Finding The Light - By SwordOfDavid

Written By: SwordOfDavid

Category: Short Story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, SwordOfDavid presents "Finding The Light," a captivating short story rooted in real-life experiences. With an evocative narrative, SwordOfDavid guides readers through a remarkable journey of faith, healing, and self-discovery. This work invites the audience to reflect on the unseen miracles and the unwavering presence of faith amid life's darkest moments.

About the Work

"Finding The Light" is a profound exploration of faith and resilience, interwoven with themes of personal struggle and miraculous healing. The narrative is rich with spiritual reflection, offering a heartfelt message about the enduring presence of divine guidance. SwordOfDavid crafts vivid imagery that captures the complexity of human emotions, presenting a deeply moving testament to the power of faith and the pursuit of inner light.

Finding The Light

Original Submission by SwordOfDavid

Finding

The

Light

By

SwordOfDavid

This is based on a true story.

The names of the characters have been altered to protect the identity and privacy of the individuals.

As we venture forth into this book, I encourage you to open your hearts to receiving the messages this book holds. As one’s life may take a turn, know that God is with you through all things.

Introduction

As I sit down to tell you this story of wonders and miracles, I invite you to look deep within yourself and see the paths of life that you have been delivered from, the negativity you have been saved from and the dangers that you did not see but overcame.

In life we tend to take a lot for granted but when those things are taken away from us that is when we truly understand the importance of them. For when we are without is when that void within us is exposed and many turn to fill that void with substances but even then that void cannot be filled. However, there are the few that find the right path and are led into a life that is filled with Wonders and Miracles that cannot be explained by mere man but can only be the presence of God.

Throughout this book you will see said Wonders and Miracles but you will also see the darkness that is within a person’s void and you truly know not what a person can be going through unless you sit down and talk to them. I really encourage many of you today, if you feel you are unheard within your family, within your friends, within your community, seek wise counsel and I know this sounds easy but its not. We aren’t always meant to have all the answers to life but are meant to walk in the light and have the lamp of the Spirit of the Lord lead our paths forward.

This book may not be for all to understand but when you come to the revelation of your path you will rejoice for you have found the light that is within you and has always been within you. A light that shines so bright that it cleanses all the darkness within you. I do want to say this, don’t feel that because you have a light within you that you aren’t going to face persecution or face hardships, it’s that you will face all manner of challenges, but with the Grace and Peace that you never had and the Wisdom that will be poured out onto you to overcome all things. Trust in God for He knows the path He hath set for you.

Mental health is important and shouldn’t be taken lightly, for a person can suffer with poor mental health from a young age so do not dismiss the early warning signs, as a sign of bad behavior. The more you ignore it the worst it’s going to become until the day comes when it’s too late to save the lives of your friends, colleagues, and loved ones.

Let us dive into this story with our hearts ready to enjoy and feel the emotional rollercoaster that are about to come.

Chapter 1

Sitting before the woman who gave birth to me, really is both a scary and heart warming feat. For I was not brought up with gentleness but I was brought up in a strict manner, being told that I am the eldest and need to be strong for my family but truly that was not who I was at that time. I was an aggressive and naughty youngster who lived in the shadows and preferred it that way, to keep up the appearance as one who is defenseless and who is frail and timid in front of people.

I know this sounds like a fantasy introduction but this story isn’t going to start with a long long time ago.

As I ran out of primary school eagerly awaiting to go home and remove this uncomfortable school uniform, I was met with joy because my mother was picking us up from school. See, sitting with her in a car was a bit of mixed emotions really, because she drove as if she was auditioning to be apart of NASCAR but truly, I can’t say that it wasn’t an upper hand when we were running late in the mornings. I buckled myself in, after giving up the front seat to my youngest brother and having to sit in the back seat with my sister, the middle child of the family and prepared myself for a speedy trip home. Getting home was always good, to breathe in the fresh air of freedom after being in school the whole day.

As I got home and began to do my homework, as some would call it, “the schools way of taking fun away when you at home”. Ruffling through my bag I found an assignment which was crumbled up, must have been that way cause I was rushing to get out of the classroom. The Title of the project was “Who am I” ….interesting topic to get when you are only writing down notable events but not so much when you have to stand in-front of people and give a speech.

Given this discovery of new a headache, I asked my mother to help me with this as I only had vague memories of my childhood, so she sat me down and she began to speak “Get a book and Pen because I am not repeating myself” and that’s how I knew this was not going to be an ordinary story for she did not wear an expression of frustration but one of heartache.

