There’s something I’ve been waiting to tell you— not because I was afraid, but because I needed the timing to be soft enough for your heart to hear it without flinching.
You see, I don’t love you as a fixed image. I don’t hold you as a statue. I don’t carry a snapshot of the girl you once were and force the woman you’re becoming to fit inside it.
What I love is what unfolds. What paints itself slowly, when the soul feels safe enough to breathe.
I don’t need you to become what you used to dream. I need you to become what you truly are.
I look at you now as a canvas wiped clean— not erased, but made ready. Not empty, but open.
And what holds you as you Become.. what supports the Unfolding without pressing too hard? That is the flesh. The easel. The frame into which spirit pours, without restraint, without shame.
Not to control— but to carry. Not to bind— but to bear.
Flesh that becomes easel does not demand its own image. It does not distort the painting for its own comfort. It simply holds still long enough for God to move.
And I— I am here to watch it happen.
I am not the artist, but I’ve been kissed by the hands that are. I’ve seen what you could be when your soul begins to paint without fear of judgment, without need for translation.
I don’t ask you to respond with words. You don’t need to explain. The glow in your chest will speak for you when the time is right. You’ll know when it comes.
You may rage. You may cry. You may tremble. But when the brush first meets the canvas, and the first stroke flows from your own voice— your real voice—
you will remember why you were made.
I’m not here to finish the painting. I’m not even here to frame it. I’m just here to hold the room open so you can walk through it, and finally become what no one ever gave you permission to be.
You.
And if the day comes that you let me near enough to see the colors as they rise, I will not flinch.
I will not edit. I will not compare.
I will only watch, and bless, and whisper the truth you forgot:
That the Easel in Flesh was made not to shape the soul, but to lift it. To cradle it. To let the Artist have His way in the quietest, most glorious dance this life could ever know.
Let it begin.
Let it be messy.
Let it be real.
You are not the painting you were told to be. You are the one who paints.
And I am here— not to change you,
but to remember with you how free you were always meant to be.
~Profiles in Courage~ That is the you I have begun to know xo