by James Love
James Love
© 2026 The Love Trollinger Initiative LLC. All rights reserved.
I’ve been in church practically my whole life. Long enough to know that many of us hear the word but do not do it—or do our best for a while, then give in to our own desires and impulses. As someone who studies the mind, I understand that tension. Sometimes we grow impatient. Sometimes we grow pessimistic because it seems the things we learned are not actually happening—ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened.
As I’ve gotten older, my relationship with faith has grown less mystical and more practical. That shift came largely through religious pain I’ve endured. That’s a story for another time, but it’s important to say this: I allowed what I witnessed within the church to convince me that this was not for me, and that I did not want to be there.
Despite distancing myself from the church, I was still praying.
I prayed for people who plainly disrespected me simply for showing up as myself—asking questions, seeking clarity, being creative. I prayed for people who disagreed with my creative expression and my way of seeing the world. I prayed and prayed and prayed.
I prayed for my mom to be healed. When it became clear that healing didn’t seem to be in the cards, I prayed that she would die in her sleep. That prayer was apparently answered.
I prayed for my friends, exes, and strangers—for their peace, their families, their prosperity. Those prayers also seemed to be answered.
But in the process of watching these prayers come to life, I was submerged in an unspeakable depth of pain. While others appeared to thrive and peace was ushered into their lives in different forms, I couldn’t fully appreciate it. My one prayer remained unanswered: remove this pain from my heart.
I cannot lie—I fell away hard.
I looked into witchcraft. I listened to rock music. I read The Satanic Bible. I found myself comfortable with the language of atheistic materialists. My orientation shifted completely because I had grown so disconnected from people who claimed to follow God, and so frustrated with what I thought I knew of God.
I began to believe God was a mirage—a psychological construct interfering with material reality. A cult. An accepted cult, approved by the state. A weapon to keep poor and marginalized people compliant despite the literal hell they face every day, internally and in their communities.
I grew angry at the image of God sitting back, watching humanity unravel, and simply pointing a finger saying, do better. For a while, I wanted nothing to do with Christianity. I thought I was on the right side of history—the side of the “smart” people who don’t live by ancient realistic fiction.
And then I had an epiphany.
After burying my mother and living inside intense grief, something became clear. My entire life had been oriented around my dreams—what I wanted to accomplish before I died, before she died. With her gone, I had to reevaluate everything.
What I discovered was unsettling: my anger and disturbance existed long before her illness. Long before my first heartbreak. It began when I failed to understand how large the absence of my father actually was in my life.
There was no guidance. No structure. No one speaking life into me as a son.
I didn’t realize how angry I was about that absence. I tried to replace it—with coaches, with potential fathers-in-law—but each attempt only deepened my resentment. Outsourcing a father’s role never sat right with me.
What I finally understood was this: I did not feel internally validated. I didn’t truly feel loved. Even my mother’s fierce love, as real as it was, couldn’t fill that particular void. That missing validation haunted me quietly for years.
There is more to the story, of course, but this was the central fracture. And I’m grateful I was finally able to see it.
As this realization settled in, I repented (or changed my mind)—slowly and genuinely.
I began to see that my anger toward God closely mirrored my anger toward my father. I viewed God as absent, detached, doing whatever He wanted—because that was how I had learned to understand my father. I didn’t feel chosen. I felt included only as a supporting character in someone else’s story, not as a reason to stay and build a family.
I will never fully know my father’s struggles. I believe he wanted a good life, but feelings, influences, time, and health overtook him. And still, I love him—because hatred is too heavy a burden to carry.
I love both my parents for what they did and did not do for me. I do not blame them.
What I do understand now is that I must work through these psychological realities in a way that allows me to function, to be healthy, and to use the time I have left well—not just for myself, but for those around me.
That means continuing to pray, even when prayers are not answered in ways I’m ready to recognize. Sometimes pain blinds us to what is being revealed. And sometimes prayers are not answered at all—and that, too, can be good.
I’m beginning to understand that some of the things I begged God to remove were the very things exposing what needed to be healed.
If something in this piece touched a nerve—if you’ve wrestled with faith, grief, unanswered prayers, or the quiet anger that comes from feeling unseen—you don’t have to hold it alone.
I’m open to conversation, not debate. Sometimes clarity comes simply from being heard.
You can reach me directly at
📩 admin@ltisite.com
I read every message and respond when I can.
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