And so the Story begins..

On the morning of the 7th, sound echoed through the house as my mother went into labor. At that time, my parents were still finding their way through life and did not have a car of their own. My father rushed out of to borrow one from a friend and call the doctor, who lived just up the road. But in his rush and panic, he was too late for my mother had already given birth to me. As I entered this world, a mix of shock and fear was worn on her face, not that I could see it. For as I came out the womb, I was adorned with a veil upon my face. Research reveals this occurs in less than 1 out of every 80 00 births, a rare medical phenomenon surrounded by generations of stories and beliefs across different cultures. Little did I know then how much this would go on to shape the road ahead of me.

After cleaning me up, she proceeded to clean herself and awaited the arrival of my father. My father had reached the door of the house and the cries of the newborn caught his ear, resulting in him rushing upstairs with the doctor tailing behind him. Hands grasping the door frame firmly and panting for breath, his tender eyes fell upon my mother and the newborn in her arms. His body became rigid as if he was struck by a sudden bolt of lightning. He stood there taking in the sight, for mere minutes ago he had left home and now had returned to see his wife sitting on the bed caring for a crying baby in her arms without any trace of child birth. The sudden shock made him rush out the room to gather his thoughts and leave the doctor to do his duties. After performing his duties the doctor informed my parents that I was born perfectly healthy but still would urge them to take me to the hospital for deeper observations. So upon those instructions out they rushed, my mother who was still physically recovering and my father who was mentally trying to process everything he had witnessed.

Fast forwarding a few years, I was a bouncing baby boy, who was filled with a lot of energy and throughout the house my laughter could be heard. However, as the weeks turned into months, I began complaining more and more of pains in my legs, a dull ache that crept in and refused to leave. The doctors we visited dismissed it as growing pains, assuring my parents it was nothing more than a normal part of childhood. Until I turned 2 and my legs gave out beneath me, and the ability to walk was stripped away, as though something inside me had turned against my own body.

Concerned and desperate for answers, my parents rushed me through a series of tests, each one chipping away at their hope, until finally, a doctor delivered a discovery that would shatter their world. Sitting across from them, unable to soften the blow, the doctor spoke the words that no parent should ever have to hear: “It’s Leukemia.” I was merely two and a half years old.

As the words left the doctor’s mouth, it was as if the sounds of the world suddenly came to a halt and time itself stood stunned at the news. The deafening silence could be heard by just the 2 people in that office, my parents. Hope was officially lost and faith was slowly making its way out of their hands. The doctor tried to comfort them by giving medical advice and possible solutions but the ringing of the news still echoed through their minds.

This news didn’t just hit my parents hard but all, it rippled out to everyone around them as well.

As treatment commenced and hardship fell upon my parents, as the road ahead was going to be paved with hospital bills that were large enough to cripple any family. However, through all that, my parents prevailed for they kept themselves afloat as much as they could. The treatment was rough for me, for the torment that my body and mind went through was immense.

The cold needle pressed against the warm flesh of my hand as the nurse tried to distract me from the sharp, biting pain that was to follow. As the cold, emotionless needle found its way into my vein, and the chemotherapy began. It felt like molten metal was being poured through my veins, and as it spread through every vessel in my body; my mind slowly started to lose itself, the medication working its way through my brain. As treatment went on, I lost my hair and the ability to taste food, everything that entered my mouth tasted like metal. The best way to describe it was a a battery-like taste.

Treatment went on, and before I knew it, I was four years old with a little sister who was at home. Most of the days were spent within the same four hospital walls, undergoing treatment after treatment, test after test, until the sterile smell of the ward became more familiar to me than the smell of my own home. In that ward, I made friends who where small, brave faces who understood what I was going through without needing to say a word. But as time went on, I noticed fewer and fewer of them around. I never knew where they went. All I was ever told was that they were ‘‘in a better place’’, words that meant nothing to a child, yet somehow felt heavier than any explanation could.

Living in the hospital wasn’t glamorous. I was surrounded by other children who were suffering just as I was, and doctors who, at times, seemed to look at me less like a frightened child and more like a science experiment, another case number, another set of results to record.

