staring at your own reflection in the dark bathroom mirror after everyone else is asleep, terrified that the face looking back is a stranger you no longer recognize

The Light Knows You Before You Knew Yourself

The afternoon light is unforgiving, stripping away the masks you wore all morning to reveal a face that feels like a stranger's. You stare into the mirror and wonder when the person looking back became someone you no longer recognize, someone hollowed out by the performance of being okay.

But the light sees you with a clarity that cuts through the distortion of your own fear. Before you ever formed an identity or failed at being who you thought you should be, the light already knew you.

It saw you sitting under the fig tree of your own confusion and called you by name. You are not the stranger in the glass.

You are the one being seen.

Drawing from

John 1:48, Gospel of Thomas 70

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