The Light Sees Through Your Mask

The house is quiet now, but the silence feels loud with everything that isn't being said. You are sitting at a table set for many, pretending the empty chairs don't ache, smiling at a phone screen to prove you are fine.

It is a heavy performance, this acting of okayness while your heart fractures under the weight of the missing. But the light does not need your mask to see you; it sees right through the performance to the grief underneath.

There is a truth that lives in you, deeper than the loneliness, and it has not been canceled by an empty seat. The light was there before the holiday began, and it remains now, unmoved by the absence.

You do not have to hold up the facade for the One who already knows the cost of your silence. The pretending is exhausting, but the love beneath it is not.