Days blurred into each other, and the cycle kept going until the end of the treatment came. The doctor did her checkup jand delivered the news that the treatment had been barely affective against the illness, I was given a 0.5% change of living. This tore my parents’ hearts apart, for in dedicating so much of themselves to being by my side, they had unintentionally neglected my sister.

The final day came, where all of us who were on life support were wheeled into one big ward. Too critical to do anything on our own, there were 50 of us. The instruction from the doctors were clear: “Say your final goodbyes to your children, for the life support will be turned off. Those who are strong enough will remain, but hold no hope, for you will only disappoint yourselves in the morning.” Sounds harsh, I know, but that was the reality of the situation at hand.

As I lay there, awaiting certain death but still fighting to stay alive, that eerie stillness that settles over a room when fifty life support machines shut off all at once, their steady hums fading one by one into nothing. We were left alone with ourselves in the emptiness that followed, a silence so complete it pressed against my ears like a weight. It was deafening in a way silence should never be.

Then, I heard a whisper.

I forced myself to move adjusting so I could face whatever was coming towards me. My eyes strained against the dim light until they landed on a figure; tall, dressed head to toe in black, with no face to speak of, only darkness where features should have been. It seemed to drift rather than walk, drawing nearer with every passing second. Its voice reached me first, distant and muffled, as if it were speaking from somewhere far beyond the room. But as it came closer, the words sharpened, until finally, I heard them clearly:

“Your time has come, and your time is now. I am here to take you”

Face to face with death, the reaper of souls was here to take me. I was already weak from the medication and the pain that surrounded me. There was some peace that came with those words, some relief that would come if I just accepted, but the anxiety kept growing the closer it made its way toward me. It was closer now, still no human features to distinguish, as it reached out for me with a hand cloaked in eerie darkness that sent goosebumps across my body and a shiver down my spine as fear filled me.

Just then, as if on cue, a sphere of light left me and shone brightly beside me. This light was gentle and peaceful, filled with hope I never knew I had. Though I could not see what it was, the light spoke to me, saying, “Your time has not come. You will be healed.” a gentle hand was placed upon my shoulder, as if to confirm the words that were spoken, the light sprung forth and burst through the darkness in front of me. I lay there, still unable to understand, too young to comprehend what I had just witnessed.

The morning that followed was filled with mixed emotions, as the atmosphere filled with cries of joy and cries of sorrow as parents flooded the ward. Out of 50 children who had been left to fend for the night, only 5 remained alive. After checks and further testing, 4 had complications that afflicted them, and then there was 1 who was completely healed, without any complications to speak of, The Miracle child, as the doctors would later call him.

I was him. The one who overcame death through a power unknown to anyone, by sheer wonder. I stood healthy and tall. Walking forth into the world, having witnessed both life and death with my own eyes, not understanding who or what the light was, but I started chasing it. At the age of 6, following my encounters, I was placed in full remission, no longer having to face the doctors or torment of treatment again.

Once I heard this story, the missing pieces found its place and I was filled of awe and yet my mom was filled with tears as she spoke about this to me. She wept trying to explain all this to a young child. Going back to doing my homework was never the same after that encounter. I delivered some of this in my speech in class in the coming weeks and it brought many to ask a lot of questions but also to have a weeping heart and to see that the person who stood before them wasn’t the same as them but was different in a good way. Over the weeks that followed me giving the speech many questions were ask as many close friends of mine had never known this about me and many teachers opened up about losing someone close to them due to cancer as well. The story became a story of encouragement to not only the peers whom I spoke to but even the doctors that still see me. All those who was around me felt and heard the change this light had on me and my life was a living testimony of it.

There was no doubting that this was not done by any man, but this was the doing of a much higher power, one who called upon me when I was in the valley of death and saw something special within me that was work saving.

The weight this little story hold is far greater than the words on this page, for its not something one can simply sit and write down but something one has to truly experience.

Chapter 2

Since the day I delivered that speech, I have carried that memory with me like a stone in my pocket, worn smooth from being turned over so many times. It was the first time in my life I had ever spoken out loud without a stutter, the words simply left me, clean and whole, as though something had reached into my throat and untangled a knot that had lived there since childhood. For a boy who had spent years dreading the moment a teacher called on him to read aloud, who had learned to shrink himself smaller in every classroom just to avoid being noticed, standing at the front of that room and speaking without a single stumble was its own kind of miracle, quiet and unannounced. No one clapped in a way that made it feel like a performance. It felt more like a room full of people watching someone take their first steps. It was an eye-opener for many that day, but it was an eye-opener for me most of all, because for years I had believed that stutter was simply who I was, a permanent piece of me I would carry the way I carried my own name.

