The Light Does Not Require Your Performance

The service ends, the hymn fades, and suddenly you are expected to stand, to smile, to shake hands while your skin feels two sizes too small for the person inside it. You walk through the line of peace, offering a greeting you do not feel, wearing a face that does not fit.

But listen — the light does not require your performance to be real. It is already shining within you, waiting for you to stop pretending and simply be.

There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world even when you are too tired to see it. You do not have to manufacture the glow; you only have to stop hiding the one that is already there.

The mask is heavy, but the face beneath it is known. The light is not in the handshake or the 'amen' you forced out — it is in the quiet truth you carry home.