She was fasting for truth
while they were splashing in the river on Sunday mornings.
She was memorizing scripture all day
while they were licking honey off their fingers,
sticky with life.
She guarded the sacred scrolls,
wrote doctrines on silence,
burned incense at dawn
while someone down the hill
was laughing so hard
they snorted tea through their nose.
She bowed in the dark,
waited for signs,
suffered beautifully
and called it devotion.
They played in the mud.
They sang out of tune.
They danced without meaning.
And she—
She thought she was above them.
But God was not in the fasting.
God was not in the posture or the stillness or the aching to be holy.
God was in the belly of the one who giggled mid-sermon,
in the child who dipped her toes in the water
and called it sacred without asking permission.
And now?
She remembers.
Not with shame.
With laughter.
What better story could be told
than of the woman who spent lifetimes
trying to earn what was in her body the whole time?
What better ending
than a fool who finally let go of the torch
and picked up a popsicle stick
and built a temple in the sandbox?
She’s not above them.
She was just late to the party.
And now—
She arrives sticky-fingered,
sun-dazed,
and laughing.
Because truth never needed to be carried.
It just wanted to play.
