The Light Runs Toward You

The cart wheels hum a steady rhythm through the middle of the day, a mundane soundtrack to the long endurance of routine. Then a song starts playing overhead — just a few notes from that year — and your whole body recoils before your mind can catch up.

You freeze in the cereal aisle, suddenly back in a room you thought you had left behind, carrying a weight that feels too heavy for a Tuesday afternoon. The light does not ask you to keep walking as if nothing happened.

It meets you in the flinch — in that split second where the past crashes into the present. There is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off, and before the apology or the explanation, he ran.

The light runs toward you in that grocery store aisle, not to scold the recoil, but to hold you while the memory washes over. You do not have to perform okayness for the shoppers passing by.

The kingdom of God is within you, even when your hands are shaking on the handle of the cart. The song will end.

The aisle will clear. But the light remains — not as a demand to move on, but as a quiet presence that says: I know how much that hurt, and I am still here.