Jw-org -

He realized he was not angry at the organization. He was not seduced by the world. He was just tired. And in that tiredness, the Kingdom Hall felt less like an ark and more like another room where he had to perform.

Then he closed the laptop. He walked to the window. Down on the street, a woman was locking her bicycle. A man was arguing on his phone. A child pointed at a squirrel.

Elias thought about the jw.org bookmark in his hand. The website’s articles were always so clean, so certain. Why Does God Allow Suffering? How to Be Truly Happy. He had memorized those answers once. jw-org

Elias pushed his chair back from the desk. Outside his apartment window, the city hummed its indifferent evening song. He looked at the calendar. It had been fourteen months since he last put on his tie and walked through those wide, gray doors.

“Hey Mark. I’m not coming back yet. But I wanted to say I don’t think God hates me. I just don’t know what I believe anymore. If you want to get coffee sometime—not to ‘encourage’ me, just to talk—let me know.” He realized he was not angry at the organization

After the meeting, Elias had stood in the foyer, drinking lukewarm punch from a tiny paper cup. He watched the families drift toward their cars. A toddler cried. Two teenagers whispered about a video game. A sister named Helen told him her husband’s chemotherapy was showing results.

But as he drove home that night, he realized he had been pretending. He was not fleeing an assignment. He was drowning in the silence of his own life. His mother had died six months earlier. She had been the one who studied with him, who took him to the assemblies, who cried when he got baptized at sixteen in a hotel swimming pool converted into a makeshift baptistery. And in that tiredness, the Kingdom Hall felt

He tucked the bookmark into his pocket. He wasn’t sure if he would ever walk through those gray doors again. But he knew he wasn’t done searching. And perhaps, he thought, that was the most honest prayer he had offered in fourteen months.