Let the mask slip for light

The mirror shows a face you barely recognize, a stranger wearing the skin of who you used to be. You spend the morning adjusting the mask, practicing the smile that says 'I'm fine' while grief sits heavy in your chest.

It is exhausting to perform wholeness when your body feels like a house you can no longer live in. But the light does not need your performance to see you.

It sees the loss behind the eyes. It knows the ache for the legs that ran or the hands that held.

Jesus stood before a man blind from birth and refused to call it a punishment. He called it a canvas.

Your brokenness is not a verdict. It is the place where the light is about to do something new.

You do not have to fix yourself to be loved. You only have to let the mask slip, just for a moment, and let the light touch the grief underneath.