I once found myself standing in the middle, daggers being thrown from left and right. I took each one straight in the gut, trying to save your heart and defend my own; I stood alone.

In the midst of the shade thrown over like gray sticking permanent, I learned how to stay in my light by walking away from the gray in the middle. The gray does not own me. It never did.

Those daggers were meant for me, but really only launched from a place of someone else’s self-induced pity turned to pain. Well, let it rain. I will stand soaked in whatever pours my way, smiling and unaffected by a version of me told from the mouths of someone who never knew me but thrives on stories told like gospel, hands up, praising rumors as if speaking in tongues, ear to ear, makes it true. I feel for you.

I feel for me more. I found peace in my pieces, grace in the chaos I never asked for and calm in the storm I have always been. I dug through my pain, kept the pieces I created with my own hands and threw the ones away that was not mine to carry.

There will always be people who paint a picture of you with colors that don’t hold true and that’s okay. Let them carry the weight of those colors in their own heart, while you stay true to you.

You, with your beautiful colors, your mosaic pieces, your heart... made whole with its grace, with its peace, with undying honesty. You, with your gracious soul, your unmovable loyalty, be a masterpiece that never tries to defend its own colors to anyone who never saw the pain in your pieces, but only heard about it and couldn’t wait to smear it thick in gray, save it for a rainy day, and try to shine like you always have.

Don’t ever apologize for a version of you written by someone else. Be you and know, nobody can shake your grace or your peace from the roots of you. Your heart.. it is a masterpiece.