In Spite of My Circumstance

In Spite of My Circumstance

By Kateb Shunnar

They didn’t see me crying in the corner of rooms where no one knocks.

They didn’t hear the creak of floorboards that groaned under the weight of my silent prayers.

I was not the chosen in the eyes of men

But oh, how the heavens whispered my name in thundered hushes when no one else was listening.

I came into this world like a whisper riding the tail of a storm

Raised not by circumstances, but by the hands of women

Who stitched strength into my spirit and hymns into my breath.

Marva my mother, a lighthouse built of sermons and solitude,

And Celestine my grandmother, who saw angels in dust motes and

Made gospel out of greens and cornbread.

I watched them pray,

Not with the fanfare of the righteous,

But with cracked voices and tired eyes,

Their knees worn smooth like river stones from kneeling.

Still, life pressed its weight on me

Like the bottom of the ocean pressing on the chest of a sunken ship.

I knew what it was to feel forgotten while walking among the living.

To be passed over, passed by, passed through.

But in the ache, I began to notice something no eye could see

That pain has a language, and God is fluent in it.

One night, long after the hour where hope typically sleeps,

I sat by an old willow tree, bent like a bowed elder.

There, under the hush of night and the crooked arm of the moon,

I felt a stillness fall that was not of this world.

The wind stopped mid-sentence.

Time folded in on itself.

And from the silence came a voice not loud, but layered.

It said:

"I have not forgotten you, child. I was never far.

Your circumstance is not your sentence.

Your tears are seeds, and I am the rain."

I wept not for sorrow, but for recognition.

Because in that moment, I knew…

I was seen.

Not for what I had or had not done.

Not for how many fell away when I needed arms.

But for who I was underneath it all

A soul still glowing beneath the soot.

The next morning, I walked differently.

Not like one who had conquered the world,

But like one who had been held by something beyond it.

I began to notice miracles in ordinary things:

How the birds dared to sing on days it still rained.

How bread rose in ovens like hope in a belly.

How my own breath, once shallow and unsure,

Now came deep like forgiveness.

Let me tell you an old story my grandmother once whispered over boiled leaves and flickering flame.

It was the tale of a boy born with broken feet in a village where all men ran fast.

The elders said he’d never be worth much, that even the animals outran him.

But one day, a great flood came, and only he, slow-footed and unnoticed,

Knew how to walk gently across the shaking bridge

Saving those who once mocked him.

When the waters dried, they asked him how he did it.

He simply said,

“What was once my shame became my strength.”

That story lived in my bones long before I understood it.

Because I know what it’s like to limp through seasons where everyone else seems to soar.

But I also know this

There is a God who writes poetry in our scars

And plants gardens in the ashes of our despair.

So, in spite of my circumstance In spite of the cold nights where my name echoed only in my own mind,

In spite of closed doors and empty plates,

In spite of being overlooked, underestimated, misunderstood

I am still here.

But not as I was.

I am restored.

Not because the world apologized.

Not because life became easy.

But because Love found me in the ruins

And poured oil where the world only saw wounds.

Because Grace doesn’t knock it walks in uninvited and sits with you in your shame,

Then stands you up like royalty.

So now, I walk with a limp of glory.

I speak with a voice shaped by silence.

I love with a heart that has been broken, mended, and anointed.

And I live not for the approval of eyes that once passed over me,

But for the gaze of the One who never blinked when I was drowning.

If you, too, are buried under your circumstance,

If your faith feels like it’s been evicted from your bones

Know this:

You are not forgotten.

Your life is not a mistake in the manuscript of eternity.

Your struggle is not the final verse.

You are being written still.

Selah.