And the hardest part? They’re still here.

Still in the room. Still in the conversations. Still in the memories that used to feel safe.

Sometimes even still in your life in ways you didn’t fully choose - but also can’t fully let go of.

It’s confusing, the way your heart and your nervous system don’t speak the same language anymore. Your heart says, there was love here… there is love here. But your body? Your body flinches. Your body remembers things you try not to name out loud.

And people… people you trust, people you love- they don’t always ignore it on purpose. Sometimes it’s more subtle than that. It’s like they feel the weight of it but don’t know where to put it, so they settle into this middle ground - where it’s not denied, but never fully named either. Maybe it makes them uncomfortable. Maybe it doesn’t fit into the version of life that’s easier to carry. Maybe it’s …inconvenient.

So things stay light. Conversations stay safe. And without anyone saying it out loud, what happened gets softened around the edges.

And if I’m honest… I do it too sometimes.

Because there are days it feels easier to step outside of myself. To move through life like I’m slightly disconnected, like I can just keep going if I don’t press on it too hard. Like if I don’t fully feel it, it won’t fully define me.

But it’s still there - not invisible, just…unspoken.

Somehow, the weight shifted from me knowing it was wrong and knowing I had solid ground to hold me to stand up against it but the shift happened somewhere along the line and my solid ground felt less… solid. And the voice I had to speak became lost in the world’s perception, assumptions and judgements, actions or lack of.

A subtle, suffocating suggestion that it wasn’t really that bad or perhaps didn’t even happen. I guess perception is the key .When a line is crossed in a way that truly matters, in a way that changes someone, the response to it should reflect that. It should carry the same weight. The same seriousness.

Otherwise, it just leaves you feeling like the impact didn’t count, like something significant was reduced to something small just so it would be easier for everyone else to hold

And when it’s reduced by your surrounding world - you, you sit there holding something that will never belong or fit in your world but it’s there and you cat put it down. Now your world feels … well …. I don’t have a name for that feeling yet.

You can take ownership of your flaws. You can own the ways you reacted, the ways you coped, the ways you maybe stayed too long or spoke too late or loved too hard.

But there are lines.

And some things cross them so deeply, so quietly, that the damage doesn’t show up in obvious ways. It shows up in how you question your own memory. How you second-guess your own instincts. How you feel guilty for wounds you didn’t create.

Its the invisible aftermath. The way something immoral, something violating in a way that doesn’t always have a clean label, can distort your reality.

It makes YOU ask, Was it really that bad? While your body is screaming, YES - YES IT WAS.

And then you’re left carrying both truths at once: the version everyone else is comfortable with… and the one that lives in your bones.

The most exhausting part of all of it is this: You don’t fully hate them. You don’t fully want them gone. But you don’t feel safe in the same way anymore. You don’t trust anymore …anyone. Everyone is a suspect. Everyone is on parole for a crime they didn’t commit….your the judge from inside the prison and your angry and bitter so nobody stands a chance and then you drown in the guilt of knowing it’s not about them ….

So you exist in this in-between - loving and guarding, remembering and trying to forget, wanting closeness and bracing for impact.

And no one quite understands why you can’t just “move on. Or “let it go”. I mean it’s over ..right? That was then and this is now.

But how do you move on from something that didn’t just happen to you… it changed how you experience everything after?

Some things don’t just leave scars.

They become the lens. And That lens is wedged between you and everyone else.

If you know then you know - The Lens Between Us.

Maybe it’s not supposed to.

I don’t read it and feel comfort. I read it and feel the tension rising in my chest.

I see Peter the Apostle grab the sword, and I get it. I deeply get it. Something wrong is happening. Someone you love is about to be hurt. Everything in you screams, stop this. Fix it. Fight it. Don’t just stand there and let it unfold.

That feels right.

What doesn’t feel right is watching Jesus Christ let it happen.

Not just let it happen but He stops the only person trying to prevent it.

Put the sword down. That is what Jesus says to Peter ! That is Beyond my understanding!

I don’t know how to make that sit comfortably, because it immediately confronts something in me I’d rather avoid.

Why would God allow what He has the power to stop?

If He could intervene… why didn’t He?

If He knew the depth of the pain coming… why walk into it anyway?

If He’s good… why does this look like surrender to something so brutal?

And then that line -

Do you think I would avoid the suffering my Father assigned to me?

Assigned?

Assigned means this wasn’t random. This wasn’t out of control. This wasn’t God scrambling to recover a bad situation.

This was known. Chosen. Walked into.

I don’t know what to do with that, because if I follow that thread into my own life, it gets real, fast.

What about the things I didn’t choose? The losses, the disappointments, the seasons that feel unfair and unrelenting ; are those just allowed… or are they part of something I can’t see?

And if they are… why does it hurt this much?

Why does growth feel like breaking? Why does trust feel like losing control? Why does it seem like the deeper the calling, the heavier the weight attached to it?

I wish I had a clean answer.

But Jesus doesn’t give one in that moment.

He doesn’t explain suffering. He doesn’t justify it. He doesn’t soften it.

He just refuses to run from it.

That is the part that’s starting to shift something in me, not because it answers my questions, but because it refuses to let them be the only thing that defines the moment.

Because what I see isn’t a detached God watching pain happen from a distance.

I see a God who steps directly into it… and stays.

Not with clarity. Not with immediate relief. But with presence.

That is where this lands for me, not in understanding, not in resolution, but in a quieter, harder place.

If suffering was something even He didn’t avoid… then maybe my life isn’t off course just because it hurts.

Maybe the presence of pain doesn’t mean the absence of God. Perhaps it never did.

And I don’t know if that makes this easier.

But Maybe suffering isn’t punishment. Maybe it’s assignment.

Maybe the very place I’m begging to be delivered from is the place He’s asking me to trust Him the most.

Maybe I could just trust that if He didn’t waste His suffering… He’s not wasting mine either.

And I don’t say that lightly.

There’s nothing clean or polished about it. It’s messy faith. Tear-stained surrender. Choosing to believe He’s still good when everything in me is screaming that this hurts too much to be holy.

It feels like collapsing - like finally setting down the exhausting lie that I was supposed to be someone else.

I have spent years at war with myself. Policing my thoughts or not even the slightest and spiraling.

Editing my emotions or nothing of the sorts and drowning in them.

Swallowing the parts of me that were inconvenient, messy, too loud, too sensitive, too honest.

I have called it self-control or lack of.

I have called it maturity and at times I’ve even proudly called it growth.

But it was just fear wearing its own bejeweled mask.

Fear that if I stopped managing myself, I would be rejected. Fear that the real me was unlovable unless carefully curated.

Self-acceptance is not gentle.

It has ripped me open. It has forced me to sit with the ache I keep numbing - the grief I have minimized, the anger I have spiritualized away, the shame I have worn so long it has started to feel like skin.

It’s become looking at myself in the dark, without excuses or filters, and admitting: I am just really freakin tired of abandoning you.

