Memory Held in a Glass Jar

Intangible is something you cannot physically touch, yet you feel it deeply in your spirit, like pain, faith, or healing. I’ve held on to the memory of you pulling me close, our bodies curled together in a fetal position, a moment that felt like love but was really the last illusion I allowed myself to believe. I captured that moment in my heart, holding tightly to something I now know was never real, just a reflection of what my mind longed for and what you knew you could take from me. You craved my body, you craved my mind, you craved my time, you craved the nurturing traits I carried so naturally, and I gave it all to you, loving you beyond words, beyond what my heart even had the capacity to give. When you love something or someone more than the One who created you, He becomes jealous, and He showed me just how much.

Intangible is something you cannot physically touch, yet you feel it deeply in your soul. There were red flags all along, but I was blinded by manipulation, and the pleasure made it harder to walk away. Silence is not love, and the lack of validation spoke louder than any words ever could, revealing that I was never who I thought I was supposed to be. I believed I was meant to be a woman who gave love endlessly, but I had to learn the hard way that I needed to love myself first. I found myself depending on others to fill a void only God could fill, searching for love in souls and bodies, creating ties that were never meant to last, forming spiritual bonds rooted in lust and impurity without even realizing what I had stepped into. I didn’t understand the depth of what I was walking into until He removed the veil from my eyes and exposed the truth that everything I called love was a lie.

The betrayal began to unfold without words, the lies you never even had to speak revealing themselves through your absence, both physical and emotional, louder than anything I could ignore. I found myself facing a decision that no one else could see, because no one sees the decisions we have to make; they only see the choices we make. I watched myself spiral into darkness, into drugs and alcohol, and you became the very hand that helped me fall deeper. But something shifted when I said yes to God in my secret place, because my assignment changed the moment I surrendered. He showed me who you truly were, while you continued to show me who you pretended to be, and I finally saw you clearly for what you were, someone searching for validation through pleasure, trying to find clarity in places that could never give it.

I had to let go of the life I created in my mind because, in reality, you were draining me dry. I delayed what I knew I had to do for the sake of the children, but the weight of that decision broke me in ways I can’t fully explain. I held our memories in a jar in my mind, replaying them over and over, until one day I poured them out into the ocean, releasing what I could no longer carry. The grief of our broken family weighed on me heavily, and I took accountability for my part, knowing no one is perfect, yet realizing I had been holding onto past mistakes that were never meant to define me. In the end, the truth revealed itself in a way I couldn’t deny, you lose them how you meet them, and that’s exactly how it unfolded. In my secret place, I was told to stop crying over someone who never belonged to me, and from that moment on, I began to see you not as a loss but as a lesson meant to guide my next steps.

Joyful memories still visit me at times, flooding my mind without warning, reminding me that everything wasn’t always tragic or chaotic, and in those moments, I understand why things unfolded the way they did. But even in those glimpses of what felt like happiness, you were still distant, still silent, still emotionally unattached, and that truth never changed. I’ve come to realize that everyone carries a past they don’t speak on until they feel safe, and when they feel intimidated or exposed, they hold everything in until it consumes them from the inside out. I see now how silence can hide brokenness, how unspoken pain can turn into destruction, and how I tried to love someone who was still at war within themselves.

Healing didn’t come to me as peace. It came as light. Not the soft light that gently shines through a window in the morning, but a light that refuses to be ignored, a light that exposes everything you tried to hide. It followed me, and it first appeared the night I completely broke, sitting on the edge of my bed, surrounded by silence that screamed louder than any noise I had ever heard. My thoughts were heavy, my chest was tight, my spirit was exhausted, and in that moment, I whispered, “God… I don’t want to feel this anymore.” That’s when it appeared, a small glow in the corner of the room. I questioned it at first, thinking exhaustion was playing tricks on me, because pain has a way of making you see things you’re not ready to face. But it didn’t leave, it grew slowly and steadily until it formed into something real, something I could see clearly, a glass jar filled with light, bright, golden, and alive.

I stood there, unsure if I should be afraid or comforted, and whispered, “What is this?” and in my spirit, I heard clearly, “This is your healing.” I laughed, not out of joy, but disbelief, because healing was supposed to feel good, and what I was feeling was anything but that. The light flickered, and suddenly I felt everything at once, every tear, every betrayal, every moment I silenced myself, every wound I refused to acknowledge. It all rushed through me, dropping me to my knees as I cried out, “This isn’t healing, this is pain,” and the response came calmly, “Healing is not the absence of pain, it is the exposure of it.” The light grew too bright to face, and I turned away, saying I couldn’t look at it, only to hear, “You’ve been looking away your whole life.”

And that truth sat heavy in my spirit, because I had avoided it, buried it, smiled through it, written through it, but never truly faced it. The jar didn’t move, didn’t force me, didn’t chase me; it simply waited, present, patient, unshaken. Slowly, I reached for it, and the moment my hands touched it, I felt a burning, not physical, but spiritual, cutting through denial, pride, and fear. Tears poured out of me, not quietly, but violently, the kind that comes from deep within your soul, shaking your entire being. Memories flooded my mind, painful words echoed louder than ever, and moments I thought I had healed from stood right in front of me again. I wanted to let go, I almost did, but something inside of me whispered, “Stay.”

So I held on, and as I did, everything began to shift. The burning turned into warmth, the chaos turned into clarity, and the pain, though still present, began to make sense. The jar began to crack, slowly at first, then more and more until it finally shattered, releasing light throughout the entire room. It wasn’t overwhelming, it wasn’t blinding, it was covering, gentle, powerful, and present. It covered me, and in that moment, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time, peace. Not because my past disappeared, but because it no longer had control over me. I looked at my hands, and the jar was gone, but the light remained, no longer around me, but within me.

I fell to my knees again, but this time not in pain, in surrender, whispering, “God… You never took the pain away,” and in my spirit, I heard, “No, I transformed it.” From that moment forward, healing was no longer something I waited for; it became something I carried, something I walked in, something I became.