The God Insurance Policy

She prayed not out of devotion, but out of terror. What if she was wrong?

Fear Masquerading as Faith

From childhood, God was introduced to her less as love and more as surveillance.

He was the unseen eye that watched her thoughts, the judge tallying her mistakes, the force that could punish her in this life or the next if she strayed too far.

So she prayed—not because she always wanted to, but because she was afraid not to.

The Checklist Spirituality

Her relationship with God became a checklist:

• Morning prayer? Done.
• Sunday service? Attended.
• Fasting day? Observed.

Each ritual felt less like connection and more like paying premiums on an invisible insurance policy. If something went wrong, at least she could say she had "done her part."

The Half-Hearted Believer

She envied people who spoke about feeling close to God, who cried during worship, who described faith as intimacy.

For her, faith felt like performance. She knew the right words, the right songs, the right expressions. Inside, she was full of doubt—and terrified of that doubt.

What if questioning meant inviting disaster? What if her scepticism angered a God who demanded total belief?

The Patriarch Behind the Pulpit

The more sermons she heard, the more she noticed a pattern: God always seemed to agree with the men in charge.

Women were told to submit, to obey, to sacrifice. Doubt was rebellion. Independence was pride. Boundaries were selfishness.

Somewhere along the way, she realised she wasn’t just afraid of God. She was afraid of the men who claimed to speak for Him.

Slowly Untangling

She hasn’t stopped praying completely. But her prayers sound different now.

Sometimes they are addressed to a God who feels more like love than law. Sometimes they are just honest conversations with herself. Sometimes they are silence.

She is slowly letting go of the idea that faith has to be all or nothing, that doubt cancels out belief, that fear is the same thing as reverence.

What She Believes—for Now

Right now, she believes this:

Any God who is only sustained by her fear is too small for the life she is trying to build. If faith is to stay in her life, it has to make her more free, not more afraid.