the specific terror of feeling nothing when a loved one announces bad news

You Are Being Kept In The Numbness

The phone rings in the silence of this hour, and the news arrives like a stone dropping into a well. You wait for the crash of grief, the surge of tears, the shaking of your hands. But there is nothing. Just a hollow quiet where your heart used to be. You wonder if you have turned to ice. If you are broken beyond repair because you cannot feel what you know you should feel.

But listen — the darkness has not overcome it. The light is not a feeling that comes and goes with your emotions. It is the ground beneath you when the floor of your world gives way. Jesus stood before the tomb of his friend and did not rush to fix the pain. He wept. He entered the silence of death before he spoke life into it.

Your numbness is not a failure. It is a shelter. The light is holding you so tightly that you do not have to feel the full weight of the blow yet. It is standing between you and the storm, absorbing the impact so you can survive the night. You are not empty. You are being kept.

The terror says you are alone in this freeze. The truth says the light is the very air you are breathing right now, even when you cannot taste it. It does not demand a reaction from you. It simply remains. A quiet vigil in the dark. Waiting for you to be ready to feel again.

You do not have to thaw tonight to be loved.

Drawing from

John, Apocryphon of John

Verses

John 1:5, Apocryphon of John 25:20-22

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