Your Love Is Not The Poison

The water is scalding, but you keep scrubbing, convinced that if you can just make the skin raw enough, the memory will wash away. You are trying to cleanse a stain that isn't on your hands, but in your heart—the terrible belief that your love was the poison that made them sick.

But the light does not see your touch as contamination. It saw the woman with the issue of blood push through the crowd, touching everyone she wasn't supposed to, breaking every rule of cleanliness to reach the hem of a garment.

And when she finally grabbed hold, the power did not flow out of him to make him weak; it flowed out to make her whole. He turned and called her daughter, not because she was clean enough, but because she was brave enough to reach.

Your love is not the disease. It is the reaching.

The water can wash the dirt, but only the truth can wash the shame: you did not break them. You were just a branch trying to stay connected to the vine.

Put the sponge down. The rawness is not penance.

It is proof that you are still alive, still feeling, still capable of a love that refuses to let go even when it hurts.