The Invisible God

The Invisible God

He never remembered a time he truly smiled.

Not the ones he gave politely, or the ones he wore for pictures. Not the ones that made others feel comfortable or the ones he had to give when someone said something funny but he didn’t quite feel the laughter reach his chest. Those were masks—necessary, maybe. Familiar, certainly. But never real. Real, he imagined, must feel like light breaking through the ribs. He had never known that kind of light.

Rest in The Invisible God

Sometimes, in his quietest hours, he wondered if that light belonged only to the Invisible God—the One he could not see, the One he could not quite touch, but the One he still hoped might find him.

As a boy, people often said he looked serious. Thoughtful. Quiet. Some said he was just shy. Others said he was deep. But no one ever said he looked happy. Not even in the photos tucked into boxes in his attic. Not even in the videos where everyone else seemed to be carried away by the music or the moment. He was present, but never quite… lifted.

Still, he lived. He learned how to be liked. How to keep people company. How to offer kindness, advice, encouragement. He had become quite good at showing up. People would even call him strong. But strength, he knew, was often misread. Sometimes it was just long-term survival. And survival, by its nature, does not lend itself to smiling. It demands endurance. Endurance has little time for joy.

He wasn’t cold. Just closed. Closed to anything that might let the world see how tired he really was. How disappointed. How much he had once hoped for things that never came. The smiles that never formed were not because he didn’t want them. He just didn’t know how to hold them.

There was a moment—a morning, specifically—when it all changed.

He didn’t expect it. No one does. The sky was ordinary. The coffee slightly too bitter. He had slept restlessly again, and his feet were dragging him into a day he hadn’t asked for. But something about the way the sun touched the wall next to the window caught him off guard. It was soft, golden, like something out of a painting he would never think to hang in his own home. Something about it slowed him.

He sat down. Not to write. Not to think. Just to stop. To let the room be what it was without his doing.

And in the stillness, he began to remember. Not events. Not moments. But himself. The self beneath the habits, beneath the patterns. The self who once felt things, not just analyzed them. He remembered a boy who used to believe that one day, life would feel full.

And then he cried.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t cinematic. It was just real. Silent, warm streaks across the face of a man who had grown tired of pretending he didn’t feel. And in those tears, he found the first flicker of something new.

He began to write again. Slowly. Hesitantly. Like someone trying to remember a language they used to know. Not to impress. Not to publish. Just to speak. To speak the things that had lived unspoken for far too long.

Over time, his writing turned into something more. Not better. Just clearer. He wrote not to teach, but to tell. Not to answer, but to ask. And the questions were always more sacred than the answers.

He began carrying a small notebook. Sometimes it held entire reflections. Sometimes just a single phrase that haunted him until it found its place. The notebook became like a mirror, except it told the truth he could never see in glass.

And then came the day he stood in front of a group—not a crowd, not an audience, just a circle of fellow travelers—and he was asked to read something he had written. He hesitated. That old fear returned: What if they see too much? What if they don’t understand?

But a quiet voice within him whispered something softer: What if they do?

So he pulled out a folded page—worn, the edges beginning to tear—and with trembling hands, he began to read:

“Can I Smile There?”

A reflection in the mirror of God

Today seemed different.

The light came,

but it didn’t reach me.

It stayed behind the clouds,

and I stayed behind my ribs—

where everything echoed.

I showed up like I always do—

strong, holding space,

staying grounded until even the ground beneath me cracked.

And I cracked with it.

They didn’t see it.

They never do.

They see the smiles.

They hear the calm voice.

They trust the man who doesn’t flinch.

But I flinched today.

Quietly.

So quietly that only the ringing in my ears noticed.

I wanted to ask for God.

I did.

But the words got lost

somewhere between my courage and my exhaustion.

And so I asked with my ache.

I asked by showing up

when I had nothing left to bring.

I watched the day pass—

trees swaying,

the sky holding back its color,

and life moving forward

as if it had somewhere better to be.

I sat there,

a well-worn man with well-worn thoughts,

smirking at the irony of aall—

how the ones who make others laugh

are often the ones who cry in silence

just for a taste of what they give away.

I rewound through my life—