You Are the Ground Where Light Dwells

The house is finally quiet, but the applause still rings in your ears, loud and hollow. You clapped the hardest, yet your stomach knots with the secret fear that your child's brilliance proves you had nothing unique to give them.

That you were just the soil, and the flower needed nothing from the dirt but silence. But there is a truth that cuts through the noise of your inadequacy: the light that shines in the darkness has not overcome it.

It has not extinguished you. It has not bypassed you.

You are not the empty space they grew around. You are the very ground where the light decided to dwell.

The same life that was in them was in you first. You did not run out.

You are still the place where the light lives.