As I got older and, I'd like to think, a little wiser, I began to understand the weight of a life I had not yet been given the strength to carry. Walking through the ordinary business of growing up was never simple again after that encounter all those years back. The dangers of life, the kind no one warns a child about, the kind that only reveal themselves slowly, one disappointment and one loss at a time, became more and more evident with every year that passed. I found myself reaching for something solid to hold onto, some kind of railing to steady myself against as the ground beneath me kept shifting. I didn't have language for what I was looking for back then. I only knew that the light I had felt once needed to be found again, wherever it had gone.

My search for that light continued, and it eventually led me to study to become a religious leader within Hindu tradition. I gave myself fully to it, learning the rhythm of puja, the offerings of flowers, incense, and flame during aarti, the careful placement of each murthi before me and the meaning layered into every gesture, every mantra, every ritual bath. I woke before sunrise some mornings just to sit in the stillness before the rest of the world stirred, believing that discipline itself might be a doorway. I studied the scriptures late into the night, sat with teachers who had given their whole lives to this path, and tried, with everything in me, to make it my home. There was beauty in it, more than I can properly put into words, the color, the devotion, the sense of belonging to something ancient and unbroken. But even surrounded by the smoke of incense and the sound of bells, I couldn't shake the quiet ache that told me I had still not found the place my heart was searching for. Years passed as I kept learning this culture and this way of life, and still the longing for peace sat unmoved in my chest, untouched by how much I gave, how early I woke, how faithfully I showed up. So, eventually, quietly, and with a heaviness I didn't expect, I took it upon myself to walk away.

Walking away was not easy. Many people I respected looked at me differently after that, some with disappointment, some with quiet judgment I could feel even when it wasn't spoken aloud. Conversations grew shorter. Invitations stopped coming. I understood it, even as it hurt, because I had once looked at others who left the same way. But I wanted back the love and joy I had felt in that hospital room, the moment the light had laid hands on me, and I was willing to keep searching until I found my way to it again, no matter what it cost me in friendships or belonging. That search put me on a kind of train journey, not just literally, but spiritually, toward another practice altogether: Islam. I followed its five pillars as best I could, the declaration of faith, the five daily prayers marked out across the day like anchor points, the fasting through Ramadan that taught me more about hunger and patience than I expected, the alms giving, the hope of one day making the pilgrimage to Mecca. I read the Quran, learned the rhythm of its recitation, the way the Arabic seemed to fold back on itself in patterns, and I tried to let its structure hold me the way scaffolding holds up a building under construction, believing that if I just kept to the frame closely enough, something inside me would finally be able to stand upright. But again, no peace settled over my heart. All I felt was the weight of a life's worth of sin dragging me further down, further into the same void of darkness that had once cloaked that hospital room, except now I was standing in it wide awake, with my eyes open and nowhere left to look.

Some people speak of darkness as something to fear, a place you go and don't come back from whole. But for me, on this particular stretch of the journey, it became a strange kind of shelter, a place I found temporary solitude in, even as it slowly hollowed me out from the inside, the way water wears down stone without ever seeming to move. Everything I had learned up to that point, through every tradition I had touched, had taught me one true thing that never changed no matter which door I walked through: that there was a God out there who loved us and never intended us harm. That much I never doubted. And yet, surrounded by a darkness that seemed to have no edges and no bottom, I began to lose the will to keep fighting for the thing I was searching for. Years of searching turned into years of sin stacked one on top of another, my hands stained by choices that were sometimes my own and sometimes the wounds others had left on me, the lines between the two growing harder to see the longer I stayed down there. Somewhere in there, I lost the strength to keep searching in the way I had been, worn down by my own weight, and I found what felt like comfort in paganism instead.

Every road I had walked so far had led me, in one way or another, toward depression, anxiety, sexual immorality, wrath, lust, envy, and alcoholism, a list I'm not proud of, but one I've learned not to hide from either, because it's the truth of where I was, and I think a testimony that hides its own darkness isn't really a testimony at all. It's just a highlight reel. In paganism, for a while, I believed I had finally found some measure of peace, because the attacks on my life seemed to be quieting down, or maybe I had just grown too tired to feel them the way I used to. I want to be clear here, because paganism carries a lot of different meanings depending on who you ask, and I don't want to speak for a word bigger than my own experience of it, when I use the word, I'm speaking specifically about the worship of the old Norse gods: Odin, Thor, Freyja, and the rest of the Aesir and Vanir, the gods of a people who once looked at the same kind of darkness I was standing in and gave it names and faces of its own.

