Monologue #7: The First Time I Met God

I don’t often write about God.
Not because I don’t feel Him—but because what I feel is too intimate, too sacred, to perform. My relationship with the Divine has never been for display. It has been personal, winding, and at times too fragile to name.

But a message found me. A fellow writer, a kindred spirit—I only know them by the name they chose to share, the rest was woven into their words. They told me my writing held a kind of honesty that stopped them, that it felt like truth they could touch. They said they recognized something familiar in my voice—something kindred. And that recognition stirred something deep in my spirit.

Because I believe souls do find each other. And I believe God, the universe, whatever language your soul speaks, orchestrates these meetings in ways we never fully understand. That message became a mirror, and I saw it was time. Time to tell this story.

The first time I met God officially, I was 18.
Pentecostal. Seeking. Trembling.
I gave my life to Him in a small church with loud music and louder praise. I was baptized, claimed, saved. And for what I needed then—structure, direction, a place to put my hope—it worked. For a time.

But I walked away. I came back. I wandered. I questioned.
I tried temples. I sat in cathedrals. I stood in the back rows of Catholic churches with my mother’s rituals on my tongue.

I looked for God in incense, in stained glass, in scripture. I looked in every space built by men to house the holy.

But I never found Him in the buildings.
I found Him in the quiet.
In the in-between.

And then, eventually, I found Him in me.

Over time—over years of praying, pleading, forgetting, and returning—I began to hear something softer than doctrine. In conversations with God, I felt a truth rise up like breath:

How can you separate yourself from Me?
I am with you. You are with Me.

It undid me.
Because I realized what I had been chasing wasn’t God’s love—not exactly.
I was chasing self-acceptance, safety, wholeness.
I wanted God to love me because I didn’t know how to love myself.

But the Divine is not separate. And the love I was searching for
was already embedded in me.

God is love. And love begins within.

It took time. Years of wandering and return, of forgetting and remembering—
to begin truly living this. Not perfectly. Not fully.
But with enough clarity to see—

It wasn’t about the structures or the rituals, though I once sought shelter there.
It was always drawing me inward— toward communion, not performance.

I share this not as teaching— but as a moment. A soul unfolding.

If you’re seeking, keep walking.
If you’re doubting, keep asking.
And if you’re aching—
know the ache itself is sacred.
It may whisper through stillness,
or in the kind words of a stranger.
To the soul who sent me that message—
thank you.
Your words were a divine appointment.
You reminded me:
Honesty matters.
Kindness matters.
Being seen matters.

So this is where I met God.

Not just once.

But again and again—

In the quiet.

In the questions.

In the reflection.

In me.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai