#words i have to tell myself

You are not the author of grace. You don’t have to heal yourself. 

Here is what you can do: you can respond.

The response will feel foolish and too late, like you’ve missed something that was there all along. Regret will enter, shame, and confusion along with the joy. 

No matter. Let it go.

You are not the author of grace.

When it comes to you in streams of sunlight, in the waters of a storm, in the friend saying “one day it will hurt less” you don’t have to do anything except take it, accept it. Let it in. 

It will show you the ways in which you’ve been wrong, the ways you can re-center. The shame accompanying the sudden sight of all your blindness is good for you, cleansing and invigorating to the spirit.

But let it pass.

Knowledge can only come after ignorance, light after dark; help only means something to the one who needs it. 

You don’t have to have not needed the grace to be worthy of it, to be able to open your hands to it. 

You don’t have to have already known what to do.

You are not the author of grace. You don’t have to heal yourself.