I threw myself into learning this practice properly, studying the sagas, the Havamal's old proverbs about wisdom and fate and the price of pride, learning to read and speak fragments of Old Norse late at night with a dictionary open on my lap, carving and casting runes and learning what each one was said to mean, and offering prayers to gods I was told could protect me and strike down my enemies, or hand me the power to do it myself. This became my daily rhythm, wrapping my entire life around this belief system the way I had wrapped it around the two before, hoping that somewhere in all my devotion, in all my discipline, I might finally find favor. But no favor came. Only more hurt, more pain, more sorrow, and no real comfort to hold onto, just an overwhelming pull toward more sin, and a strange, aching pride in carrying it, as though the weight itself had become part of my identity.

This became simply what my life was: filling my own cup with the sins of others and carrying burdens that were never mine to bear alone, walking around with a heaviness that most people around me never saw, because I had gotten so good at smiling through it. And underneath all of it, quietly, stubbornly, I kept hoping that someday, when I finally departed this mortal world, I would be reunited with that light I had felt so long ago in that hospital room, the one that had once made a stuttering boy speak clearly for the first time. I told myself that was enough to hold onto. Or at least, that's what I believed at the time, before I understood that the light wasn't only waiting for me at the end of something, but had been trying to reach me the whole way through.

Then came the day. A random, unremarkable day like any other, the kind of day you forget the moment it's over, except this one I never did. I was sitting in my room, actively avoiding people, the way I had trained myself to do so well by then. Avoidance had become a kind of art form for me. I knew exactly how to keep the blinds half-drawn on my own life, how to answer a text just late enough that no one expected more from me, how to exist in a house full of people and still feel like I was the only one in it. So when a close friend of mine, someone I had come to think of as a sister over the years, knocked on my door and asked me to do something, my first instinct was to find a way out of it.

The task itself couldn't have been smaller. Open the gate for someone who lived in the same complex. That was it. Not a conversation, not a favor that cost me anything, just a few steps outside my room and a hand on a latch. And yet I remember hesitating, the way I hesitated at almost everything back then, weighing whether the effort of standing up was worth it. I had no way of knowing, sitting there in that moment of quiet resistance, that the next few minutes would end up rewriting the rest of my life. That's the strange thing about the turning points that matter most, they almost never announce themselves. They arrive dressed as errands.

I fought the ask a little, the way I fought most things by then, dragging my feet both literally and figuratively. But eventually I got up, and I walked toward the gate. And that's when I saw her for the first time really seeing her, not just registering that someone was standing there. She was quiet and subtle, simple and pure in the way she carried herself, no performance to her, no need to fill the silence with noise the way so many people around me did. There was an aura around her, something I couldn't name at the time, and if I'm honest, it kept me at a distance before she had even opened her mouth to say hello. Some part of me recognized, even in that first second, that this person was different, and different in a way that made me want to protect myself rather than lean in.

Still, I opened the gate, and barely able to form a full sentence, I started a conversation with her anyway, stumbling over small talk the way I hadn't stumbled over words since that day I gave my speech all those years before. I was being myself, but I was also keeping my distance on purpose, holding a wall up between us even as I spoke. I had been through too many heartbreaks by that point in my life, too many nights spent picking myself back up off some floor or another, and I wasn't looking to add one more scar to a collection that already felt too heavy to carry. So I kept the conversation short, polite, safe. But as she walked away from me, back toward her own door, something happened that I still find difficult to put into words even now, years later, trying to write it down. I felt a peaceful aura settle around me, something I hadn't felt in what seemed like an entire lifetime. It wasn't just that she seemed peaceful. It was that I felt it too, as if peace were something that could be caught, the way warmth passes from one body to another standing close in the cold. She was wrapped, somehow, in the same kind of light that had once come out of me that day in the hospital room, the light I had spent years chasing through temples and mosques and old Norse prayers, never quite catching it. And here it was, walking away from me in the shape of a girl who lived three doors down.

