The Light Meets You Where You Lie

The phone lights up in the dark, and your stomach drops before you even read the name. It is just a screen, just a message, but it feels like a demand you cannot meet.

You do not have the energy to perform wellness for them tonight. You do not have the strength to pretend you are okay.

So you leave the phone face down. You let the silence stretch.

There was a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years, lying beside a pool while everyone else rushed around him. When the light found him, it did not ask him to prove he was worthy of healing.

It did not ask him to stand up first. It simply asked if he wanted to get well.

Then it told him to pick up his mat and walk. The light does not need your performance.

It does not need you to pretend the sickness isn't there. It meets you exactly where you are lying.

You are not failing because you cannot answer. You are resting because the light is already holding you.

The text can wait. The mask can fall.

You are safe right here, in the truth of your exhaustion.