You Do Not Have to Be Steady

The house is quiet now, and the silence feels like a test you are failing because your hands won't stop shaking. You are trying to perform a perfect, frozen calm, as if stillness were the price you must pay to earn back the safety that slipped away tonight.

But the light does not require you to be steady before it stays. Look at the woman who had lost everything, weeping at feet she was not worthy to touch — she did not compose herself first.

She did not fix her face. She came broken, and the voice that spoke her name said: your many sins are forgiven, for you loved much.

You do not have to earn the right to be held by acting like you aren't falling apart. The safety was never conditional on your composure.

It was lost, yes. But it is also the very thing being returned to you right now, not because you are calm, but because you are here.