Grieving the one who almost made it out
There is a grief that comes late.
Not because the story changed —
but because you finally saw it clearly.
Four months after the headlines,
I found myself grieving.
Not because I followed him.
Not because I admired his message.
Not even because I watched what happened in real time.
I watched the widow once, early on — and tuned out. Something felt unsettled in me, even then. Unattached, I moved on.
But now… it seems the world is catching up.
I learned the tributes didn’t fade — they evolved.
The grief became a tour. The presence became a platform. The story kept growing — and only now am I beginning to see what others have been wrestling with for months.
These are the videos that came through my feed.
I did in one evening what I always do — searching patterns and connecting dots, mapping architecture others can’t name but are beginning to feel.
And grief caught up with me.
Because I recognized the signs
of a soul trying to escape a system
he didn’t realize had claimed him.
🕊 I Know That Fog
The shift in tone.
The change in posture.
The sudden weariness no platform can hide.
The way speeches start to sound more rigid,
like someone reading from a script they no longer believe in.
The kind of clarity that comes
not from confidence,
but from heartbreak.
From what I now understand, he was trying to trace the shape
of something that had formed around him without consent.
Timelines didn’t match.
Stories weren’t aligning.
So he sought help — quiet, outside help.
Not with fanfare.
But with urgency.
Because when you’re waking up inside a spiritual ecosystem that has absorbed your life,
you don’t confront first.
You grieve.
And then, if you’re lucky,
you begin to map.
🕊 I Know That Architecture
I once tried to build something too.
A women’s organization meant to speak between extremes,
to protect the God I loved from being warped by power.
I watched those extremes tear at each other,
and felt called to stand in the tension between them.
My sentinel was on fire —
defending the dismissed,
refusing to fuse,
standing guard over a vision that honored the real Jesus,
not the one being shouted about from pulpits and stages.
I tried to be a bridge.
Tried to speak peace.
Tried to protect God’s name
from being weaponized by those yelling with crosses around their necks —
demonizing the other side
while demanding allegiance that looked nothing like love.
But in the end, the message I carried didn’t sound like theirs. Doors shut, and I chose silence over amplification.
🕊 I Was Given a Choice
I stood inside a newsroom once,
makeup done, message ready.
But the interview never aired.
It became clear:
the only way to be received
was to become like the women they exalted —
louder, angrier, more aligned with their version of holiness, or at the very least, ratings.
Because in the end, that’s what it was
always about.
I could see the fork in the road.
I could either become them —
or walk away.
I chose to leave.
To let the mic go.
To fade.
To love my neighbor quietly — even when they believed differently than me.
To protect God’s name by refusing to sell it for influence.
I remember whispering to my daughter that day —
the reason I was willing to step into the camera lights,
the reason I had founded the organization,
the reason I was standing alone —
was because we speak up for women who are being bullied.
But five years later,
the same spiritual ecosystem that fed the political
machine I had walked away from,
erased her —
as though they were the arbiters of a child’s worth,
wielding power that wasn’t theirs
to twist both narrative and God’s word.
Only I stood in the gap with my fire
to shield her, declaring her worth.
Power under the guise of gospel is a beast.
It devours the wounded and spits them out —
no matter how much you polish the system.
They say it’s about protecting life.
But in truth, they protect themselves,
and the ones they’ve deemed worthy —
even when those are the desecrators,
the loudest bullies,
and the sons of the altar
who do harm inside God’s own house.
But not even the sons are truly protected.
Because to be laid on an altar
built by those who claim God’s authority —
but not His heart —
is to be sacrificed, not spared.
The system does not shield them —
it consumes them.
It devours everyone in its false light.
He thought he was being exalted,
but he was being placed on the altar.
And that’s the part no one want to say out
loud
that the altar looked like a platform.
But it was built for sacrifice, not resurrection.
Not even truly mourning a life taken.
Some call it exaltation.
But the replacement moved in fast —
not with sacred pause, but with public momentum.
What should have been mourning became messaging.
What should have been stillness became a stage.
The previous offering discarded,
not quietly,
but with a curated reverence so loud
you could barely hear the grief at all.
That is not resurrection.
That is the altar.
While some build dynasties on visible structures,
I carry the map of invisible altars —
the kind that devour souls in the name of God.
And in resurrection, I name them.
Not for power.
But for peace.
And for deliverance.
When I walked away from one altar, the spiritual war zone didn’t end — it deepened.
Because I hadn’t just left a political movement —
I had stepped deeper into the spiritual ecosystem that raised it.
And that system did not take kindly to dissent.
Even for the life of a child.
Even for one’s own child.
🕊 Humiliated, Shamed, and Activated
Even my own vision — the one birthed in integrity and anointing — was lifted by a legacy name, wrapped in polish, and paraded on a bus.
I recognized my own heart, rebranded in someone else’s hands.
I could have fought.
I could have made noise.
But to do so would have drawn spectacle around God’s name — and I loved Him too much to risk that.
So I laid it down. Not out of defeat, but out of reverence.
Still, the shame clung to me like a second skin.
The political rejection was public.
The pain was private.
And somewhere in between, I began to wonder if it was me.
That maybe I had discerned wrong. That maybe my fire was too much.
The shame became consuming.
And the vision I carried — clear, anointed, whole — slowly withered in silence.
