“God Did Not Leave”

I thought You left when the room stayed dark long after my prayers learned silence. No answer. No sound. Only the echo of my own fear walking back to me. I almost called it abandonment— almost signed my name to that lie and made it truth. But something kept me here when leaving felt easier, like an unseen grip on my breath refusing to let me disappear. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just steady enough to outlast my breaking. And I see it now— You were never missing. You were in the holding. In the waiting. In the parts of me that didn’t collapse when I should have. So if I survived what tried to erase me, it wasn’t luck, and it wasn’t me alone— it was You refusing to let go when everything else already had.