a meditation for who we were.

Once, we believed together.
A faith so vast, it felt like the sky itself,
a shared promise that stretched endlessly,
wrapping around us like a safety net.
We stood side by side,
two souls tethered to the same hope,
the same truths.

But time has a way of unraveling things,
doesn’t it?
Not all at once, but thread by thread,
questions whispering like shadows in the corners
of a room we thought was full of light.
I followed those shadows,
walked into the wilderness of doubt,
letting my faith stretch, bend,
and break apart in places
so it could grow into something new.

You stayed,
but not without a cost.
I still see the weight of your questions,
the quiet unease behind your smile.
You told yourself staying was safer,
that roots were stronger than wings,
even as you wondered
if they would one day hold you back.
You stayed,
not because you never doubted,
but because you feared what you might lose
if you let go.

Now, when we speak,
there’s a quiet ache beneath the words.
Your faith appears solid, unshakeable.

But I have stood too close for too long to believe all is well.
Mine feels like the wind—
unseen, but always moving.
You look at me as if I’ve lost something,

as if I’ve drifted too far,
but I feel as though I’ve found the world.

As different as we have always been, 

we used to share thoughts,
the underlying truths in perfect harmony.
Now, our words stumble,
colliding like mismatched puzzle pieces.

Your certainty feels like fragile;
my questions sound like betrayal.

And yet, I still see you,
the person who held me up
when I couldn’t stand,
the one who prayed for me
when I couldn’t find the words.

I wonder—
Is it love that keeps us here,
or just the echoes of what we were?
Can a shared history bridge
two hearts that now beat
to different rhythms?

I want to believe it can.
But every time I reach back
for the faith we once shared,
I feel the weight of it pulling me
into a version of myself
that no longer exists.

So here we are,
standing on opposite sides of a divide
neither of us meant to create.
I see you.
I honor the depth of your belief, 

the way you have stayed steady

even under the weight of the questions you carry.
And I hope you can honor who you know me to be—
even if I’m walking a different path.

I carry our shared faith tenderly,
like a pressed flower tucked away in my heart,
a reminder of what is beautiful
and true and good—

a memento of who we were together.
But I can’t live there anymore.
I’ve traded the comfort of roots
for the risk of wings,
the promise of the unknown
over the certainty of staying the same.

It hurts—
this letting go, this holding on,
this love stretched across the gap
between who we were
and who we’ve become.
And maybe, just maybe,
there’s grace enough for both of us,
even here.