And so the spiritual battle began. I went back into my room that night and I sat down on the edge of my bed, and my mind started fighting itself in a way that felt less like a thought and more like an actual war being waged somewhere behind my ribs. It felt as though whatever had taken root in me over all those years, the darkness, the sin, the paganism I had wrapped so tightly around myself that I had started to mistake it for skin, had suddenly been uprooted in a single afternoon, torn up by something I couldn't see and didn't ask for. The light I had been missing for so long, the one I had convinced myself I would only be reunited with in death, had somehow found its way back to me while I was still very much alive, still very much a mess, still very much unfinished. I lay awake that night turning it over and over, trying to explain to myself what had just happened, and coming up with nothing that made sense.

This feeling didn't fade after a day or two the way I expected it to, the way every other spark in my life up to that point always had. It stayed. It followed me into the following week, and the week after that, refusing to loosen its grip no matter how many times I told myself I was imagining things. And somewhere in the middle of all that quiet unraveling, I started falling for her too, not just noticing her, not just remembering the sound of her voice at the gate, but actually falling, the kind of falling you don't get to vote on. Despite the age difference between us. Despite the fact that I was a pagan wrapped in runes and old prayers to gods with battle axes, and she was a Christian who had probably never once doubted which direction to face when she prayed. Despite everything that should have made this impossible, or at least deeply unwise, I fell in love with her deeply, without asking permission from my own better judgment, and without any real plan for what I was supposed to do with a feeling that big.

I tried, for a while, to talk myself out of it. I told myself it was loneliness. I told myself it was curiosity, or the simple pull toward anyone who seems unbothered by a world that has bothered you for years. But none of those explanations held up under their own weight for very long. As things progressed, I found myself sitting on the edge of my bed again, night after night, asking myself the kind of questions that don't let you sleep, what am I doing, what is this, why am I doing this, why can't I just let this go the way I've let everything else go. I had no answers. I only had the questions, circling the room with me like something alive.

And then, on one of those nights, as sweet and as sudden as a gentle whisper, in a moment so quiet I almost mistook it for the sound of my own blood moving, I heard a voice say two words: go to church. I want to be honest, I don't know exactly how to describe what that voice was, or where it came from, only that it wasn't mine, and it wasn't hers, and it didn't ask twice. It didn't have to. A longing filled every part of me at once, undeniable and unrefusable, the kind of pull I had spent years chasing through incense and prayer beads and Old Norse runes and never once actually feeling with this much certainty. And so, with nothing left to lose and a heart already halfway gone, I went.

Chapter 3

As I went forth on a whim to church, I began to feel something stirring within me almost immediately, something I couldn't quite name, a strange mixture of doubt and reassurance, tangled together so tightly I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. I remember gripping the handlebars of my motorcycle a little tighter than usual as I rode there, the wind pulling at my jacket, the engine's hum the only steady thing in a moment that felt anything but steady. My mind ran through every reason this was a bad idea, cycling through them like a list I'd memorized without meaning to, what if I didn't belong there, what if they could somehow see everything I'd done just by looking at me, what if I walked in as a pagan and walked out exactly the same, having wasted the one chance this feeling seemed to be offering me. And then, right behind every one of those fears, came the other list, every reason this might be the only good idea I'd had in years, the only door that had ever opened toward something instead of another dead end.

Part of me expected to turn back before I even arrived. I actually slowed down once, at a light I didn't need to slow down for, half-formed thoughts of just riding past the church and heading home instead, back to the quiet and the routines that at least didn't ask anything of me. The safety of avoidance had become so familiar to me by then that even a small act of showing up somewhere new felt like stepping off a ledge. But part of me was equally terrified of what would happen if I didn't go, as if turning back now would mean losing the thread for good, letting go of a hand that had only just reached out to me for the first time in years. I had spent so long building an identity out of runes and old prayers and borrowed gods, wrapping myself in a belief system that had never once made me feel clean no matter how faithfully I practiced it, that the idea of walking into a church felt less like visiting a building and more like walking into a courtroom where I was certain I'd be found guilty the moment I stepped through the door. I imagined stern faces, unspoken accusations, a room full of people who had never once doubted anything the way I had doubted everything, people who would take one look at me and know exactly how far I'd wandered.

