three purple hearts

There’s something sacred about making bread. The slow rhythm of it. The mess it creates. The way hands move without needing to speak. Bread takes time. It doesn’t rush. It demands warmth and rest, and then more kneading, and more waiting. Maybe that’s why it feels like such an honest metaphor for the kind of love I’ve come to trust—not the performative kind, not the rule-bound kind I once learned in pews from pulpits, but the quiet, enduring kind that shows up with its sleeves rolled up and a willingness to get flour everywhere. I’ve found that when love is a way of life, community doesn’t always look like a scheduled gathering or a sermon three points deep. It looks like the couch you crash on when the world’s been too loud. It looks like a kitchen that never really closes, where someone’s always willing to put the kettle on or have another cup of coffee. And even if it’s 2 a.m. and nobody knows what day it is anymore, love leans in. Love in community looks like someone checking that ...

I learned to scan the sky for storm clouds every time the sun stayed too long— I clung tight because people slip when I loosened my grip— I was never asking for too much. I was asking for  consistency in a world that kept moving the goalposts. And then, they arrived. Not with lightning. Not with thunder. Just quiet presence and eyes that stayed. They didn’t ask me to shrink. They didn’t vanish when my voice cracked. They didn’t label my longing a liability. They just  held space like it was holy. They answered the text. They showed up the next day. They let me  be , without needing me to  do . And slowly— oh so slowly— My nervous system stopped flinching at love. I find peace where there used to be panic. Laughter where there once was chasing. Stillness in the middle of connection. They didn’t fix me. They  loved me in the weaving of a life that is soft and warm. And in that soft, unshaken bond, I am finally finding what safety feels like. Not silence. Not dista...