CHAPTER 6: THY CORRIDOR PRAYER
1409 Words
That night, she didn’t go to anyone.
Not to friends.
Not to sisters from fellowship.
Not even to the ones who would have opened their arms without questions.
She didn’t want noise or pity.
She didn’t want anyone trying to turn her pain into a lesson before she had even understood it herself.
So, she went home.
And for the first time in a long while,
She sat alone with God.
Not as a leader.
Not as a “strong sister.”
Not as the woman people once associated with a man on the pulpit.
Just her, with words her heart alone could utter to the heavens.
She sat on the "corridor floor".
The same place she had sat many evenings before, when life felt simple and prayers came easily.
The tiles were cold beneath her thighs.
The night air moved gently, brushing against her skin like it knew how to be quiet.
Somewhere in the distance, a generator hummed steadily, mechanical, indifferent.
She leaned back against the wall,
Staring into the darkness.
And her mind, would not stop running marathons.
It replayed everything.
Not in order or with mercy.
The first time he called her "my wife to be".
The way his voice softened when he said it.
The way her heart had received it like prophecy.
The first time he prayed with her and held her hand just a second too long afterward.
The first time she felt seen, chosen, set apart.
The first time she watched him preach and thought,
This is a man I can follow.
Her lips shook with a slight whimpering.
“I used to think being chosen meant being loved,” she whispered.
But now,
That belief felt fragile because love didn't feel like this.
Love didn’t hide.
Love didn’t confuse.
Love didn’t make you question your worth in quiet moments when nobody was watching.
She drew her knees closer to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.
Her breathing shallow and even.
"Hello God, can I be vulnerable with you?"
"Can I have a moment of truth with you?"
"Sweet comforter, do you mind coming over?
Right now, right here, she said with a heavy heart."
Her voice broke on the word.
“I don’t even know how to come to you right now.”
And that was the truth.
Because beneath the sadness and the disappointment, there was something else.
Something she hadn’t said out loud yet.
She was angry.
Not loud anger, not the kind that shouts or accuses.
The quiet kind.
The kind that withdraws.
The kind that sits in silence and asks questions it’s afraid to voice.
“If You are there, she whispered, her eyes stinging, “why didn’t You warn me?” Why didn't I get a sign?"
The words lingered in the air.
Unanswered.
“Why did You let someone use your name to come into my life and break it like it was nothing?”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
Then another, they didn’t come dramatically.
They came steadily.
Quietly.
Like her pain had finally found a way out.
Her throat tightened.
Because another question was rising.
One that felt dangerous, felt like something she wasn’t supposed to think.
“Who is really serving You?” Can I say I'm serving you also, dear Redeemer?"
She closed her eyes.
Because she had seen him.
Daniel.
She had seen him pray until people fell.
She had seen him speak in tongues until the atmosphere shifted.
She had seen him cry at the altar like a man desperate for God.
Yet,
He had lived another life.
A hidden life.
A careless one.
So what did that mean?
Was she foolish?
Was everyone pretending?
Was all of it just performance?
Her chest rose and fell as the weight of those thoughts pressed against her.
For a moment, she said nothing.
She just sat there.
Breathing.
Thinking.
Feeling everything at once.
Slowly,
Something began to shift.
Not outside her, inside.
A quiet realization.
God was not the one who betrayed her.
A man did.
A man with a gift, with a title.
A man with influence.
A man.
Her eyes opened slowly and for the first time since everything happened, she allowed herself to separate the two.
God and Daniel are of different entities.
They were not the same.
They had never been the same.
Somehow, she had tied them together without realizing it.
“I trusted You through him,” she whispered.
And that was where it hurt.
Because now she had to learn something new and harder. She could come to him directly.
To trust God without using a man as the bridge.
She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, staring at her fingers like they didn’t belong to her.
The memories felt different now.
Even the sweet ones they tasted uncertain.
Like she had been laughing inside something that wasn’t real.
“God, I don’t want to be bitter, help me” she said softly.
Because bitterness felt close.
Easy and available.
Like armor she could wear to protect herself from ever feeling this way again.
She didn’t want that, didn’t want to become someone who could no longer be trusted.
Someone who flinched at love, who saw deception in every kindness.
Still,
A fear sat quietly in her chest.
Heavy.
Unmoving.
“What if I can’t love again?”
The question slipped out before she could stop it.
“What if this becomes the only story my heart knows?”
She imagined it.
A future where she second guessed everything.
Where she watched every phone, measured every word, doubted every promise and she hated it.
Because it meant his choices would continue to shape her life long after she had walked away.
The breeze shifted slightly.
A door closed somewhere inside the house, the night deepened.
She leaned her head back against the wall and looked out.
The sky was dark.
But not empty and somehow,
That mattered.
“God,” she whispered again, her voice softer now, steadier, “if love is still part of my story,”
She paused.
Breathing in slowly.
“Please, write it well.”
Tears slipped down again.
But this time, they felt different.
“I don’t want a love that hides, that makes me smaller.”
“I don’t want a love that requires me to lose myself just to keep a man.”
Her left foot shook while saying out those words.
And in that moment,
Something in her aligned.
Not perfectly or completely.
But honestly.
A memory surfaced.
The girl.
The one who had once come to her, crying, confessing.
The shame and fear.
The weight she had carried.
They had all been connected.
Different roles.
Same damage.
Her hands tightened slightly around her arms.
Because suddenly, it wasn’t just her pain she was feeling.
It was all of it.
The betrayal and silence.
The hidden harm that no one stood up to name.
She closed her eyes again.
And in the quiet, something became clear.
Serving God was not in volume nor in charisma.
Not in how loudly people responded when you spoke.
It was in integrity.
In the private places.
In the unseen decisions,
the quiet fear of God that doesn’t need an audience.
Her breathing steadied.
Because that truth grounded her.
It meant she hadn’t been foolish for loving God.
Only mistaken in where she placed her trust.
And that could be corrected.
She opened her eyes, still hurting, disappointed.
Still processing everything she had lost.
But she was not destroyed.
Somewhere beneath the pain…
Hope still existed.
Quiet.
Stubborn.
Refusing to leave.
Not hope in people or Faith through humans now.
But hope in God.
Hope that her story wasn’t over.
Hope that something honest and whole could still find her.
She slowly stood up, dusting her hands against her shorts.
The night hadn’t changed but she had.
Not completely.
But enough.
She looked down the corridor.
Tomorrow would come.
And with time
She would laugh and worship again.
She would trust again, wisely.
And maybe one day.
She would love again.
Not as someone begging to be chosen.
But as someone who understands what love should feel like:
Open.
Honest.
Safe.
She looked up at the sky one last time.
And whispered,
“Amen.”
Not because everything was okay.
But because she was choosing to believe it would be.
One day, it will be.
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