But when I got there, none of what I feared happened. Instead, I was warmly greeted by the woman who had already, without meaning to, captivated my heart, the same quiet presence from the gate, standing there like she somehow knew I'd come, though there was no way she could have. Her smile wasn't performative or polished, not the kind of smile people give strangers to be polite. It was just warm, plain and simple, the kind of warmth that doesn't ask anything of you in return, the kind that doesn't require you to have your life figured out before it's offered to you. Seeing her there did something to steady the nerves that had followed me the entire ride over, like a hand settling gently on my shoulder before I'd even said a word. I parked my motorcycle a little further from the entrance than I needed to, buying myself a few extra seconds to breathe before I had to walk through those doors, and even that small delay felt like it mattered.

I proceeded to enter the church not knowing what to expect, half-braced for judgment, half-braced for nothing at all, my whole body tense in the way it gets when you're waiting to be told you don't belong somewhere. What I felt instead was an overwhelming sense of being home, not the home I grew up in, not the home of any of the traditions I had poured years of my life into, chasing peace through incense and scripture and old Norse proverbs, but something older and steadier than any of that, something that felt like it had been waiting for me long before I ever knew to look for it. The room itself was nothing extraordinary to look at, just chairs and a small stage and simple decorations, nothing like the gold-leafed idols or the carefully carved runes I had grown used to surrounding myself with, and yet it felt more alive than any temple or mosque or altar I had ever stood in front of. I remember taking a seat near the back, the way you do when you're not sure yet whether you're staying, keeping one foot near the door out of old habit, my eyes moving over the unfamiliar faces around me, half expecting one of them to turn and recognize the pagan standing among them.

No one did. No one even looked twice. People smiled the way the woman at the gate had smiled, nodded politely, made a little room on the pew without making a show of it, and something about that ordinary kindness unsettled me more than hostility would have. I had prepared myself for a fight I didn't have to have.

The preaching started, and I don't even remember the exact words the pastor used that day, not really, because what I remember instead is what happened inside my chest while he spoke. It started small, a kind of warmth low in my chest that I mistook at first for nerves, and then it grew, spreading upward and outward until it felt like it was pressing against the inside of my ribs, insistent, like something trying to get out or something trying to get in, I couldn't tell which. My heart felt a kind of love I had never experienced before in my life, not with any god I had prayed to at dawn, not with any ritual I had performed with careful precision, not even in the fleeting peace I had chased through paganism and mistaken for something real. This was different. This didn't feel earned or worked for. It didn't feel like something I had studied my way into or disciplined myself toward through years of practice and devotion. It felt given, freely, to someone who had done absolutely nothing to deserve it, someone who had spent years chasing after gods that demanded and demanded and never once simply gave. And before I even realized what was happening, I started to cry, quietly at first, then harder than I meant to, sitting there in a pew surrounded by strangers, tears running down my face in a church I had never set foot in before that morning, over a God I had spent years running from without ever fully understanding why I was running in the first place.

I tried to wipe my face discreetly, embarrassed, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed, but no one looked at me the way I feared they would. No judgment, no whispered comments, just a room full of people who seemed entirely unsurprised that someone might cry during a sermon, as though it happened here more often than I could have guessed. That alone told me something about the place I had just walked into, that whatever this was, it wasn't the courtroom I had braced myself for on the ride over. It was something closer to a hospital, the kind of place people come to when they're already bleeding, not the kind that turns them away at the door for it.

After the service, the pastor approached me, drawn, I think, by the simple fact that I was a new face in a room full of familiar ones, the kind of thing a shepherd notices without needing to be told. He didn't approach with the kind of forced enthusiasm I had half expected, the sort of performative welcome that makes you feel like a project rather than a person. He just walked over, introduced himself, and asked my name like it was the most natural question in the world. And as I started speaking to him, something in me broke open in a way I hadn't planned for and couldn't have controlled if I'd tried. I found myself telling him everything, the words tumbling out faster than I could organize them, the hospital room and the light I had felt as a child, the years of searching through Hindu temples and mosques and Norse rituals, the darkness I had made a home out of when nothing else seemed to work, the gate, the girl, the whisper that had told me to come here in the first place. It all came pouring out of me in a way it never had with anyone else, not even the people who had known me my whole life, not even the friend I called a sister. There was something about him, some quality of patience I wasn't used to being on the receiving end of, that made it feel safe to finally say all of it out loud in one sitting, without editing myself, without deciding halfway through that some parts were too much to share.

