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I grew up being taught that I should always put my faith in God. I sat through sermons and Sunday School services about the glory of our Heavenly Father, and how Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, died for our sins. I never questioned sacrificing things for your faith, even your own life, because that was just the way things were. I never allowed myself to doubt or question, because surely questioning God was a sin, right? And if I doubted my faith, I’d be forced to recognise how lost in the universe I truly am, with nothing to guide me.
So I became the Jesus freak. I became the nerdy prude saving myself for marriage to win love from my parents and an uncaring God. I was named after the concept of grace - good favour and elegance, specifically God’s favour, my mother told me when I was young that God’s benevolence is a blessing that we should thank the Heavens for. My baptism was the proudest day of my life - there’s a photograph of me, hanging up in the living room, beaming next to the pastor, soaking wet, as his arm wraps around me. I was born anew for the first time that day, dedicating my life to the church.
I presented myself as a paragon of virtue, too holy to give into temptation. I am no glutton, and I am too meek to give into wrath. I do not hoard or covet, so I am free of the sin of greed. I have always been modest, so pride was never a problem for me, and I am always on the move so sloth cannot touch me. Envy and lust are where I stumble. I envy my classmates, so free, able to live lives without self-imposed censorship. I lusted after Max Jägerman for far too long.
That boy was Satan, he has to be. No, he was Lucifer, pre-Fall Satan with heavenly beauty, but with the same malevolent ability to manipulate, the same ungodly wrath. His smile was so warm and kind as he asked me how my day was or if he could carry my books, he looked positively angelic. But he snarled and growled like a lowly demon when he beat my friends to a pulp simply for walking in the same hallway as him. Much like Lucifer, Max fell, and he rose again as a spirit, wreaking havoc on the living, like an avenging Angel of Justice. He stirred up such wicked temptations within me. For a moment I genuinely believed that he would want to… that we could… but I am nothing but a challenge to those who bed every woman in their path.
I refuse to be like Eve, tempted by Satan’s soft, crooning suggestions of eating the apple, giving in to sin. Marriage should not be about carnal pleasures, but serving God and bringing new life into the world. When I find a husband, the sharing of bed will be nothing more than a formality, he shall only see all of me on the night our child is conceived. My chastity was all I had, and although I, admittedly, use feminine wiles to tempt unworthy, dirty dudes today, I control it whenever I can.
Ah, yes, my new gods. At first I denounced the Black Book and the Lords in Black as beings of pure fantasy, and that it would be blasphemy to see them as real. But I have heard their voices, I have looked Wiggog Y’Wrath in the eye, and he has told me that he sees me, that I am loved. I still pray, I still listen to hymns, but now I make holy sacrifices in the names of my new Lords. Like Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac due to his God’s command.
My parents think I’m still Christian. I know better than them, I know that the only Heaven is the Black and White. But I have not neglected all of their teachings. I put my faith in God, and his name is Wiggly.