There’s a moment when silence is no longer holy.

When the ache inside you boils, and your heart pounds like a fist against a locked door. When your chest is a furnace, not of passion, but of pain. It’s that moment the Psalmist knew well—when your thoughts, left unspoken, become a wildfire.

“My heart was hot within me. While I was musing, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue…”

These are a couple verses that have truly stirred my spirit and woke me up inside. Not just gently nudged me. Woke me up—like defibrillator paddles to a dying soul. Because there’s nothing tame about this moment. This is spiritual CPR.

David wasn’t just journaling his feelings. He was erupting. He was imploding on the inside, brooding over the unbearable weight of life’s fragility. And when the silence could no longer hold the pressure, he spoke.

He didn’t speak to a friend.

He didn’t vent on Facebook.

He didn’t scream into the void.

He turned his fire toward God.

“Lord, let me know my life’s end.”

What kind of prayer is that? That’s not your average “bless me, Lord.” That’s not the polite, polished petition of someone living a safe, comfortable life. That is the cry of someone staring death in the eyes, tasting the bitter brevity of existence, and desperate to know why any of it matters.

Raw. Unfiltered. Desperate.

This is the kind of honesty that bleeds on the page. The kind of holy angst that can’t be silenced. Because some of us don’t live in the land of light platitudes and pretty promises. Some of us have burned. We’ve walked through betrayals, stood over caskets, lost pieces of ourselves in abusive religion, or stared down the barrel of trauma that won’t stop echoing.

And somewhere in the smoldering rubble, we’ve all whispered that same plea:

“God, show me how short this all is. Let me see the edge of my days. Teach me how frail I am.”

And I feel this so deeply. I feel it in my bones—because I’ve known that numbness.

Not the poetic kind. Not the “I’m tired” kind.

I’m talking about that soul-dead, shell-of-a-human, walking-through-life-with-a-mask kind of numb. The kind where you look alive, but you’re rotting inside. Where you quote Scripture with your lips but can’t feel a thing in your chest. Where people say, “You’re so strong,” and you want to scream, “You have no idea I’m dying.”

That fire didn’t start in a worship service, though it absolutely can and has. It didn’t flicker to life in some cute, Instagrammable devotional. It ignited the moment I got real with God. Ugly real. Brutally honest. Tear-soaked, middle-of-the-night, snot-on-the-floor kind of real. When I stopped pretending. When I threw the script away. When I stopped editing my prayers and just let the rage, the grief, the confusion pour out.

And you know what? God didn’t flinch.

He met me in that mess. In the ashes of my illusions. And He didn’t shame me—He lit the fire. He showed me that my numbness was a symptom, not an identity. That my silence was suffocating me. And that the only way out was through.

That’s not a death wish.

That’s a life wish.

It’s a demand to be shaken awake from this fog of denial and distraction. It’s the groan of a soul that refuses to waste one more second pretending everything’s fine when it’s not. It’s the confession that we are not gods. Not invincible. Not immune. That our time here is a vapor, and we can’t afford to live numb, bound, or fake.

You want to live fully? You better come to terms with death.

David wasn’t trying to be dramatic—he was being real. And maybe that’s what God is waiting for from you. Not your performance. Not your spiritual résumé. But your fire. That unspoken storm inside. That cry you’ve been holding back because you thought it wasn’t “faith-filled.”

But faith isn’t the absence of fire—it’s what you do in it.

So go ahead. Let it burn. Let the musing become a blaze. Let the silence break under the weight of your truth. And when you speak—don’t hold back.

Because God can handle your fire.

And He’s not afraid of your edge.

He’s waiting for you there.

L. Abigail Bradeen