He listened diligently, without flinching, without the kind of judgment I had steeled myself against on the ride over. He didn't interrupt to correct me or to explain where I had gone wrong in any of the paths I described, didn't try to rush past the parts that clearly made him wince a little on the inside. He just listened, the way you'd listen to someone finally setting down a weight they'd been carrying for years, and let me get to the end of it in my own time, nodding occasionally, asking a quiet question here and there just to let me know he was still following, still present, still there. And when I was finished, when I had nothing left to say and felt strangely lighter for having said it, as though the telling itself had already begun to do something to the weight I'd been carrying, he welcomed me warmly into the church, no conditions attached, no penance required before I was allowed to belong. There was no list of things I needed to fix first, no probationary period before I could call this place mine. I just felt warmth flood through my heart, a new emotion washing over me that I still don't have a perfect word for, even now, all these years later trying to write it down. It felt amazing. It felt like home in a way nothing else ever had, not the temples, not the mosques, not the old Norse gods I had prayed to under my breath in the dark, hoping someone might finally be listening.

I stayed longer than I meant to that first day, long after most people had filtered out, talking with the pastor and a few others who had drifted over, drawn by nothing more than curiosity and the same kind of ordinary kindness I kept encountering there. By the time I finally got back on my motorcycle to ride home, the sun had shifted position in the sky more than I'd realized, and I remember thinking, almost laughing at myself, that I had gone in expecting an hour and come out having lost track of an entire afternoon.

As the days went on and I dove fully into my walk with Christ, I found myself becoming more at peace than I had been in as long as I could remember, more loved by the Father than I had ever let myself believe I deserved to be. The nights that used to be filled with restless questions started to quiet down, one by one, like lights being switched off in a house I had spent years wandering through in the dark, room by room, until finally I could see the whole shape of the place I'd been living in without ever really looking at it before. The weight I had carried for so long , the sins piled one on top of another, the burdens that were never mine to carry alone, the guilt I had mistaken for identity, began to lift, slowly, unevenly, but undeniably, the way morning fog lifts off a field without you ever quite catching the moment it disappears, until you look up and realize you can suddenly see clear to the tree line. I started to recognize myself again, or maybe for the first time, in the reflection I saw each morning, someone steadier than the person who had walked in through those doors that first day, someone whose hands didn't feel quite as stained as they used to.

I went back the following week, and the week after that, and it stopped feeling like an act of courage and started feeling like something closer to instinct, the way you return again and again to whatever finally makes you feel like yourself. I started reading scripture the way I had once studied sagas and scriptures from other traditions, except this time the studying didn't feel like reaching for something that kept receding the closer I got. It felt like being met halfway, every single time. I began praying not out of obligation or fear of consequence, the way I had prayed to gods who demanded results, but simply because I wanted to keep talking to someone who actually seemed to be listening.

The girl from the gate became something more than a passing feeling; she became part of the story God seemed to be writing right alongside my own, two separate threads pulled slowly toward the same center, though even now I still don't fully understand every part of how it all connects. I started showing up to church not out of obligation but because I wanted to, arriving early sometimes just to sit in the quiet before anyone else got there, the same way I once woke before sunrise for a different god entirely, except this time the discipline didn't feel like straining toward something distant. It felt like coming closer to something that had already come looking for me first, something that didn't need me to earn my way any closer than I already was.

But peace, I would come to learn, is not the same thing as the absence of a battle. It is simply what it feels like to no longer be fighting it alone. Because just as I believed I had finally found solid ground beneath my feet, just as I let myself exhale for what felt like the first time in years, something else was already stirring on the horizon of my life, something I couldn't yet see, something that would test every ounce of the faith I had just barely begun to build. I didn't know it that day, sitting in that pew with tears still drying on my face and a stranger's kindness still settling into my chest. I only knew that the light had found me again, and that whatever came next, I would not be facing it the way I once had, alone, in the dark, with no one and nothing to hold onto.

What I didn't know, what none of us in that small church that morning could have known, was that the very thing that had brought me back to life was about to be the very thing tested most severely of all.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, hosted by Hashtag Kalakar, is a prestigious platform celebrating literary excellence from around the world. This competition showcases diverse voices in poetry, short stories, essays, and creative writing, providing participants with the opportunity to share their unique narratives and connect with a global audience.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to SwordOfDavid for sharing "Finding The Light" in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Your poignant storytelling and inspiring journey of faith have undoubtedly left a lasting impact on readers. Thank you for your contribution to this celebration of literary creativity.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.