Wise Cracks

For the majority of the past four years, I have walked on eggshells.

I convinced myself that staying small was holy. That silence was wisdom. That tiptoeing was tenderness.

But walking lightly around someone is not intimacy. Sometimes it is simply survival. And survival is not the same thing as peace. 

Quiet does not always mean peace. Sometimes it means you are holding your breath and hoping the ground won’t crack beneath you.

And then, there is this kind of breaking that doesn’t destroy you. It wakes you. And one day, without fireworks or fury, I finally woke up…

I stopped confusing comfort with reality. I stopped mistaking my restraint for righteousness. I stopped believing that protecting someone else’s feelings meant I was somehow honoring God.

And somewhere between the holding back and the breaking open, I finally stopped tiptoeing.

I saw the truth of it all. And the truth is that I was not protecting my marriage by playing small. Or ignoring the cracks. Or even pretending I could somehow put Humpty Dumpty back together again by sheer will power and patience. 

Instead I was abandoning my heart’s voice for broken eggshells…

Because love should never require you to whisper your needs. Or cushion every thought. Or live like honesty is a weapon, instead of a bridge.

So, I made a decision.

I will no longer walk on eggshells.

I will walk in truth. And I will walk in true peace. The kind of peace that is not borrowed from silence. I will walk with my whole weight again, knowing that the people who truly love me do not feel my heart and my needs are too heavy to hold. 

The truth is the cracks were never my failure. They were my wake up call.

And wisdom, it turns out, is not always gentle. Sometimes it sounds like eggshells cracking under your feet.

And I find I am again, finally, remembering to trust that still, small voice in my spirit that actually does hold me together…

Even if it leads me out of the place I have prayed would stay whole.