NeuroDivine

I did not expect to cry.

Not at my own words. Not at a scene I had already written, shaped, and sent out into the world. Surely, by then, I should have known it too well.

And yet—reading it again, I found myself caught off guard.

Not by the craft of it.
But by the truth of it.

There is something almost unsettling about being moved by your own writing. It feels, at first, like it shouldn’t count—as if emotion must come from elsewhere to be valid. But that is not quite right.

Because when a piece is written honestly, it is never only written once.

It is lived once in the moment of writing—often quietly, almost without noticing. And then it waits.

And later—sometimes much later—it speaks back.

Rereading that Good Friday moment, I realised something I had not fully grasped when I first wrote it:

I had told the truth more plainly than I knew.

The line about dialysis is brief. Almost incidental. It sits there as a simple fact—why Aidan cannot be present later, why he comes early instead.

But reading it now, it carries weight.

Because I know that rhythm.

I know what it is to have time shaped by treatment.
To measure a day not only by intention, but by necessity.
To arrive early—not out of devotion alone, but because later is already taken.

And perhaps when I first wrote it, I was holding that reality at a slight distance—placing it in a character, letting it speak safely from the page.

But rereading collapses that distance.

It becomes mine again.

And then there is that quiet insistence in the scene:

No drama. No theology explained. Just a simple refusal.

And that, I think, is what undid me.

Because it names something stubborn and faithful in the midst of constraint. Not a grand act of endurance, but a small, determined turning toward presence.

Even when the day will be interrupted.
Even when the body will require its due.
Even when the liturgy will go on without you.

Still—you come when you can.

Perhaps that is why it made me cry.

Not because it is sad.

But because it is recognisable.

Because it reminds me that faith is not always lived in fullness or completion. Often, it is lived in fragments—in the early visit, the shortened prayer, the moment taken before the rest of the day claims you.

And yet those fragments are not lesser.

They are simply real.

There is a strange grace in being undone by your own words.

It means that, at least once, you told the truth clearly enough that it could find you again.

And when it did, you didn’t turn away.

This reflection arises from a passage in The Church is Open: Holy Week & Easter.