I carried certainty like it was oxygen in my lungs,

Breathing in conclusions I had carefully strung,

I believed every thought I sharpened into truth,

Was proof that I had somehow mastered the roots.

I named the world in pieces so it felt contained,

Put labels on the unknown so it wouldn’t feel untamed,

But control was just a silence I mistook for peace,

While everything inside me slowly started to cease.

I stood on what I thought was solid and unshaken ground,

Convinced that clarity was something I had found,

But the deeper I relied on the strength of my own mind,

The more I realized I had been quietly blind.

My confidence was loud, but it was built on fragile air,

Each answer that I claimed began dissolving there,

The things I used to steady every fear and doubt,

Turned out to be the very things that let me down.

I pushed forward with a grip that would not let go,

Clinging to the illusion that I could fully know,

But every step revealed a deeper kind of loss,

As meaning slipped away from everything I crossed.

I chased understanding like it was something I could earn,

Stacking up my thoughts like lessons I could learn,

But learning didn’t lead me where I thought it would,

It led me to a place where nothing felt understood.

The questions multiplied beyond what I could contain,

Echoing inside me like an unending refrain,

And every answer I had built began to fracture and break,

Exposing all the ground I never truly could take.

I felt the weight of everything collapse in my chest,

Like the truth I depended on had failed every test,

No direction, no certainty, no voice that felt clear,

Just the overwhelming realization of fear.

The silence wasn’t empty—it was heavy and wide,

Like standing at the edge with nowhere left to hide,

Everything I trusted turned distant and thin,

As if the foundation itself was wearing within.

I reached for something—anything—to hold me in place,

But my own understanding couldn’t carry the weight,

And I watched as all my confidence faded to dust,

Leaving nothing in my hands that I could trust.

It felt like falling without ever hitting the ground,

Like losing all meaning without making a sound,

A slow unraveling of everything I believed,

Until I had nothing left that I could retrieve.

And then—at the lowest point where nothing remained,

Where every part of me was exhausted and drained,

A light broke through that I could never produce,

Not from my effort, not from anything I could choose.

It wasn’t earned, it wasn’t built, it wasn’t mine to command,

It arrived like a dawn I could never demand,

Cutting through the darkness that had swallowed my sight,

Revealing truth I could not reach by my own might.

Christ—steady, unshaken, beyond all I could see,

The Light that existed outside of me,

And in that moment where everything inside me gave way,

I found what I lost was never meant to stay.

All I thought was understanding fell silent and small,

Compared to the One who was holding it all,

And in the breaking of everything I thought I knew,

I finally saw truth… and it carried me through.