Rogue Grace– Makeshift Masterpiece
Note to Readers:
This piece holds space for a story rooted in survival, not as a performance or a wound on display, but as a real part of the road I’ve walked.
If the themes of our deep emotional struggle, choosing to stay or confronting the edge of hope, are sensitive for you, please honor where you are.
I share this not to retraumatize, but to tell the truth about where grace found me —
and how it still shapes the hallelujah I carry now.
If you’re not in a place to read it today, that’s okay.
Come back when you’re ready — or not at all.
This space isn’t about pressure. It’s about presence.
Hell-Burned Hallelujah and the Grace it Holds
Some people sing hallelujah like it floats.
Like it’s featherlight.
Like it’s always been familiar on their tongue.
But mine doesn’t sound like that.
Mine has grit in it.
It cracks. It shakes.
It sometimes stumbles out of my mouth sideways — half hope, half history.
Because it’s the hell I’ve been through that makes my hallelujah heavy.
The words don’t make me cry-
But I flinch.
I grip tighter.
I feel the ache rise like a second pulse.
Verses that land like bruises.
Choruses that don’t roll off my tongue — they drag themselves out of my chest.
Because I’ve stood in holy places with unsteady legs.
Because I’ve been handed grace while I was still gasping for breath.
Because I know what it means to worship from a place that’s been wrecked — and still in pieces.
My hallelujah isn’t smooth.
It isn’t staged or sweet.
It’s real.
It’s rooted.
It’s covered in ash and still glowing.
It’s what happens when you don’t get the resolution, but you show up anyway.
When the breakthrough didn’t break like you hoped — but you still whispered thanks.
It’s what happens when survival is sacred.
When showing up again becomes your liturgy.
Some hallelujahs rise like incense.
Mine hits the floor first.
But it still rises.
And that?
That’s worship too.
So if your hallelujah feels heavy — good.
It means it’s real.
It means it costs something.
It means you’ve been through some fire and still had the audacity to say “Amen.”
That’s not weakness. That’s reverence.
That’s not broken faith. That’s what holy sounds like with scar tissue.
Because sometimes, it’s the heavy hallelujah that holds the grace we cannot bear.
Not yet. Not all at once.
But it carries it for us anyway — until we’re ready to stand.
Each hallelujah comes at a cost.
One that’s already been paid for me —
and one I still carry in my chest.
Not to earn it, but to honor it.
Not because grace requires the weight,
but because survival shaped the sound.
Because getting back up still costs something —
even when resurrection is free.
And maybe this is how I say thank you:
by carrying it forward,
by singing it anyway,
by letting the heaviness make it holy.
Eighteen years ago, I made a choice.
Not the kind you waffle over.
Not the kind you revisit later and laugh at.
The kind that ends things.
The kind that almost did.
And I don’t write that for pity.
I write it because it’s true —
because that decision, though it didn’t get the last word,
still shapes the sound of my hallelujah now.
Not because I lean on it.
But because it left a mark that I don’t pretend away.
It changed how I show up for breath, for people, for God.
Even though I didn’t learn about grace until later… years later.
I don’t owe that moment my identity —
but I do owe it my integrity.
Because I’m still here.
It’s the hell I’ve been through that makes my hallelujah grateful.
Not the easy kind — the awe-filled, I’m-still-here kind.
It makes my hallelujah accountable, too.
Because I’ve seen what grace can do — and I refuse to waste it.
My posture may waver.
But my hallelujah is steady.
It holds what my spine can’t.
It breathes when I can’t.
It’s less of a lyric now — and more of a stance.
My hallelujah is more often a sigh than a song —
a posture of reach, even when it looks more like a wrestle.
Because sometimes the most faithful thing I can do
is refuse to let go.
I didn’t offer the hallelujah back then.
Truth is — if it had been up to me, it would’ve ended.
It wasn’t a maybe. It wasn’t a “some days are hard” thing.
It was a decision.
But grace didn’t wait for me to reach.
It wrestled me in
So the hallelujah I carry now?
It’s not proof that I never broke —
it’s proof that breaking wasn’t the end.
I didn’t survive so I could sing pretty songs.
I survived because something holy held on
when I had nothing left to grip.
And now?
Now, every hallelujah I give
is an act of accountability.
Not for what I did —
but for what I still get to do.
This hallelujah isn’t just mine.
It’s what I pass on — not the easy kind,
but the kind that can hold weight without breaking.
Some people lift their hands.
I lift my hallelujah like a stone I refuse to set down.
It’s been shaped by fire, scarred from the fall,
and still — it’s mine to raise.
It’s not polished — it’s hell-burned.
Not light — but lit by survival.
And still I raise it.
For the days I couldn’t.
For the days I still don’t want to.
For the grace that holds on anyway —
Hallelujah.
Now are the days I can.
But only because grace got me through the days I couldn’t.
Because hallelujah never let go — even when I did.
This hallelujah carries something that happened eighteen years ago.
Something I survived.
But survival isn’t my brand — it’s a fact.
It shaped me, but it doesn’t speak for me.
It’s written in my history,
But grace turned the page,
And I hold the pen.
I don’t lean on that moment to validate my voice.
But I don’t pretend it didn’t change my lens either.
I carry it — not as a crutch,
but as clarity.
And my view from here is one I own.
Every hallelujah holds more than a note —
it carries where we’ve been,
sees us where we are,
and dares to echo where we’re going.
Hell-Burned Hallelujah
It’s not polished.
It’s not perfect.
It’s not sung in key.
It’s not about who’s watching.
It’s not about having the right words.
It’s not even about feeling strong.
It’s about showing up anyway.
It’s about handing breath to hope when you don’t have a voice.
It’s about lifting something scorched and sacred
and saying — this, too, is holy.
This, too, is mine.
This, too, is hallelujah.
And if any of this sounds familiar —
if your hallelujah feels more like a scar than a song —
then this isn’t just my story.
It’s yours too.
Because grace doesn’t just echo in the perfect places.
It reverberates in the wreckage.
And if all you’ve got is a hallelujah held together by ash and ache —
You’re not alone.
You’re already worshiping.
