He Ran Before You Were Clean

The afternoon stretches out, a long, flat road where the doubt whispers that you are too fractured to be held. You carry the weight of your own brokenness like a stone in your pocket, convinced that love requires repair before it can arrive.

But there is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off — covered in the filth of the pig pen, rehearsing a speech about unworthiness. He did not wait for the cleanup.

He ran. Before the apology, before the bath, before the robe — he ran.

The light does not ask you to be whole before it loves you. It loves you so that you might become whole.

You are not a project to be finished. You are a child to be embraced.

The breaking is not the end of your story.