In That moment  (which there are so many of them ) when I make that decision to stay - it feels like the most defiant thing I’ve ever done.

Because the world has taught me that my value is conditional. That love follows obedience. That worth is something you earn by being smaller, quieter, easier, or for me personally - stronger than you actually feel.

Empowerment, real empowerment, shatters that bargain.

Accepting myself doesn’t make the pain disappear. It does require me to stop turning it into proof that I was broken.

I demands I stop trying to outrun my flaws and instead let them sit beside me, trembling because they bare scared of me and my ridiculous need to cover and contain them.

It requires I Let myself be seen by me.

And somewhere in that unfiltered honesty, I feel it: not confidence, not pride, but some strange relief. The deep, sobbing relief of finally being on my own side.

It’s the realization that empowerment isn’t becoming invincible - it’s choosing not to leave yourself, even when everything in you says you should.

It’s breaking me open in ways that certainly doesn’t feel like a break-through but more like being broke down with no where to hide. It’s hitting a point in your life where you can no longer pretend you’re fine betraying yourself.

In fact anything less than true acceptance of yourself feels violent.

Strength just feels like a costume stitched from other people’s expectations.

I have been so practiced at surviving that I forgot what it felt like to be honest without immediately bracing for punishment, judgement or guilt.

I have learned  over time that love can be withdrawn, that approval is fragile, that safety was something you negotiated for by behaving correctly or ignoring your own needs.

So I learned to disappear in plain sight and abandon myself. To stay withdrawn, isolated and distant from even me.

Self acceptance has demanded I sit with the parts of me I’d labeled unholy - the rage that flares when boundaries are crossed, the desperation that wants reassurance, the grief that leaks out at the most inconvenient times.

I wanted to fix them. Silence them. Redeem them. Pretend they weren’t there.

Instead, I am having to listen. I am having to let myself feel without rushing to make the feeling respectable. And God, it hurts. It hurts to realize how often I have chosen self-erasure over truth because it felt safer to be empty than rejected.

There is nothing pretty about choosing yourself after years of self-abandonment.

It feels like grief.

It feels like withdrawal.

It feels like standing in the wreckage of who you thought you had to be and admitting she was never going to save you.

I am mourning the version of myself that tried so dang hard to earn love by being useful, sacrificial ,resilient.

I just want to thank her and then I let her go.

Empowerment is coming but slowly because it requires my permission for the most part: Permission to be inconsistent. Permission to be tender and furious in the same breath. Permission to take up space without explaining why I deserve it. To stop shrinking my needs into something palatable. To stop translating my pain into lessons before it has even healed.

O how deeply I have internalized the belief that love had to be earned through endurance.

That if I could just survive more, forgive faster, hurt quieter, I would be safe.

I have called that strength. The world calls that strength.

But it has just hollowed me out.

It’s called my numbness -  peace.

My compliance -  grace.

It’s made self-denial be mistaken by me for a virtue and not the sacred Godly self denial I’m not the self sacrificing for the world, the religion, the relationships, the title, the friends and I could go on and on and you can add your own here too.

And all the while, something is screaming to be acknowledged - not fixed, not corrected, just seen. Just accepted.

It’s self. It’s myself . Yourself.

Self-acceptance is allowing me to grieve the way I learned to swallow pain instead of name it.

The ways I learned to doubt my own instincts because trusting myself once came with consequences.

That grief has been heavy.

It had a pulse.

It has showed up in my body, in my breath, in the way I flinch when I want to rest.

There were moments I have hated myself for needing so much. For feeling so deeply. For not being “over it” yet.

I have desperately wanted a cleaner story.

A redemptive arc that wrapped everything up neatly. But healing has refused to perform.

It has demanded me stay messy.

To stay present.

To stop using shame as a motivator and start using compassion as a language - one in which I have had to learn from scratch.

And here is the most unfiltered truth I know: I am not learning to love myself by convincing myself I am lovable. I learning by refusing to punish myself for being human.

Learning to stop interrogating every emotion like it is a threat. To stop rushing to explain my pain so it doesn’t make others uncomfortable. To let myself be angry without turning it into guilt. To let myself be tired without calling it failure. To let myself want without immediately shrinking the want into something acceptable.

A quiet, stubborn decision to stop leaving myself behind. To stop outsourcing my worth to people who never had to live in my body. To stop demanding that my wounds prove something before they’re allowed to exist.

Self-acceptance is radical because it breaks the cycle. It ends the inheritance of silence. It says: I will not pass down the belief that love requires self-erasure.

It is choosing to become a safe place for yourself.

This is empowerment: not the absence of fear, but the presence of loyalty. Not the elimination of pain, but the refusal to turn it inward. Not becoming untouchable - but becoming unwilling to disappear.

I am learning how to stay.

Some days I want to run back - But I know too much now.

True Empowerment only comes with self acceptance. Nothing less.

“In The Fire, We Are All Peter”. - Near the Truth, far from courage - yet always met with grace. - RS

Picture Peter warming his hands at the fire - close enough to truth to feel its warmth, yet too far from courage to touch it. The flames licked his fingers, but his chest stayed cold.

Peter stood in the courtyard with the others, trying to look like he belonged, trying to quiet the pounding in his ears. The night had turned sharp - cold air, colder fear. Somewhere inside, Jesus was being questioned, accused, bruised by words before fists ever landed.

Peter knew that. He felt it. And still, he stayed where he was.

A voice cut through the dark. “You were with Him.”

It wasn’t a shout. It didn’t need to be. Truth rarely raises its voice.

Peter’s mouth moved before his soul caught up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The words tasted like ash. He had sworn he would die before denying Him. He had meant it - meant it the way men mean things when courage is still theoretical.

Another voice. Another accusation. “You’re one of them. I can tell by your accent.”

Fear wrapped tighter around his ribs. Survival screamed louder than loyalty. And again, he denied it. Not Him, he told himself , just the association. Just the danger. Just the moment.

The third time, he didn’t even hesitate. He cursed to make it believable. He burned the bridge himself.

And then the rooster crowed.

It wasn’t dramatic. It was ordinary. A sound that marked the passing of time, indifferent to Peter’s collapse. In that instant, memory flooded him - Jesus’ eyes, steady and knowing, earlier that night. Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.

Peter didn’t fall apart because Jesus had been wrong. He broke because Jesus had been right.

And if I am honest, I am not just seeing Peter. I am seeing every person who left me, every hand that slipped away when I needed it most, every voice that denied me - that chose to remain silent when I needed them to speak up or sharply when they spoke ill of me when I needed them to hold my truth close. I have felt their absence like fire on my skin. I have counted the ones who stayed, only to watch them falter when fear, comfort, or convenience won over loyalty.

And I have been that person too - silent when I should have spoken, absent when I should have been present, turning away when love demanded a risk I wasn’t ready to take.

I have trusted people, and I have been betrayed. Sometimes it is subtle - a forgotten promise, a sideways glance, a quiet refusal to show up or speak up even in smalls ways you need someone to stand with you.

