The Friend Behind Me

You are exactly how I made you.

Those are the words The Universe has whispered into my heart many times throughout my life.

Whenever life has left me confused, I have found myself walking into a quiet pasture, searching for answers. Other times I have simply sat alone with a heart bruised by disappointment. Somehow, those words always find me. 

One of those moments came when I was around sixteen years old.

At that age, I felt divided. One half of me was the boy raised in church, shaped by sermons, scripture, and expectations. The other half was a gay teenager who barely understood what the word "gay" meant, only that it seemed to place me at odds with everything I had been taught to believe about myself. 

A friend invited me to attend church with her family one Sunday. It was a non-denominational congregation, very different from the Baptist churches of my childhood. There were no hymnals. Song lyrics appeared on screens at the front of the sanctuary. The atmosphere felt unfamiliar, yet strangely welcoming.

During the service, we began singing a particular song. I do not remember every word today, but I remember what happened inside me.

As the music swelled, something within me began to break open.

I felt overwhelmed and followed an instinct I could not explain. I walked to the front of the sanctuary and knelt at the altar.

There, with tears running down my face, I finally prayed the only prayer I knew how to pray.

Fix me.
Make this stop.
End the civil war inside me.
I just don’t want to disappoint You.
My family.
Myself.

For so long I had felt caught between two identities, two worlds, two versions of myself that seemed unable to coexist.

Then something happened.

For only a moment, the sounds around me seemed to disappear. The music faded. The voices faded. The room itself seemed to fall away.

And in that stillness, the Voice spoke.

You are exactly how I made you.

Not in anger.
Not in disappointment.
Not as a challenge.

As a declaration.

As truth.

It wasn't simply that I heard the words.

I believed them.

For the first time in my life, I wasn't listening through fear.

I was listening through love.

In that instant, I felt warmth spread gently across my back, as though someone had wrapped peace itself around my shoulders. The tension I had carried for years loosened its grip. For the first time, I did not feel like two halves fighting for control. 

I felt whole.

Not because I had become someone different.
Not fixed.
Not changed.

Whole.

As I stood to my feet, I realized my friend was kneeling behind me. Her hand rested gently on my back as she prayed.

I never asked her why she came forward that morning. Maybe she saw my shoulders shaking. Maybe she simply felt prompted to pray. Whatever moved her, she answered it. She never knew that, in the very moment I believed I was standing alone before The Universe, I wasn't alone at all. 

It was not the first time The Universe had used her as an instrument of encouragement in my life.

But that is another story.

Looking back now, I realize there were two friends behind me that morning.

One was the friend whose hand rested gently across my back.

The other was The Universe, who had been behind me all along, reminding me that I had never been abandoned, never been defective, and never needed to become someone else to deserve love.

I have never returned to that sanctuary.

I never needed to.

Because I have returned to that moment countless times.

Whenever doubt whispers.
Whenever fear questions my worth.
Whenever I wonder if I belong.

The answer has never changed.

You are exactly how I made you.