What mystery speaks without exposition that goes written on the flesh of men and women shedding ash for grace. To learn how to replace the mask worn for their own that is worthy to be shown but has stayed hidden and as such...remained unbidden...
I come tonight to talk about an issue near and dear to my heart. It is the very foundation of wisdom and where the greatest strength is found...humility. That place of accountability where you can admit where you've gone wrong. Not for a pity party or to beat yourself into stagnation but to let you see what needs fixing so that you can create a strategy to get it done. Many of my readers are true folk and as such have beautiful "faces" but choose to wear a mask to hide the scars they wear out of fear that the scar will define their existence. My people, take it off and do nothing but look at your face. Take your time and see all your lines. Find the beautiful in your ugly but where ugly is just ugly...call it out. Let no one tell you that you are "literally" perfect as you are because that is a lie. None of us are. We all need improvement. People love to talk about "loving yourself" right? Well stop listening to folk that are advising you to lie to yourself. I love my son enough to tell him the road he's on leads to destruction. We don't accept our weaknesses to coddle them. We accept them to be able to change them or in the least, strengthen other areas so that those weaknesses no longer pose a threat to all the beauty God and life has allowed to bloom. Yet for all this to happen, we have to come clean. We have to keep it real. Cry if we need to. Get in the mirror and tell ourselves off and in the end, become the catalyst towards our betterment. It don't take much because what you need to become is already in you. It just takes dying to all that seeks your destruction. I made the mistake of falling into the same ditch because I kept calling those failures "mistakes". When you finally come to end of yourself you realize that a repeated mistake is nothing more than a bad habit called a mistake to by-pass all accountability. Own them but don't do so to celebrate them. Own them to be able to starve them to death.
Some of you have been through so much that you don't even believe you are worth all that trouble but I'm here to tell you that you are. That you have faced all that you have to survive for a reason. You are here to be more and to do more than you have ever imagined. Which is why I find the greatest strength and beauty in souls that have faced much...and lived to tell the tale. That is you and that is me my beautiful pretty souls. I am not defined by my weaknesses...and neither are you. If I ever saw something great in you then that is what you will always be in my eyes. Slip-ups, trip-ups and all because I know that eventually you, like me, will come to end of yourself and accept that you are greater than any weakness would have you believe. You are my silent heroes...
Most seek to hide the scars drawn by evil but hiding wounds keeps them untended and vulnerable to infection. They wear a mask that most would consider respectable based on what's already inside them. So tonight I offer a beautiful truth. That healing beneath that calcified tissue is possible. Not by placating the scars creating more of the same but by acknowledging the truth of their cause. By finally accepting that although you may wear those scars...those scars don't have to wear you.
So to that face that has gone unbidden...I bid you tonight. Be seen, be refreshed, be renewed...accept your healing...
~Moses Apollo Apolinaris
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