Sometimes it is loud - a cutting word, a hand pulled back, a loyalty withdrawn. A gathering you no longer get invited to because your pain is too sobering for the fire you once sat around together.

And in those moments, my heart cracked in ways no one saw, no one acknowledged.

And yet… He still looks at me. He meets me in my shame, in my fear, in the wake of every denial. He does not flinch when humans flinch. He does not break when flesh fails. He does not abandon me when the world does.

So I have learned this truth, painfully and personally: you cannot build your hope on people. You cannot anchor your faith in their loyalty. Because people leave. People deny. People fail. That is the truth of human flesh.

But God… God remains. God waits. God calls. God meets you in the quiet aftermath, in the mornings after the fire dies down, when the rooster has long crowed.

I do not return because I can trust people.

I return because I can trust Him.

Even when the ones I loved the most deny me. Even when betrayal comes softly or sharply. Even when all the world turns its back.

He does not.

And that is the only faith that can hold.

Picture yourself at the fire now - hands warmed, chest still tender, faith rebuilt not on loyalty that faltered, but on the One who never will.

If this spoke to you, I encourage you to read the story in the Bible for yourself. It’s found in the Gospels, where Peter’s fear, denial, and eventual restoration are recorded.

Seeing Peter’s journey firsthand can be powerful, humbling, and full of hope.

I have given references below

Matthew 26:69–75 – Peter denies Jesus three times; the rooster crows; Peter weeps bitterly.

Mark 14:66–72 – Includes the detail of people recognizing Peter by his accent and the progressive denials

Luke 22:54–62 – Adds that Jesus looks at Peter after the third denial, prompting his repentance.

John 18:15–27 – Gives more context about the courtyard and Peter following at a distance, warming himself by the fire.

It is where He touches the places you swore were off-limits, the grief you’ve managed, the anger you justified, the coping mechanisms you baptized and renamed “wisdom.”

Salvation doesn’t interrogate those things. Discipleship does.

It puts a holy finger on the wound and refuses to look away.

And you discover something terrifying and beautiful: Jesus will not compete with the version of yourself you are determined to protect.

You can be saved and still cling to control. You can be saved and still curate your obedience. You can be saved and still insist on being understood.

But you cannot be a disciple and remain sovereign.

The disciple learns quickly that Jesus does not explain Himself to your comfort. He does not rush to resolve your confusion. He is not in a hurry to rescue you from the consequences of obedience. Sometimes He will let the cost linger, long enough for you to learn that following Him was never about outcomes, only about allegiance.

This is where faith stops being inspirational and becomes invasive.

Because discipleship dismantles your inner courtroom - the one where you rehearse arguments, justify your reactions, and keep score of who hurt whom first. Christ does not sit beside you there. He overturns the tables. He demands the gavel. He silences the defense.

“Take up your cross” is not a poetic suggestion. It is an execution order - for your right to yourself.

And the cross is never abstract. It looks like choosing obedience over vindication. Like relinquishing the last word. Like letting God be right when it costs you everything that made you feel safe.

This is the agony Chambers wrote about - not suffering for suffering’s sake, but the suffering of alignment. The pain of a will being bent into agreement with God’s will. The slow, grinding death of self-rule.

You will feel abandoned—not because God has left, but because your false supports are being removed. You will feel exposed - not because God is cruel, but because truth cannot heal what remains hidden. You will feel undone—not because discipleship failed, but because it is finally working.

And here is the part no one prepares you for: God will often wound you at the level of your strength.

The thing you relied on. The identity that worked. The version of faith that functioned without full surrender.

He will touch it, not to destroy you, but to free you from trusting it more than Him.

Discipleship is costly because it insists that Jesus be Lord everywhere, not just Savior somewhere. Not just in your prayers, but in your reactions. Not just in your worship, but in your wounds. Not just in your theology, but in your reflexes.

And still, still…the disciple stays.

Because somewhere along the road of surrender, you realize the truth: You are not losing your life. You are being given back to yourself - purified, stripped, awake.

The hard life Christ calls you to is not punishment. It is preparation.

It prepares you to love without leverage. To suffer without bitterness. To obey without guarantees.

It prepares you to belong wholly to God.

Being saved rescues you from hell. Being a disciple rescues you from you.

And once you’ve tasted that kind of freedom, no matter how much it costs - you cannot go back.

I imagine peace. Order. Laundry folded. A mug that says Blessed that I’m not even mad about.

And then the morning actually starts.

Within minutes I realize I’m not Proverbs 31—I’m Jael. Full Jael. Judges 4 Jael. The woman who said, “Come in, rest, I got you,” and then absolutely ended a man with a tent stake because he crossed the wrong line. Which is biblical code for I have been pushed too far and now I’m choosing violence - respectfully.

Some days I’m the gentle, wise, measured woman who speaks with grace. Other days I’m standing in my kitchen whisper-shouting, I swear to God if one more person needs me for one more thing— And here’s the thing that should honestly comfort us all: God honored both women.

Somewhere along the way, we decided the Proverbs 31 woman is this soft-spoken, emotionally regulated, linen-wearing saint who never loses her cool and always has sourdough starter thriving on the counter. But that is not what Scripture says. It calls her a woman of valor—which does not mean “chill.” It means strong, relentless, capable, and not to be messed with.

She worked. She provided. She handled business. She protected her people. She did not crumble because the day went sideways. She adapted.

So maybe the Proverbs 31 woman isn’t the one who floats through life unbothered. Maybe she’s the one who shows up tired. Maybe she’s the one who prays honest prayers like, Lord, I love you, but I am at capacity. Maybe she’s the one who keeps moving even when the laundry is multiplying and the house looks like a zoo run by feral raccoons.

Maybe the Proverbs 31 woman has Jael days. Maybe she has Jael hours. Maybe holiness includes knowing when to be gentle and knowing when to say, Absolutely not. Not today. Not this woman. Conversation over.

Maybe valor looks like self-control some days. And other days it looks like not snapping when every nerve in your body is screaming.

So if you’ve been judging yourself because you’re not calm enough, soft enough, or “put together” enough to be a godly woman, let me free you real quick: you’re not failing—you’re human.

The Proverbs 31 woman isn’t an aesthetic. She’s endurance. She’s grit. She’s faith under pressure. She’s loving fiercely and holding the line when necessary.

She’s not imaginary. She’s not perfect. She’s probably tired.

And honestly? She looks an awful lot like you and whole lot like me - just trying to survive a regular Tuesday without committing a felony.

Which feels…biblically accurate.

There was a time when every feeling dragged a whole story behind it. Not just an emotion - a narrative, a memory, a wound wearing a disguise.

Someone’s tone wasn’t just a tone; it became “I’m not valued.” A delayed text wasn’t a delay; it became “I’m being abandoned again.” A disagreement wasn’t two humans trying - it became “I’m the problem.”

I didn’t know then that my reactions were never about the moment.

