I’m grateful to Tension Literary for publishing my piece, “The Order of Things,” in its spring/summer Rebirth issue.

Although the issue is not formally themed, its editors selected work with the idea of before and after in mind—the moments, both large and small, that divide a life into what came before and what could no longer remain afterward.

For me, rebirth did not arrive cleanly. There was no single moment when the old life ended and the new one began. It came through rupture and resistance. Through desire I had been taught to fear. Through years spent trying to pray myself back into the life prescribed for me before I was old enough to imagine one of my own.

From childhood, I was handed an order for my life: grow into a righteous woman, marry a godly man, have children, remain faithful, remain grateful, remain quiet.

I followed that order for decades.

This piece is about what happened when the life I had been taught to want collided with the self I had been taught to silence—and what it cost to finally understand the difference between being good and being free.

Thank you to Tension Literary for making space for this story and for including it among so many powerful explorations of change, rupture, survival, and becoming.

Check out Tension Literary!

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