Prayer Doesn't Require Access

There was a time when I thought love and distance couldn't exist together.

If I loved someone, I believed I had to keep the door open.

If I forgave someone, I believed I had to remain available.

If I prayed for someone, I believed I had to keep hoping that one day they would return.

I confused compassion with access.

Looking back now, I think a lot of us do.

We imagine that goodness always looks like another chance.

Another conversation.

Another explanation.

Another opportunity for things to be different.

Sometimes goodness looks exactly like that.

Sometimes it doesn't.

One of the hardest lessons God has ever taught me is that I can sincerely desire someone's salvation while no longer inviting them into my inner world.

Those are not contradictions.

They are boundaries.

I still pray for him.

Not because I am secretly waiting for him to become the man I once imagined.

Not because I hope life will somehow circle back to where it began.

Not because I am unable to let go.

I pray because I genuinely want his soul to know God.

Those prayers no longer come from longing.

They come from charity.

And charity is remarkably different from attachment.

Attachment says,

"I need your story to end a certain way so that mine can make sense."

Charity says,

"I entrust your story to God, even if I never know how it ends."

That distinction has given me more peace than I ever expected.

For so long I believed forgiveness meant reopening the wound every time someone knocked on the door.

Now I know forgiveness often looks like quietly locking the door... and wishing the person well as they continue walking down another road.

Not every goodbye is bitter.

Some are simply complete.

There is a quiet confidence that begins to grow when you stop feeling responsible for another person's choices.

You stop rehearsing conversations that will never happen.

You stop imagining explanations that will never satisfy.

You stop carrying emotional responsibilities that were never yours.

Little by little, your hands become empty.

And empty hands are finally able to receive what God has been offering all along.

I think one of the greatest lies I believed was that loving someone meant remaining emotionally available forever.

As though boundaries were somehow evidence that my heart had grown cold.

The opposite happened.

My heart became gentler once it no longer had to defend itself every day.

It became freer to love my son.

Freer to love my family.

Freer to love strangers.

Freer to love God.

Sometimes protecting your peace isn't the opposite of love.

Sometimes it is one of the purest expressions of it.

Because peace allows love to remain generous instead of becoming resentful.

I don't know what tomorrow holds for him.

I honestly don't.

I don't know what conversations God will have with his heart.

I don't know what mercies will meet him.

I don't know what roads he still has left to walk.

Those things no longer belong to me.

They belong to God.

And strangely...

That realization has made my prayers more sincere than they have ever been.

I no longer pray from desperation.

I pray from trust.

I don't ask God to bring him back.

I ask God to bring him home.

There is a difference.

One asks for my will.

The other asks for his greatest good.

Perhaps this is what real detachment has always been.

Not forgetting someone.

Not pretending they never mattered.

Not closing your heart.

Simply releasing your grip.

Because prayer never required access.

It only required love.

And love has always been safest in God's hands.

♡