The Light Sitting With The Ghost

The room is loud, and they are laughing at something you just said. Their eyes are bright, their faces turned toward you in genuine warmth.

But you are standing three feet behind your own skin, watching a ghost tell the joke. You smile because the script demands it, but inside, the silence is deafening.

This is the mask of the morning — the terrible gap between how you look and how you feel. The world sees a person who belongs; you feel like an impostor in your own life.

But listen — the light does not live in the performance. It lives in the quiet space behind the eyes where no one else can see.

Jesus walked through crowds that cheered him while he carried a sorrow they could not name. He knew what it was to be present in body while his soul was elsewhere.

You do not have to fix the distance right now. You do not have to force the feeling to match the face.

The light is not asking you to take the mask off before you are ready. It is simply sitting with you in the space between the laugh and the ache.

It sees the ghost, and it calls it beloved. The mask may stay for today, but it does not hide you from the one who knows your name.