The Truth

It’s that stuff that makes us grow, helps us heal, helps us see. It transcends time, weaving its way through our childhoods, our presents, waiting for us in our futures (in the next second, and the next and the next…) It always leaves its candles burning, stars of light dotting our paths in every direction.

The truth leaves us forever changed. It comes and sits down in our living room or our kitchen and has a conversation with us. It welcomes every thought, every feeling, every doubt, every cry for help. It challenges us. It comforts us. It says, “There is a better way.”

Sometimes it is a whisper through stillness, a subtle sense in the far distance that knows if it comes any closer it will scare us away. It stays constant and unchanging. We move and it moves with us.

Sometimes it is a thousand trumpets! It bangs on our door in the middle of the night and says, “HEY! You were looking for me! HERE I AM! (oh, were you sleeping?…)”

Sometimes it runs to us, spanning miles and leaving its enemies conquered in its wake. It is valiant.

Sometimes it is just there. In the words of a friend, in listening to a child’s questions, watching the clouds, beholding a flower or a pet or cooking a meal, in a book or a blog or a song. It speaks out from such everyday things; it surprises us with how close it exists, how readily it speaks… candid, calm. It cries. It cheers. It watches. It sees.

Sometimes it is hidden. The lies we were told and the lies we believed encrusted it, and we pick up a chisel. We have to work at knowing it. Chip away this and this, and we glimpse it and keep chiseling and we sweat and we grow new muscles; we know there’s only one way.

We test it. We mull it over. We chew on it. It becomes part of who we are. Sometimes it tastes so satisfying, and this scares us at first! Sometimes we sit and look at it with hungry eyes for awhile, questioning if… we are worthy of it? Sometimes we can’t accept it because we aren’t ready. Sometimes we wolf it down! Sometimes it lands on us and explodes like fire. Sometimes it’s a seed that takes years to grow.

It reaches out to us in the long rays of a sunny morning and blankets us in the soft light of a night’s moon. It is the light that illuminates our souls and makes us shine.