you listened to me all those times I cried my eyes out. I will begin at the bottom because that is where you found me.
“This is my Letter To God — I Was On The Bathroom Floor”
I remember three years ago, I was sitting on the floor of my bathroom at two in the morning, trying to remember the last time I had eaten a full meal. The electricity had been cut off for the third time that year. My landlord had slipped a note under my door that morning, and I did not even need to open it to know what it said. Poverty was indeed a thing from the devil.
I had sent out hundreds of job applications. Hundreds! I kept a list. I do not know why I kept a list — maybe I needed proof that I was trying. Maybe I needed something to hold onto.
I was not even sure I believed in you anymore, to be honest. I grew up in church, I knew all the songs, I could quote the scriptures. But sitting on that cold bathroom floor, I couldn’t find a single word in the bible that felt true. I remember saying out loud — and I was embarrassed, even though no one could hear me — I said, “If you are real, I need you to show me because I am running out of reasons to keep going.”
That was my prayer. Messy and faithless and desperate. That was all I had.
The next week, my phone rang. It was a woman I had met briefly at a conference eight months earlier, someone I had exchanged numbers with and completely forgotten about. She reached out to me; not sure she understood why, but she felt the urgency to speak to me. She worked at a company I had never applied to. She asked if I was still looking for work.
It felt like a dream. Is that how you worked? So powerfully discreet? I sat on the floor for hours thinking deeply, afraid I was delusional.
That job was not just a job. It was a door! In eighteen months, I went from that bathroom floor to a position I did not even dare to dream about three years prior. I moved into my own place — not a rented room but my own place. I furnished it slowly, one piece at a time, and every single chair, plate, and curtain felt like an act of worship.
But I want to be careful here because I do not want to make this sound like a straight line. It was not. There were months in the middle where I thought the breakthrough had been a fluke. There were setbacks that felt like cruelty. There was a situation with a colleague that nearly cost me everything I had just gained. There were nights that looked frighteningly similar to that bathroom floor, even after things had started to turn around.
I am writing this today because someone needs to know that the floor is not the end. The unanswered applications are not the verdict. The note slipped under the door is not your final word on someone’s life. I know because I lived it. I know because you took a woman who was sitting in the dark, arguing with her own belief, and turned her into someone who now has more than she knew how to ask for.
I do not take a single morning for granted. I wake up, and I think about that bathroom floor, and I say thank you before my feet even touch the ground.
You are faithful. Even when we are not. Even when we cannot find the words. Even when our prayer sounds like an ultimatum from a woman who has nothing left.
You showed up.
Thank you for showing up.
Forever grateful, Zoe.
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