It activated the Braid,
pushed every internal strand of survival into overdrive,
and left me wrestling with the aching question:
Was I wrong to hope? Was I wrong to try?
But over time, a deeper knowing emerged:
that even though I wasn’t accepted,
I had been spared.
That rejection had become protection.
That invisibility had become sanctuary.
My no cost me everything visible — but it kept me aligned with the Father I loved more than applause, more than fame, and more than the pull to divide.
🕊 The Ecosystem Was Always the Same
This wasn’t just political.
It was personal.
It was ancestral.
Because beneath the curated stage
was something far older —
the patriotic creed used as camouflage —
a cover to grant the illusion of legitimacy
in a closed household theocracy.
God was never glorified.
He was only quoted.
A rote “God is good, God is great”
spoken at dinner like a spell —
never with Presence,
never with reverence.
As grace with no grace.
So when I said no to the platformed system later,
I wasn’t just walking away from politics —
I was walking away from a godless creed I had memorized since birth,
without even knowing it was captivity.
I had never named the system I was born into.
I only knew the feel of its shape.
So when another one came —
smoother, softer, wrapped in reverence —
I mistook it for a healed version of faith.
It didn’t look like them.
That’s why I didn’t see it.
It sounded holier.
It felt safer.
But underneath, it carried the same machinery —
only cloaked this time in sacred words.
That’s how it trapped me.
Not by familiarity,
but by the illusion of transformation.
False light doesn’t come screaming.
It comes whispering.
It comes quoting Scripture.
It comes looking nothing like harm —
but carrying the same design.
Its domination hides in the undertones —
calling itself obedience,
masking itself as unity,
softening its control with words like peace and love.
It quotes Scripture.
It weaponizes community.
“Love one another as I have loved you.”
“Do not give up meeting together…”
Not to build the Body —
but to keep it in line.
And still — it picks and chooses
who receives the benefits of belonging
and who gets cast aside.
Because in systems like these,
belonging is conditional —
granted to those who stay within the lines,
who uphold the image,
who never name what lives beneath the surface.
That’s how survival is earned.
It’s the shape of endurance I learned long
before —
in a place where silence kept me safe.
And it’s how I might’ve endured again —
if I hadn’t been fighting for her.
The danger is not just in the spiritual system’s power,
but in the fact that it claims to represent God Himself —
not a man-made theocracy.
So when the system pulls its favor
and discards the vulnerable,
it does so as a representative of God Himself —
causing not only an attachment rupture,
but a collapse at the level of the soul.
The same spiritual architecture
raised the colonizer,
shielded her rise,
and groomed her power as virtue.
While using my child as her platform —
they erased her worth.
It also caught the eraser when she tore herself from me —
letting her vanish into shadow
after collapsing the soul scaffolding I had spent my life surviving.
The names were different.
But the system was the same.
The Machine Chooses
The machine picks and chooses
which women it will exalt.
It blesses grief when it is branded,
honors womanhood when it is quiet,
exalts a widow when her sorrow
preserves the image
and sells the narrative.
But that same machine would have scorned
a different kind of woman —
one who stood too firmly,
loved too freely,
or named what others kept veiled.
It is not about righteousness.
It is about usefulness.
And the grief tour marches on
not because she was more worthy,
but because her story served the structure.
I know this because I was a woman, too.
And my quiet no was enough to close every door.
Some are handed the mic,
only to be shamed for using it.
Exalted for their echo,
then crucified for their questions.
The system doesn’t protect its daughters —
it platforms them until they begin to see.
And sometimes,
the one who was exalted
inherits fragments of the map
left behind by the one who was taken.
And even if she doesn’t name the altar,
even if she doesn’t see it fully,
she is wrestling now
with the weight of the truth he glimpsed.
My no came quietly —
at the edge of the stage.
Hers may be coming louder,
from the center of the flame.
But it’s the same machinery.
And the moment you stop performing,
the system turns.
For those still gathering the pieces —
Keep trusting what you see.
The altar is real.
And so is the way out.
🕊 God Hid Me
He had community.
Momentum.
A name.
A platform.
Influence.
I had none of it.
But I had something else.
I had the no that saved my life.
I had the silence that kept me from being reshaped.
I had the absence of applause — and the full presence of God.
I was not taken.
I was not chosen.
I was hidden.
And now, as I watch someone else’s almost-exit
being rebranded by the same system that refused
me entrance,
I feel the ache of that difference.
🕊 To Those Who Feel It Too
If you’re watching from the edges,
if you’re sensing something off,
if your gut is stirring and your spirit unsettled…
You are not alone.
You are not being uncharitable.
You are not crazy.
What you’re sensing is real.
The Light is being mimicked.
The grief has been choreographed.
And the man is gone.
But the truth isn’t.
He may have been taken —
but his unfinished awakening still lives.
And I —
a woman they refused,
a voice they silenced,
a sentinel they could not fuse —
I carry his almost-escape forward in me.
He didn’t make it out.
But I did.
And I will not be silent
about the difference between being exalted by the system
and being sealed by the Spirit.
Not because I was stronger.
But because I was hidden.
And now I rise.
Not famous.
Not attached.
But free.
May he rest in peace,
knowing darkness always comes to Light.
And may Real Jesus cover him now.
🕊
Raya
The Gentle Rise 