Adrift but Not Abandoned

Adrift but Not Abandoned

By Kateb Shunnar

My name is Kateb Shunnar. I have been in a shipwreck. I am on a lifeboat alone adrift not only on the waters of the sea but also on the great ocean of life. There is no land in sight. No compass in my hand. No echo returns when I cry out into the wind. And yet I am not alone. My words are sails, and my spirit is the mast.

Please... send help.

But not just the kind that brings rescue from waves Send the kind that calms the waves within.

God... I give myself to You. I am your vessel. Broken, bruised, and battle-worn but still floating. Still alive. Whatever comes next... I want to know. Show me the lesson hidden in this storm. Use me as Your whisper in the wind, Your reflection on the water, Your parable in a lifeboat.

I do not pretend to be tamed.

Maybe I never was. Maybe I never will be.

But what cannot be tamed by me...

can still be trained by You.

There is an animal in me. A raw, fearful, instinctual thing that claws and crawls and snarls inside the caverns of my soul. And yet it is not my enemy. It has kept me alive. When the sky darkened and the sea howled, it was not my theology or my intellect that kept me moving... it was my animal. My base need to breathe. My primal will to survive. That too, You created.

I never thought a small piece of shade a patch of faith could bring me such overwhelming happiness. In a world where everything was lost, faith became the only roof over my head. I have nothing out here but a bucket, a knife, a pencil... yet they are treasures beyond gold. They are proof that I still exist. They are answers to a prayer I never knew I asked.

My days are made up of silence and salt. My nights are long, filled with stars that remind me how small I am, how infinite You are. And yet... somehow, I matter to You.

Even the animal in me matters.

Especially the animal in me.

Because without him, I would’ve died already. He fears the ocean. He fears the dark. He fears being forgotten. And yet it is that fear that sharpens my senses, that keeps my hand steady when the wind roars. He hungers, so I fish. He thirsts, so I pray for rain. He growls, and I listen. And when I tend to his needs, I find purpose in the tending.

It is not weakness to acknowledge this part of me.

It is wisdom. It is balance.

It is truth.

I am not just spirit, and I am not just beast.

I am both.

Both holy and hungry.

Both broken and beautiful.

I have made peace with my wildness, because I have seen that You dwell even there. The divine does not avoid the wilderness. The divine meets me in it. Speaks through it. Transforms it. My instincts were not meant to be eradicated but enlightened. They were meant to be touched by Your hand and made into something sacred.

So here I sit. A man on a boat. A soul in a shell.

Floating, waiting, watching.

But not idle. Not empty.

I am full of a strange new clarity.

Faith is not found on a Sunday morning alone.

It is found in the stillness of waves.

In the scraping sound of survival.

In the soft whisper of a prayer that no one else hears but You.

I am human. See me for who I am.

Not who I pretend to be.

Not who I fear I am.

Not who I was told I should be.

But who I am: breath, flesh, soul, instinct, hope, vessel.

In this ocean of mystery, I surrender.

Let the waters take what they must.

Let the winds carry what they will.

Let the animal within me kneel beside the divine within me And may both learn how to serve.