They were about the story I had attached to the moment.

Reacting was my body remembering pain even when no one was trying to inflict it. It was my past hijacking my present, dragging me into battles that didn’t exist anymore.

Healing - real, brutal, honest healing has forced me to sit in the space between the feeling and the story I’ve built around it.

To ask myself, “Is this happening… or is this what I’m afraid is happening?”

That’s where the shift begins.

Responding becomes possible only when I separate the two - the emotion from the old narrative that used to define it.

Reacting is instant because it’s survival. Responding is slow because it’s conscious.

Responding is the moment you breathe long enough to question the script you’ve been reciting your entire life.

Responding is the beginning of rewriting it.

But deeper into the healing, past the unlearning and the unraveling, I am discovering something even rarer:

Not responding.

Not the silent treatment.

Not the shutdown.

Not the bury-it-deep kind of quiet.

But

A holy quiet.

A clarified quiet. A quiet that comes when the story finally loses its power.

Because when the story quiets - the old “I’m unworthy,” the old “people leave me,” the old “I have to defend myself,” the old “I’m hard to love” - so does the urge to react.

And that kind of silence?

That kind of detachment?

That kind of knowing your worth without a single sound?

That kind of not responding… now that’s something Unscripted …

It’s the moment the feeling shows up but the story doesn’t follow.

It’s when the trigger hits and you meet it with truth instead of fear.

It’s saying, “I can feel this without falling into the narrative of it.”

Healing didn’t erase my emotions.

It rewired the meaning I gave them.

It taught me to listen without surrendering, to feel without collapsing, to recognize the difference between what is and what my past is trying to convince me it is.

I’m still becoming.

Still rewriting.

Still learning to trust the spaces inside myself that used to terrify me.

But I know this now:

Reacting is the story.

Responding is the truth.

And not responding - that’s freedom from the story altogether.

That’s the moment life becomes beautifully, powerfully, Unscripted.

Because deception today doesn’t feel like deception— it feels like empowerment. It feels like “my truth.” It feels like “this is who I am, don’t judge me.” It feels like self-love while the soul is starving.

And accuracy? Accuracy is not intimacy. We are biblically literate and spiritually illiterate. We know verses but not His voice. We know doctrine but not His presence.

We know church culture but not the God it’s supposed to reveal.

Spiritual pride has gone viral— you can buy it in merch form, podcast form, self-proclaimed prophet form, celebrity pastor form, Christian influencer form. And the enemy loves it.

Satan isn’t showing up in horror movies anymore— he doesn’t need to. He’s on your feed, your For You Page, your recommended videos. He’s in sermons that sound good but produce no repentance. He’s in worship that makes you cry but doesn’t make you change. He’s in conferences that hype you up but leave you hollow by Monday.

He binds this generation through distortion; half-truths dipped in Scripture, sprinkled with emotion, seasoned with “God told me,” served with a side of self-importance.

From one level of deception to a deeper level that feels like “growth.” But it’s not growth - it’s spiritual decay dressed as destiny.

And if you think you’re well, you won’t ask for deliverance. If you think your numbness is peace, you won’t cry out for healing. If you think your trauma is normal, you won’t even realize you’re spiritually bleeding out.

Some of y’all don’t see you’re dying because the world told you, “This is just anxiety.” “This is just hormones.” “This is just your personality type.” No - some of what we’re calling “mental health” is actually spiritual warfare with better branding.

But hear me - your destruction is actually your transformation. And freedom today must match the depth of today’s darkness.

Because we’re not wrestling with the same demons our parents faced. We’re wrestling with generational curses with Wi-Fi. We’re fighting spirits of confusion that can trend worldwide in five minutes. We’re battling childhood trauma wrapped in adult coping. We’re surviving nightmares so real you wake up sweating with a feeling you carried hell in your chest.

The deeper the darkness, the louder the deliverance.

Remember the five loaves? Jesus didn’t keep them whole. He broke them into so many pieces the fragments could have filled baskets. And those pieces fed thousands.

Your brokenness works the same way - the parts of you shattered by betrayal, by abuse, by spiritual neglect, by addiction, by generational dysfunction - God is multiplying every fracture, every wound, every trauma into someone else’s bread.

And some of us are so broken we can’t sleep unless we sit with God.

When You lie awake at 2 a.m. with a heaviness you cannot name - that’s because your spirit knows the encounter you need is not entertainment - it’s deliverance.

Everything outside of Christ today is counterfeit - the hookup culture, the manifestation movement, the crystals, the sage, the astrology, the “good vibes only” spirituality (which I love and appreciate strongly) BUT it all collapses when tested by fire.

You can be passionate and pure-hearted and still be deceived because sincerity alone is not discernment. You can be gifted and anointed and still fall because talent is not freedom.

That’s why this generation has so many believers drowning in shame, dying with secrets, breaking silently. Church kids who know every worship song but panic at night. Adults who quote Scripture but battle suicidal thoughts. People who tithe faithfully yet sleep tormented.

We are living out trauma wrapped in tradition. Ritual without revelation.

Doctrine without deliverance.

We freeze in place while going through hell behind our everyday roles - parents, leaders, spouses - all while our spirits bleed unseen.

A demonic blessing on spiritual eyes is seeing every lie and none of the truth. Feeling worthless, purpose-less, empty, anxious, afraid.

And the whisper comes like poison: “God left you. God doesn’t care. God is disappointed in you.”

This attack is not random.

It is engineered to make you resent God - to turn your faith into fatigue, your worship into warfare, your calling into confusion.

But listen - your breaking is NOT your burial.

It is your birth.

It is your unveiling.

It is your assignment.

You are being forged in the fire of this generation to be an ambassador of freedom for a world starving on deception.

Not because you were whole - but because you were broken into enough pieces to feed the multitudes who are dying for the Bread of Life and don’t even know they’re hungry.

Your brokenness is the fragments that will feed thousands.

In Hosea, God rips open the veil and shows the world what divine heartbreak looks like , not thunder and lightning, not judgment from afar, but a man loving a woman who keeps running back to her chains.

Hosea’s story isn’t about romance.

It’s about God standing knee-deep in the mess of human infidelity - our idols, our addictions, our pride - and saying, I still want you.

It’s not soft.

It’s not pretty.

It’s love that drags itself through humiliation and still whispers, You are mine.

Gomer leaves, sells herself cheap, and God says, Go buy her back. Buy her back, even though she doesn’t want you. Buy her back, even though she gave what was yours to everyone else. Buy her back, because that’s what I do for you.

And there — in that brutal, tender moment — we see God’s heart on full display: a lover who refuses to stop loving, a Father who refuses to stop calling, a Redeemer who pays the price twice — once for the world, and again for the one who won’t come home.

Hosea is not a love story for the faint of heart.

It’s God saying, You break me, but I will still make you whole. It’s love with dirt under its nails and tears on its face.

It’s the gospel before the cross — mercy before we deserved it. It’s grace so fierce, it looks like madness.

