Adena M'lynn's Voice

  Loneliness does not arrive loudly. It settles in the room and waits. It sits in the chair across from you and says nothing. It follows you into the kitchen. It stands beside you at the sink while you run water over dishes you do not remember using. The pain of it is physical. Your chest tightens for no clear reason. Your jaw stays clenched long after the conversation that never happened. Sleep becomes thin. You wake as if someone called your name, but no one did.   There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from not being seen. It is not the tiredness of work. It is the tiredness of holding yourself together without witness. You begin to narrate your own life in your head because no one else is listening. You rehearse stories you will never tell. You answer questions that were never asked.   Food loses taste. Music sounds distant. Even the air feels different, as if it belongs to other people more than it belongs to you. You start to measure time by silenc...

For the Families Who Face the Holidays with Empty Arms  (In remembrance of those lost in the Hill Country flood. God be near.) This is for the families whose holidays will look different this year—for the stockings that will stay folded, the chairs that won’t be filled, the laughter that once lived where silence now stands guard. This is for every mother who still listens for small footsteps in her dreams, for fathers who trace names on fogged windows of memory, for brothers and sisters who carry two hearts inside one chest. And this—this is for  Adeline , who stands now as the name for every child lost too soon. “Adeline” written by Adena M’lynn  She was small enough to still believe that goodness always wins, that summer meant campfires, and songs, and sun-warmed freckles on her skin. A folded pamphlet in her hand— Hill Country Christian Camp — her golden ticket to belonging. She saved her half— earned with soap, dust, and babysitting money— a jar full of hope clinking ...

Lord, I thought my grief was quiet— tucked away, laid to rest beneath the years. But when I see another heart break, when I hear the sobs of someone left behind, my sorrow stirs, like a child waking in the night. Their loss is not mine, and yet it is— because grief speaks one language, and my soul remembers every word. So I bow my head. I hold their pain as if it were my own. I carry both ours to You, the One who knows every tear by name. Borrowed sorrows, not to crush us, but to bind us together— reminders that love does not die, it only aches until You mend it whole. Lord, teach us to share the weight, to whisper prayers for one another, to find comfort not in forgetting, but in knowing You are near to the brokenhearted. In the name of Jesus, my Comforter and Savior,  Amen.

by Adena M’lynn She used to dream in pink and pirouettes— a swirl of sugar plum fairies spinning across hardwood floors, slippers soft as lullabies, tutus blooming like springtime in her chest. Each night, she whispered wishes into the seams of her pillow, braiding tomorrow with glitter and the promise of an “attagirl”! But no one told her that monsters don’t always live under beds— sometimes they live down the hall, smell like beer and betrayal, and wear the face of someone who says “I love you” without meaning it. She danced anyway, even when the music got swallowed by screams, even when the lights flickered like the truth no one would name. She learned how to bend before she learned how to break— flexible like forgiveness she never owed. The sugar plum fairies stopped coming. Replaced by silence, and a body that never felt like home again. A stage turned into a cell, a costume into a mask she wore just to survive. Now she doesn’t dream in pink— she dreams in warning signs, locks on ...