That’s when my trouble began.

I knew that somewhere, way deep down, that was why I found myself now, at barely 6 a.m., in the back room of the wooden A-frame church on the water that had felt like home to me for decades. Behind the holy, public spaces, in the private, workhorse one, I polished, ironically, the same offering plate I had stolen that five dollars from. Then I moved my silver cloth onto the chalice that the congregation drank wine out of every Sunday morning, admiring the way it gleamed in the fluorescent light of the sterile altar guild room, which was lined with old, utilitarian wood cabinets with cheap white plastic knobs. It seemed incongruous that the interiors of such simple cabinets were crammed full of priceless, antique silver. The story goes that, when this church was founded in the late 1700s, the women got together and donated their jewelry. It was melted down to form pieces like this engraved silver chalice, which was lined with gleaming gold.

I never could be sure how I felt about all these shiny things in relationship to the God I felt I knew, the one who was kind and loving and forgiving—even toward someone like me. I didn’t think that God cared all that much about the ostentatious urns we filled with opulent displays of roses and lilies each week. Even still, I loved them. I loved getting to be the one here with them, maintaining them, caring for the vessels that would hold Christ’s body and blood.

This simple space with its perfectly ordered cabinets—organized by me—soothed me. It was where I felt closest to God. I didn’t pray to him anymore, not in any sort of personal way outside of the prayers I recited in church. After I’d begged him to rescue Jeremy from that avalanche and Glen from that car accident, after I’d pleaded with him through tears in the back of the ambulance with Walter, whose head and face were swollen to proportions that didn’t even look human, I stopped. I still believed in God. I just no longer believed that he cared what I wanted.