And maybe it is.

But it’s the kind of madness that saves us all.

Age 38. Forgiveness became my language. For me, for him, for them. I learned that release isn’t forgetting — it’s unclenching your soul so it can hold light again.

Age 37. I stopped running. The chains of generations clattered to the ground. I chose healing over habit, truth over tradition. And somewhere between prayer and poetry, I met him - the one my soul loves - the echo my spirit had been calling since before time kept my name.

Age 36. I stood in the ruins and realized they were my foundation. Guilt melted into grace. I learned to speak gently to the mirror. To see my parents as people, not villains nor heroes — just human.

Age 35. I found a voice shaking but steady. I used it even when it cracked. The silence that once buried me became a garden. Each word, a seed.

Age 30. Three children - scratch that Four. Another baby girl in my arms now - the softest reminder that love still grows in broken places. A woman unraveling. Smiling in public, crying in laundry rooms. Depression whispered lies; faith answered softly, “I’m still here.” I began to see that my mother’s eyes once held this same storm.

Age Age 25. The world steadied. Marriage, motherhood, a small empire of love and chaos. We danced at the edge of joy, pretending it was solid ground. I called it survival. But even then, something divine was carving me open.

Age 20. He arrived. My son — born on my birthday. Two souls, one breath apart. I learned what real life means: the kind that doesn’t care if you’re ready or not. We grew up together, feeding each other courage.

Age 18–19. Love and betrayal came arm in arm. I stood for life when the world told me to sit down. I learned the taste of crystal meth on someone else’s lips, the sting of being lied to, and the miracle of being chosen by a child I hadn’t planned.

Age 16–17. I searched for God in red dirt and foreign tongues — Nigeria, Jamaica, the corners of my own aching heart. I wanted to understand why the world hurts, and why I couldn’t stop caring that it does.

Age 12–15. Everything shifted. My mother faded in and out of sickness, and childhood folded into grief. I learned sadness without words. Only now, at nearly forty, can I name what lived inside me then.

Age 9. Hair to my waist, eyes that glowed like stormlight. The moon called me by name. I wrote secret poems to the beyond and felt old souls whispering in my dreams.

Age 6. Why? Why the sky? Why the pain? Why the rules? The world was one big riddle, and I was the girl who refused to stop asking “Why?”.

Age 3. Still bald, yet somehow crowned. Won “Best Hair” at my sister’s pageant. The irony suited me even then.

Age 0–1. They say I cried without ceasing. Inconsolable, hungry for something no bottle could fill. Maybe I already knew this world would never be enough to quiet me.

And now knocking on Age 40

39 years in reverse, I see her - the baby, the seeker, the mother, the lover, the warrior, the poet.

She was never becoming.

She was always me.

Only now, I finally understand her.

I just stand there, watching the small ways you keep life running.

The ways you rush to get things done to make sure you are where I am and being what I need.

You take what’s small and flawed and always call it enough.

The way you are so patient with my scattered mind and reckless ways.

I see you better than you think I do.

You and your tired hands, your quiet strength.

You love like you’re apologizing for something you never did wrong.

I keep thinking how I somehow ended up here — with you — when I’d never even seen this in a dream before.

I’ve been in love before. I’ve said I love you to others before,and meant it too.

But this, it’s more.

More in the way that makes me fear time itself.

It’s not butterflies or a rush.

It’s an ache.

The kind that whispers, God, please let me go first.

You call to say you miss me before you make it out the driveway.

You rush home like the highway is stealing minutes from you being by me.

I couldn’t paint you right if I tried.

No artist could.

There’s no color for the way you make the world feel lighter.

No brush strong enough for the weight of your grace

Loving you isn’t fire, it’s roots.

The way my chest tightens knowing there could never be another you. The thought of living in a world with only the memory of your laugh is unbearable.

I’m painfully aware of how rare you are.

You make a wreck of the kitchen , the shed and any other place you are creating a masterpiece with your ideas or over thought out plans.

I don’t mind .

It’s proof you are here.

It’s the little things

Like making coffee hours before I’ll be awake and heating it up again before you leave knowing it’ll be cold before I get to it but you do it ….just in case.

The way you make my cup with ice but don’t pour my coke because I have a certain way I want to pour it myself and you get that. You get the way my mind works in ways others don’t.

You make ordinary things look holy.

There you are standing in the kitchen again, singing something out of tune, you can feel my eyes on You.

You always smile and say “Hi Baby, you ok?”

In that moment I don’t know.

My stare is memorizing something I’m afraid to lose .

You are mercy that I didn’t earn.

A light I don’t always know how to hold, I whisper to God “please let me keep this one …this time “

And the truth is… I’m scared.

Not of the years passing , but of them ending.

I think about us at eighty, your hands still shaking cream into our coffee, and I pray to God He takes me first.

Because I don’t want to know what it feels like to walk into this kitchen without you in it.

Morning - sunlight spilling through wide windows.

Evening - thunder rattling the frame.

People step inside and I can’t decide whether to pull them close or deadbolt the door.

Love feels like a siren. I run toward it, arms out , then flinch when it’s near.

One heartbeat I’m weightless, next heartbeat I’m drowning, But both in the same breath.

My thoughts?

Wildfires.

Spark.

Blaze.

Ash.

Before I can even name the smoke.

I don’t mean to burn the ones who stay, but the storm in me doesn’t ask for permission.

Some nights I want to disappear into the quiet so deep it swallows every echo.

But quiet…quiet is never still.

It’s every goodbye I swore I’d survive coming back for one more round.

It’s the shadow of every hand I’ve held turning to smoke between my fingers.

It’s the echo of promises spoken softly, then shattered loudly.

I build walls, then I break them down with my own trembling rigid hands. I reach for love, then recoil from its heat like a child that just got burned from the touch of a stove.

I don’t want to be a storm.

I don’t want to be a warning sign.

I want to be a harbor.

I want to be a steady shore.

But some nights the waves inside me rise higher than my own will to hold them back. Some nights, I drown in my own tides.

And still… some small part of me keeps clawing toward the surface, keeps reaching for air, keeps whispering:

not yet.

not like this.

not done.

Because even storms forget their rage.

Even the heaviest clouds must let the sky breathe again.

Even the night must release the day.

And somewhere, soft but certain, light always slips back in.

I know the morning is coming.

I know the sun will rise.

I know the light will find me again.

I’m sorry.

for the ones it hurts along the way for the hands I’ve burned, for the hearts I’ve shaken, for the love I sometimes push away.

I’m grateful.

For the ones that know me and see me through the stormy weather.

For those are the ones lucky enough to know they’ve stumbled upon a rare treasure, an unforgettable spark.

The ones that understand that joy is felt more deeply because we’ve known sorrow. And Peace is appreciated because we’ve known chaos.

They are the ones that know That struggles and shadows are what allows the light to truly shine.

For without the dark, we would not know the light.

