Once upon a time, a girl sat down and opened her Bible.

She'd read this chapter a few times before--she was familiar with Romans. She knew what the words meant on a grammar level. There were few surprises. 

But she hadn't let it sink into her heart. The words were distant, far from her actual soul. And as she read them again, she realized: she was angry. Understanding was not enough--she needed belief.

That was hard to come by when her prayers went unanswered.

She pounded her fists against her Bible. She screamed. She prayed. Her diary became far more faithful a companion than her prayer journal, but then the diary started to veer into a darkness she hadn't expected. Later, talking to her therapist, she'd realize just how awful that moment had been. "I started writing about myself in the third person," she'd said. "Do you think that's relevant?"

Her therapist had chuckled and leaned back. "People tend to do that to distance themselves from traumatic experiences," she said.

The girl stopped writing entirely, and she stopped asking. Her questions weren't for God. They were for her parents, for other people, for the void. God could hear them--that much she knew. But it felt like nothing got to him. There was a fence on the way up, and her questions snagged like balloons in a ceiling net, tapping relentlessly, but unable to go any higher. The questions were corralled, and she could not seem to read past that chapter of Romans.

More. More than conquerors. The words were a mockery. What did it mean to be more than a conqueror when she couldn't even overcome her own questions?

She wrote a list for her mother: questions God can't answer. "The only thing keeping me here is that nothing else has better answers," she explained to her mother. That was really the only thread she had--none of the other possible worldviews made sense even on a molecular level.

One day, during prayer, the reminder came again: more than conquerors. Outside, rain poured down in the middle of a dark spring evening. The girl looked out the window at the rain and sighed. More prayer. More asking God for something that wouldn't happen. More begging for answers.

The prayer ended. The family wandered. The girl's younger sister looked out the window and gasped. "Guys, come look," she said urgently.

The church building where they were praying was empty, but that had no effect on them at that moment. Because there, stretched over the parking lot--a rainbow. It spanned the church building, bright and unmistakable.

You are loved, that rainbow whispered. It was a reminder--a promise. Hope. hope. 

The answers were not all right there, but the girl took a deep breath, looking at that rainbow.

That wasn't a direct answer.

But it was a start.

And for the first time, the balloons of her questions were breaking past the net and soaring, free, into the great blue sky.