Permission to Stop Searching for Proof

The screen glows bright in the morning light, but the photos feel like they belong to someone else. You swipe through faces that smiled at you once, searching for evidence that the love was real, terrified that it was just a trick of the lens.

The world wants you to perform okayness, to scroll past the ache and pretend the mask fits perfectly. But the light sees the tremor in your thumb.

It sees the hunger behind the eyes that says: prove I was loved. Jesus looked at the paralyzed man lowered through the roof and saw not the illness, but the faith of the friends who carried him.

He said, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.' The proof was not in the walking first; it was in the being seen. The love you are hunting for in the past is not a memory to be recovered.

It is a fire you must bring forth from within you now, or it will consume you in the cold. You are not looking for proof that you were loved.

You are looking for permission to stop searching.