No one explains the quiet humiliations: how a friendship can vanish without even a fight. how a relationship can die in slow motion while you keep setting the table, how a child’s eyes can mirror every fear you try to hide.

There’s no class for sitting on the edge of your bed at 2 a.m., holding a truth that makes your chest ache so hard you forget how to breathe.

No one tells you how life can keep stealing the ground from under your feet over and over again.

How the people you love can become strangers while you’re still holding their hands.

How someone’s voice can fade until it’s not even a memory anymore.

How one morning you wake up and realize the person you were is now gone, and there’s no getting her back because …

Life has touched you, changed you, forever.

At first it feels like betrayal.

Like, Weren’t we supposed to be warned?

I used to think faith meant certainty, a bright flame you carried like a torch or just where you never spoke your disgust, disbelief and disappointments aloud without hearing the cliche truths you know but don’t feel…not in the moment anyway.

When everything I built started cracking, my marriage, my plans, my dreams of what was to come, you know the ones I poured my whole heart into building, the entire picture of who I thought I was…..when it came crumbling down in what seemed to be minutes…..what came next I was not prepared for.

What came was silence.

Loud Silence. It felt like was never ending. It felt like being abandoned.

Like the rapture had taken place and I was left behind.

Dazed. Confused. Sad. In a survival …coma.

Heavy hearted mornings and loud restless nights …. when the weight of just the air in the room felt like it was going to finally going to give and kill me underneath it and many times I wished it would’ve.

But underneath the collapse there was this almost, imperceptible presence.

Not a voice. Not even comfort.

Just a stillness that refused to leave.

The Ancients call it Hod, splendor, but it certainly doesn’t feel like splendor.

It feels like the softest breath inside broken ribs, a small heartbeat under a bruise, like a truth that waits without demanding to be named.

You begin to recognize it not in sermons or words of encouragement , but in the way you keep standing. The way you keep starting over and over and over.

In the small mercies: a stranger’s kindness, a sunrise you didn’t ask for, the stubborn warmth that survives after the fire goes out.

It didn’t rescue me.

It just stayed.

And in staying, it taught me to stay too.

I can’t explain it.

I only know that when I finally stopped clawing for answers. When I finally stopped looking at the world with my “WTF? Scrunched eyebrows” stare of disheartenment. When I finally stopped wandering what the purpose of all this is for…. something in me kept breathing, something in me kept being.

And maybe that’s the part nobody prepares you for, the acceptance of it all.

Not acceptance with bitterness.

Not Acceptance but mentally bound and blaming.

Not acceptance but isolated and emancipated from reality.

But true Acceptance, the quiet miracle that lives in the wreckage.

The strength you discover only after everything else is gone.

The kind of acceptance that says everything that happened, that’s happening or will happen, is an opportunity.

An opportunity for so many miraculous, magnificent and magical things.

Acceptance that gives a gift of knowing.

A knowing that every circumstance in life, no matter how brutal, unfair, painful it appears to be - is an opportunity to transform.

To transform yourself, your children, your entire family, and generations to come.

Acceptance that gives the gift of knowing you are who you are because you used every dang opportunity to become it.

It’s this hidden architecture of God within you.

A quiet presence that waits while you rage, the whisper that keeps saying stay when everything else says break.

It’s the quiet agreement to LIVE inside what is

to BREATHE even when the air tastes like loss,

to let the truth STAND without needing to fix it.

Acceptance doesn’t erase the pain.

It gives it a place to rest, and gives you the freedom to move again not as the person you were,but as the person who has learned that surviving is its own kind of grace. A grace that gives you a unique perspective, a gift of being here enjoying the present moment as it is and as it will never be again.

Then you begin to see something else: every wound, every failure, every impossible stretch of grief becomes raw material for change. Your own hurt teaches you how to listen, how to reach for someone else who thinks they’re alone. Pain stops being only a weight and starts becoming a doorway. An invitation to transform not just your own life, but the lives brushing against yours.

And almost when you’re not looking, that grace gathers itself like a rising tide— a strength that returns to you, uncoiling through the cracks, breaking chains you once thought unbreakable, reminding you that what was shattered was only ever the beginning. That purpose was there all along.

Maybe that’s why nobody tells you, it’s something you have to experience

They don’t tell you strength will arrive like a rescue, Because it doesn’t. It grows.

It grows in dark, In the quiet and unasked for trials and tribulations of life … until one day you realize the heartbeat you hear, the pulse you still feel…. is your own… it’s you. The you that you are is all the you needed for each opportunity. That kind of Acceptance - that is the hod , the splendor - Gods hidden architecture within you.

It’s divine truth , ultimate surrender, inner clarity, humility, sincerity and it indeed feels like splendor.

The closer we got, the harder it was to swallow. I kept reaching for moments, like I could bottle them up.

It was all so achingly ordinary, but my heart knew it wasn’t ordinary at all. My heart knew that after today things will forever be different. It was the last stretch of him being mine in the same way.

The steering wheel was steady in my hands, but my heart was anything but.

Ten hours on the road with my son, my firstborn, my mirror, my little best friend….knowing every mile was carrying us closer to the moment I’d have to let him go.

The highway stretched out in front of us, mile after mile, but I couldn’t stop staring sideways at him.

Twenty years gone in the blink of an eye, and here we are, ten hours on the road to his new home, to the place where I leave him for the first time so far from me.

My little ride or die. The one who has witnessed my whole world fall apart and helped pick up the pieces and put it back together without even knowing it.

How do you drive ten hours to let go of someone who has been part of every breath, every day, every heartbeat of your life?

There’s a kind of ache only a mother knows, the one where pride and heartbreak crash together in the same breath.

I kept glancing at him, trying to memorize the way he looked in every moment, trying to hold on to the boy I raised even as I was delivering him to the man he is becoming.

But I also wanted to pull over, lock the doors, and keep him mine just a little longer.. Every laugh, every conversation, every car ride over the years lives inside me, stitched into my bones.

And now I was driving him toward a place where I would no longer be part of his every day.

I helped him carry his clothes in and unpack them…putting them away, I smiled, I fussed, I tucked away the tears until they burned so hot they spilled without my permission.

Today I left a piece of myself in Midland, Texas.

Driving away, the silence in the car is deafening. My hands grip the wheel, but it feels like my heart has been left behind.

My heart hurts with the knowing that he won’t be in my kitchen tomorrow morning, won’t be stretching out on the couch, wont be just a call from down the road at lunch time for a quick bite to eat.

But I drove on, tears spilling, heart breaking and expanding all at once.

Because love doesn’t hold on with chains, it holds on with roots.

And I have given him roots, deep and strong.

So yea son…They do in fact do say that everything is bigger in Texas.

You are in Texas, but my heart is split wide open, stretched between states, trying to learn how to let go and hold on at the same time.

So No, not everything is bigger in Texas.

