Falling In Love With Myself.

There was a time when silence was my sanctuary. I would go days without uttering a word—not out of sorrow, but reverence. Like fasting, but for the voice. And somehow, in the absence of speech, something holy would awaken. The world would slow down. I would hear myself more clearly. I would hear God.

I don’t know exactly when those habits faded. Life, perhaps. Noise crept in—not just from the outside, but the kind that builds silently on the inside. The kind that drowns out your own name.

I used to write down things I was grateful for every day and store them in empty jars—jars from honey or jam, washed and repurposed with care. I’d label each one “Gratitude Jar.” It was like saving pennies in a piggy bank. A quiet way to collect joy, day by day.

It was such a simple act, but it gave my days meaning. It helped me see that beauty lives in the ordinary—in the way sunlight stretches across a floor, in the taste of something warm, in the stillness that follows a deep breath. I wasn't just writing things down; I was archiving moments of presence, choosing to acknowledge that goodness was always happening around me—even if just in flickers.

But what I do know is this: I want to return—not in shame, not in discipline for discipline’s sake, but in love. I want to return to silence like a song finds its chorus. I want to write again what I’m grateful for, because I’ve never had more to be grateful for than I do now.

You see, something has happened. Something strange and sacred and unexpected.

I have fallen in love with myself.

Not in the mirror-kissing, self-absorbed way the world warns about. But in the way you fall in love with a person who’s been beside you all your life and you finally see them. I didn’t even know it was possible, to adore oneself with such gentleness. But it happened. Just like that—click—like a door opened and light rushed in.

It didn’t come from a book, or a breakthrough, or a big loud moment. It came without stress, without striving. Maybe it had something to do with the way I entered this year—more intentionally than ever before. But even that feels like only part of the story.

The truth is, this transformation is not mine alone. It’s divine.

The way I see it, God—Jesus, the Holy Spirit—has been tuning me like an instrument. In the quiet moments, in the praise, in the stillness between thoughts, I can feel the careful work of Heaven within me. When I’m not singing my lungs out or losing myself in chords on my guitar, I sit in silence and I feel this deep, reverent awe for everything. Everything.

The light in the room. The breath in my lungs. The old scars that no longer ache.

Even the ache itself—the one I carried for years, in silence, in shadow—feels like it taught me how to hold joy when it finally came. And joy did come. In waves. In stillness. In this quiet love story between me and my own soul.

I used to fear that returning to my old rituals would feel like leashing myself again. But I see now they were never chains. They were lifelines. Sacred rhythms. Ways of honoring what is good, what is real, what is me.

So yes, I will embrace silence again. I will save gratitude again, in jars if I must. I will walk barefoot into the still places and meet God there—meet myself there.

And maybe, if I listen closely enough, the people I love will hear me even when I don’t speak. Maybe, somehow, we’re all learning to hear each other through the silence.

Maybe that’s heaven, just a little closer to earth.