Healing a Burned Soul

We’ve all heard the phrases. “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” “Pain has a purpose.” “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” They sound powerful. Clean. Motivational. But lingering pain? Pain that stays for days… weeks… Pain that doesn’t leave when you pray once or rest one night? That kind of pain isn’t poetic. That pain doesnt have a one liner that can heal it completely. As I write this, it’s the middle of the night again. This isn’t the first night it has woken me.

I felt a pull. A pull to tradition. A pull to recenter. A pull to come back to the basics. So tonight, I went to church for Ash Wednesday. A simple worship, sermon, ashes, and communion. Nothing crazy, nothing wild. Just traditional. Chills went through my spine when the Reverend touched my forehead and said the words, “You are dust, and to dust you will return.” I felt that truth deep in my bones. Not in a heavy way. Not in a hopeless way. But in a grounding way. A humbling

There is a sacred hush when the needle touches the groove, and the past rises, soft and insistent, into the room we occupy yet also beyond it. A song begins, and suddenly we are elsewhere—in a moment that existed decades ago, carried by a voice, a melody, a heartbeat. These moments are more than memory; they are a reality that stretches beyond where we are right now, a connection deeper than the daily rush, a pulse that holds us together, a quiet community drawing near throug