Fire is the untamed blaze roaring in your chest, the hunger for meaning, the reckless craving for passion and life. But sometimes it’s a destructive wildfire that rips through you, leaving you burned, raw, and ragged on the edges. Healing Fire means wrestling with that inferno, learning how to feed it without letting it consume you. It’s screaming your truth into the void, dancing like nobody’s watching even if the floor shakes beneath you, daring to dream with your heart cracked wide open, even when it terrifies you.

Earth is the heavy weight that grounds you when your world spins out of control. It’s the stubborn, solid part of you that just wants to exist without shame, without feeling crushed by doubt or fear. But Earth can get buried under layers of neglect and silence. Healing Earth means slowing down enough to feel the grit under your nails, the pulse in your veins, the way your body demands care, real, fierce care. It’s claiming space, saying, “I am here,” even when the world tries to shove you aside.

Air is the relentless noise in your head—the ceaseless chatter, the spiraling thoughts, the doubts gnawing at your sanity. It’s the voice that can either be your fiercest warrior or your cruelest jailer. Healing Air means shoving silence in its mouth, finding the words that crack open your chest, and risking real connection, raw, messy, vulnerable. Sometimes it’s a single breath; sometimes it’s tearing down the walls you built just to survive.

Water is the dark ocean swelling inside, deep, wild, and terrifying. It’s your pain, your gut-wrenching empathy, your secrets drowned beneath the surface. Healing Water means surrendering to the storm, letting yourself drown in your grief, your rage, your heartbreak because only in the flood can you wash clean. Cry until your body shakes. Sink into your own brokenness and know this: it’s not weakness. It’s the fiercest kind of strength.

When you sit with these elements—the fire that scars, the earth that anchors, the air that suffocates, the water that drowns, you start to unravel the mess of who you’ve been told to be. Healing isn’t clean, pretty, or polite. It’s savage, chaotic, and brutally honest. But it’s the only path that leads you back through the noise, the wounds, and the lies, to the raw, bleeding heart of you.

Fire — Passion, energy, action, and courage. Fire signs are bold, spontaneous, and driven by their desires. They’re the spark and the flame, often inspiring and leading with enthusiasm.

• Aries

• Leo

• Sagittarius

Personality: You’re raw energy and boldness wrapped in a human form. You lead with passion, act on impulse, and crave freedom. You want to feel alive every second, and you’re often the first to jump into something new or take risks. But that fire can burn you out fast if you don’t learn to slow down and care for yourself.

How to work with your Fire:

• Channel your energy through physical movement, dance, run, create.

• Learn to recognize when your passion is burning too hot and practice patience.

• Use your courage to face your fears, but remember rest isn’t weakness.

• Express your truth authentically; your fire lights the way for others.

Earth — Stability, practicality, grounding, and reliability. Earth signs are rooted, steady, and focused on the tangible world. They’re the builders and nurturers who create security and structure.

• Taurus

• Virgo

• Capricorn

Personality: You’re grounded, practical, and deeply connected to the physical world. You value security, consistency, and hard work. You can be patient and reliable but may struggle with stubbornness or fear of change. You often carry a quiet strength that others lean on.

How to work with your Earth:

• Prioritize self-care rituals that honor your body—good food, rest, nature.

• Practice mindfulness to slow the mind and ease perfectionism.

• Embrace flexibility; growth often requires breaking old patterns.

• Build safe spaces where you feel supported and can recharge.

Air - Intellect, communication, curiosity, and social connection. Air signs are thinkers, talkers, and idea-makers. They thrive on mental stimulation and connecting with others through communication.

• Gemini

• Libra

• Aquarius

Personality: You’re curious, social, and mentally agile. Ideas and communication flow through you like electricity. You love learning and sharing, but your mind can become restless or scattered. You thrive on connection and need intellectual stimulation to feel alive.

How to work with your Air:

• Engage in journaling, deep conversations, or creative writing to process your thoughts.

• Practice grounding techniques to calm mental overwhelm.

• Set boundaries around socializing to protect your energy.

• Use your gift of communication to advocate for yourself and others.

Water — Emotion, intuition, sensitivity, and depth. Water signs are deeply emotional, empathetic, and often mysterious. They feel intensely and are attuned to the unseen currents beneath the surface.

• Cancer

• Scorpio

• Pisces

Personality: You’re deeply emotional, intuitive, and sensitive. You feel everything beneath the surface, often more than you want to admit. Your empathy connects you to others’ pain and joy, but you may struggle with boundaries or emotional overwhelm.

How to work with your Water:

• Allow yourself to feel your emotions fully without judgment, cry, create, meditate.

• Develop healthy boundaries to protect your energy.

• Practice self-compassion; your sensitivity is a gift, not a burden.

• Use creative outlets, music, art, movement, to express what words can’t capture.

Most people have a mix of these elements in their natal chart. For example, you might have a fiery Sun sign, an earthy Moon, and an airy Rising sign. Each element brings a different part of your personality to life:

• Balance your dominant element: If you’re mostly Fire, you might need more Earth grounding. If you’re heavy in Air, you might need more Water to connect emotionally.

• Honor your moon and rising signs: These often reveal your emotional needs and how you approach the world daily. They can tell you where your healing focus should be.

• Use your elements to understand your triggers: If your Earth feels shaky, your Fire might flare up defensively. Knowing this lets you catch yourself before things spiral.

• Integrate your elements through rituals: For example, a Water-heavy person might benefit from journaling (Air) or yoga (Earth) to find balance.

Your astrological elements are not just parts of a chart, they are the primal forces that shape your soul’s story. They carry your wounds, your power, your fire, and your tears. To heal with them is to face your deepest truths without flinching, to hold the wild parts of yourself with fierce compassion, and to reclaim your power one raw, honest breath at a time.

This isn’t a gentle journey, it’s a reckoning. But on the other side of that reckoning is freedom-freedom to be unapologetically you, in all your elemental chaos and beauty. So lean into your fire, ground yourself in your earth, open your mind with air, and surrender to your water. Heal boldly. Live fiercely. Become unstoppable.

If were being honest, we are at our darkest… not the kind of dark that swallows you whole, but the kind that sits with you in an empty room and whispers that light was only ever a dream.

We sit here, still, as if the stillness might keep us safe, as if the world might forget to ask us for more than we can give.

We wait for love to take us by the hand, to trace the map of our scars like they are constellations worth naming. To tell us love is not earned by bleeding quietly, but given freely, even to those of us still learning how to receive it.

If we’re  being honest, there are days we forget the sound of my own laughter. it sits somewhere behind us, dust settling on its shoulders, waiting for us to turn around.

We still fight, though the fire is not yet out. Some days it burns through our resolve, other days it forges us into something We didn’t know we could be.

Both are true.

We have learned that being whole does not mean being untouched. It means knowing our scars well enough to call them by name, and still stepping forward when our knees shake.

The weeds in our garden?

They’re honest about where they came from. Some are the wild offspring of storms, others the stubborn reminders of neglect. We pull what we can, and what we can’t…We weave into a crown, because beauty is not always born from clean soil.

