written by my beautiful friend, laura.

plumnellie:

Some days you forgive yourself. Some days you’re busy enough to forget you’re a sinner. You carry on like you don’t need me. Some days you find enough excuses to soothe your conscience. You try and wash away your filth with your own useless justification. I watch you: a poor little thing trying to clean herself with muddy rags. Some days you try and abstain. Each day without—you see as a tiny self-victory. But then you fall again. You wrestle with more excuses until you’ve finally come up short—you have no more excuses. So you ignore me. You fill your time with anything just so you can drown out my voice in your ears, my face in your head, my presence in your heart. And you can try and forgive yourself all you want; you can search the entire world for self-justification—but where you find it, I will not be.

I won’t be there because I live in a place you rarely recognize. Beyond the landscapes of your heart where self-righteousness is the king, I am there in the shadows. I am there where not even you can handle its depths—in your very own heart. You don’t need me where you can forgive yourself, so I live where you can’t. I live where the excuses run out, and self-justification must turn into honesty.

Meet me there.

Meet me where your pride breaks like a shell, and your stubbornness melts into reconciliation.

Because that’s where I’ll be—with open arms. It is where I live. It is where grace lives. And where you can only, truly, live.