Let Love Lead

For many years, I watched my mama be a submissive wife—

even to men who weren't her husband.

Somewhere along the way, I mistook that for love.

I believed love meant silence.
Submission.
Sacrifice.

I believed endurance was holy.

So I learned to turn a blind eye to the very things that keep you bound...

the things that steal your peace,
rob your sleep,
and leave you on your knees begging God for deliverance.

The irony?

The roads we spend our lives trying to avoid
often become the highways we know best.

We see the warning signs.
We hear the sirens.
Every instinct tells us to turn around...

Yet we keep driving.

Because pretending feels safer than confronting the truth.

We settle for familiar dysfunction instead of unfamiliar freedom.

Hear me clearly...

At this big age,
I've never been loved properly.

I've never spoken those words out loud until recently.

As I watch my mama slowly slip away, our conversations have changed.

They're softer now.
Lighter.

But somehow they carry more weight than they've ever held.

We're finally saying the things we spent a lifetime swallowing.

About a week ago she looked at me and said,

"I hope you find the courage to let genuine love in... because I'm worried that losing me will rip you in half."

It felt like swallowing a golf ball.

The room fell cold, dark, and silent.

I quietly wept—not just for the moment—but for every wound I survived without language...

every heartbreak I carried without permission to speak...
every version of myself that learned to survive instead of receive love.

My mama didn't rescue me from the silence.

She stayed there.

She needed more than an answer.

She needed to know that when she leaves this earth, I won't spend the rest of my life imprisoned by everything I never healed.

I wanted to reassure her.

I wanted to promise that I'd be okay.

But the truth caught in my throat.

Because healing doesn't happen through pretty speeches.

It happens through surrender.

And in that sacred, uncomfortable moment...

Everything that had ever threatened to divide us
became the very thing that drew us closer.

So I did the only thing I knew to do.

I got up...

And I ugly-cried before God.

Not asking Him to erase my pain.

Not asking Him to rewrite my past.

I prayed for my mama's salvation.
Her peace.
Her rest.

And I asked Him to finish in me what generations before me never had the chance or courage to begin.

If you're reading this...

Don't wait.

Don't wait until hospital rooms replace kitchen tables.

Don't wait until whispers become your last conversations.

Don't wait until grief teaches you what love was trying to teach you all along.

You get one life.

One heart.

One opportunity to reconcile what pride, fear, and pain have kept separated.

Love the people God entrusted to your care while they're still here to receive it.

And when genuine love finally knocks...

Have the courage to answer.