And when love comes whether it walks or crawls, whether it arrives like rain or like the first warm breath after winter or like a tornado ripping through the quiet, upending the rooms we thought we had tamed,

We do not turn away. We stay right here, roots in the earth, fire in our chest, and with hearts still learning how to stay open.

We remind love that we are here to stay, That we are whole but still mending, hands dirt-stained from tending what we can. The fire may still flicker around us, but we know now…..it is shaping us, not destroying us.

It clings, softly at first, then fiercely.

To people we once needed.

To roles that once made sense.

To cycles that feel familiar, even when they hurt.

To expectations we never agreed to.

To the version of ourselves we imagined we'd be by now.

We reach back because the present feels unsteady.

We tighten our grip because the unknown feels endless.

We hold fast to shoulds and musts, How others should treat us, How life should unfold, How we should feel.

Because letting go feels too much like surrender.

But clinging is a quiet kind of weight.

Have you noticed?

How the jaw tightens?

The shoulders rise?

The breath catches?

We say we’re tired because life is hard the But maybe, We’re tired because we’re holding on too tightly To what no longer fits, To what was never ours to carry, To what we’re afraid to release.

And maybe, Freedom begins where we loosen our grip

I notice everything and then nothing at once a strange kind of seeing, like looking through water and catching fire.

In this airport of passing lives, I sit still, while the world rushes, roams, rests. Airports are strange mirrors - everyone going, never quite gone.

Some rush like they’re late to their lives.

Some drift like ghosts in terminal glow.

Some sit, like me - still, but not steady.

The woman on the plane wrote in silence, her journal reading, "And she took one day at a time."

No words between us, but a thousand imagined. I sipped tequila; she held sparkling water like it was a lifeline.

Was I interrupting her healing with my indulgence? She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t look tired- just far.

She orders another sparkling water. I order another tequila.

I wonder if I’ve placed my wanting too close to her recovery. I wonder if I’m recovering from something too.

But I don’t have the words.

Just the drink.

Maybe I didn’t need a drink. Maybe I needed what she held in her hands. Or maybe we both just needed room to breathe in a sky that felt too close.

The flight attendants look too young to carry this much sky. I remember when they looked older, or maybe I was just younger, and now, I feel it.

The air was thin, the cabin door opened like an omen. I watched a movie Two days ago: Final Destination. Why do I do this to myself?

I catch the way a coworker leans too close to another. It’s not business, not just. There’s a softness there the kind you don’t wear in office chairs.

His shoes are untied.

Her lipstick bleeds down her coffee cup.

Those kids …sleepy angels in mismatched socks, don’t know what a gift they are.

And I?

I am here. Noticing everything. And then nothing again.

I’ll take one day at a time … O! And a tequila please.

Let the mud hold your knees, let the night split your cries, let the fire eat the lies, you once called “me.”

Because healing isn’t clean, it’s holy, it’s haunted, it’s hard. It clears the land for your family to not live scarred.

You bleed now, so they don’t have to wonder: why love feels like danger, why silence sounds like thunder.

You wade through the waters, heavy with ghosts, with prayers that never had words,so your babies can float.

And when they stand on the banks of their own aching days, they’ll see your footprints and know it’s okay.

There will come a day, they’ll ask how the garden grew, and you’ll smile, dirt still under your nails, and say:

"I burned what needed burning. I wept through the flood. I became the root, so you could rise like the sun."

You’ll tell them: That they were born from a line of storm-walkers, flame-bringers, truth-tellers, soul-rebuilders.

That You carved a path in the fire, a trail through the flood, so they would know that healing runs deep in their blood.

And when they laugh

oh, when they laugh,

it sounds like freedom echoing through the branches you cleared with your bare, blistered hands.

You gave them a forest where they can run wild, roots deep, hearts light. You hold their hands with calloused fingers. You let them cry without shame. You let them ask without fear. You let them grow without earning their worth.

And when they step into the world, brave and free. They will be walking on the ashes of what you burned for them to see.

Your children will run where you once crawled, laugh where you once wept, love without fear in a world you made safer by refusing to keep them on pavers.

They may never know all the battles you face but they will live in the space you made for them, they will know it as peace. They will carry it around like a birthright instead of a banner.

You see, your children don’t need a martyr or mask. They need you healing out loud, imperfect and whole.

Being whole is Holding both the wound and the wonder.

They need to understand that survival is not the end but a new beginning unfolding.

They need to be able to come to you - not out of fear but because they trust, that you are a refuge of reassurance and restoration.

You are a promise that holds their courage to speak the truth, to stand on shaking ground. One that holds their flame and does not smother but keeps it alive for their darkest hour.

You are what makes their path sacred grounds. Leaving their path wild but carved  with hands that has known both fire and frost, giving them fertile grounds where anything can grow.

Their path is wild because it’s now free. Free from all the tangled up weeds. They can run and feel the pulse of the ground beneath their bare feet.

The path is a promise

A promise that the journey will be their own. It’s not a path laid out in neat lines, but a wilderness inviting their footsteps, their stumbles, their wildest leaps.

The beauty of the path is they can forge it with hands unbound, hearts unshackled and a spirit that embraces untouched territory.

And You …

You made it sacred by embracing the wildness, the chaos, the beauty, the unknown.  By knowing that true growth thrives in freedom, not confinement.

You are the keeper of the flame that lights their way, not by dictating the direction, but by burning away the shadows that would keep them small.

Now because of you …

they will find space to invent themselves, to paint their stories across open skies, to make their mistakes without shame, to rise like fierce trees rooted in the strength you nurtured.

Your love is the soil, rich, deep, enduring.

The path is their inheritance.

It’s wild and wide and sacred, a place where they can be anything, because you dared to become everything you needed.

You made their path  - Alive.

A place where nothing is off limits, where dreams don’t have ceilings, where emotions don’t mean weakness, and questions don’t mean disobedience.

You didn’t make a path for them to follow.

You made a clearing.

A clearing, so they could build their own.

A canvas stretched wide with possibility.

A field where their “too much” is just right.

They’ll plant things you never had words for.

They’ll speak truths you were punished for.

They’ll move with a softness you had to earn

the hard way.

And one day, they’ll look back, standing in the sacred space you gave them, and say:

"Someone came before me and dared to believe there was more than just surviving. Someone came before me and loved me into a future they never got to live."

That someone is you.

And this your children’s Wild Inheritance.

Dedicated to my children

“This inheritance isn’t of pain, but of power. Of path. Of promise.” - RLS

For every laugh you give without apology, every question you ask without fear, every step you take on ground I cleared, this was always for you. May you never shrink to survive. May you grow wildly, because you were born to be set free, free indeed.

I call forth the sun with arms wide like wings, welcoming warmth as if I’d never known winter.

I name the joy mine before it arrives, set a place for it at my table, pour it tea, light a candle in its honor.

I do not wait for the stars to align, I become the constellation, drawing light from within, mapping miracles in motion.

Let the world turn.

I rise radiant, not because it’s easy

but because it is mine to rise.