The Same Apology

I was eighteen when I started avoiding prayer.

Not because I had stopped believing in God. I avoided prayer because I had run out of new ways to say, “I’m sorry.”

It usually happened in the afternoon when the house was quiet and everyone had settled into their own corners. My bedroom felt private then. Private enough to make the same mistake I had promised God I would never make again.

Afterward, I always reached for my phone first.

I cleared my browser history before doing anything else. I knew deleting it changed nothing. God did not need my search history to know what I had done. But I still deleted it every time, as though removing the evidence from my phone would somehow make it easier to face Him.

It never did.

The hardest part was kneeling beside my bed.

Sometimes I stayed there for almost a minute before saying anything. I already knew every word that was coming.

“I’m sorry.”

“I want to change.”

“Please don’t give up on me.”

“I’m trying my best.”

“Please help me.”

Those prayers were never fake. I meant them every single time. That was what hurt the most. If I truly wanted to stop, why did I always end up back in the same place?

The cycle became painfully familiar.

I would pray with tears in my eyes and leave my room believing this was finally over. For a few days, I felt hopeful. I read my Bible with confidence. I prayed without hesitation. Then another afternoon would come, and somehow I found myself holding my phone again. Before long, I was back on my knees, repeating the same apology.

Sometimes I would remain in my room for a few extra minutes before opening the door. I didn’t want anyone to notice that I had been crying. By the time I stepped outside, I looked normal again. I joined conversations, answered questions, and carried on with the rest of the day as though nothing had happened. The only person who knew what had taken place in that room was God, and I wasn’t even sure He still wanted to hear from me.

What stayed with me wasn’t the guilt of what I had done.

It was the fear that God had heard this prayer too many times.

I never questioned whether He existed. I questioned whether He was tired of listening to me.

That thought followed me everywhere. I carried it into church. I carried it whenever I remembered that my body was the temple of God. I carried it each time I bowed my head to pray, wondering if I had exhausted His patience.

No one knew.

To everyone else, I was another young Christian trying to live faithfully. They couldn’t hear the conversations I had with God behind a closed bedroom door. They didn’t know that the longest part of my prayer was often the silence before I spoke, wondering if I even deserved to ask for forgiveness again.

I think that was the loneliest part of it all.

Not the act itself.

Not even the guilt.

It was believing that the God I loved might be tired of hearing the same apology from the same eighteen-year-old who kept promising, “This is the last time.”

And yet, every time I finally found the courage to pray, those were still the first words that left my mouth.

“I’m sorry.”