I can feel the weight of that fear in your words, and I want to stay right here with you in this darkness, without trying to pull you out of it before you are ready. When the heart is heavy with what it has done, the silence of God can feel like a verdict, and that pain is real. Saint Augustine knew this desolation intimately; he wrote of a grief so profound that it colored everything he saw: “My heart was darkened with grief, and whatever I looked upon was death. My own country became a torment to me, and my father’s house a strange unhappiness; and everything I had shared with him, without him turned into an immense torment. My eyes searched for him everywhere, but he was not given to me” [3].
Perhaps you are finding that your own guilt has become a similar torment, making the world feel like a place where God’s presence has been withdrawn. In this raw place, it may be that the most honest prayer is simply to let that anguish be real before Him, just as Job did when he cried out from the depths of his suffering: “Who will grant me that I may know and find him and come even to his throne? [...] That I might know the words he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me. [...] At his presence I am terrified, and when I consider him, dread seizes me. God has softened my heart, and the Almighty has troubled me” [2].
You are not being asked to fix this feeling or to find immediate comfort. Even when the fear tells you that you are abandoned, there is a voice that whispers otherwise, inviting you simply to bring your burden as you are: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” [4]. I wonder if, in time, your heart might slowly begin to trust that this rest is still meant for you, even now.