is it still prayer if you’re kind of mad while doing it

When I was younger, I used to think I couldn’t be both Christian and queer. And I didn’t come up with that on my own. Other people said it out loud. Over and over. In classrooms, in churches, in books written in polite, flowery language that still managed to say: you're not welcome here.

So I stopped trying. I stopped praying. I figured if God already hated me, why bother?

But something in me never really let go of it. Not religion, exactly, just the feeling of God. Like something bigger than me. Like love, but wider. Like truth, but quieter. And I kept thinking: if God is real, and if God is love, then why do the people who claim to speak for Him sound so hollow, so angry, so small?

And now that I’m older, I realize how arrogant it is for human beings, flawed, biased, petty little human beings, to think they have the right to gatekeep God. To point at someone and say, He wouldn’t love you. To weaponize Scripture like it’s a brick to throw instead of a light to follow.

I’ve read the Bible. I still do. And honestly? There’s a lot in it that feels so painfully human. So contradictory. So obviously touched by fear and ego and history and culture. So man-made. And if God really is holy, if He’s something beyond our tiny capacity to fully understand, then why is He so often written to act like us?

Why is He jealous? Why is He vengeful? Why does He demand blood and obedience and dominance? That’s not divine. That’s human. That’s the voice of someone trying to stay in power, not someone trying to give grace.

I still pray. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes when I’m scared. Sometimes when I’m mad. I pray not because I think I’m perfect or because I have answers, I pray because I still believe something out there is listening, and it’s not the people who told me I was wrong to exist.

If God is real, and if He is anything like what I hope He is, then He’s not afraid of me. He’s not disgusted by me. He’s not waiting for me to be smaller, straighter, quieter.

I think abotu this everytime I pray tbh