Adena M'lynn's Voice

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 ...

  i wish you would come for a visit. not a long stay, not a grand entrance, just just your voice breaking this silence that’s strangling me. i search for the answers to  why . why you stay away. why i lied.  why no chigger jokes. why the only echoes i hear are my own cries ricocheting off the walls of my mind. tears keep coming, uninvited but faithful, like they know something i don’t. they drip down my skin, salty proof that longing still causes pain. i wish you would visit. i’d open the door to my heart so wide, it would creak on its hinges— but it wouldn’t slam shut. no. i’d hold it open like our promise, like a prayer i’ve whispered too many times, like hope that refuses to rot. and i’d greet you with a hug so fierce, so desperate, you’d feel every of missed smile pour out of me at once. the words i could never say would spill down my arms into your chest. will you just say hi? just one syllable, a crack in the distance, a bridge strong enough to carry me out of this ...

  Inspired through being loved, I learned that even in silence and closed doors, agape lingers as gratitude and learning “trust.” ~Adena M’lynn Why do you haunt my mind? I thought silence would be the cure, thought that if I blocked you, I could finally breathe again. But every time, my trembling finger hovered over the button, I’d undo it— because love isn’t built to erase. Your smile— it ambushes me. In laughter I wasn’t expecting, in words as small as chigger, in texts that should remained unwritten — and suddenly there, like a kindness that refuses to die, “hiiii”. I don’t understand why I had to do the very thing that hurt you— lie. I never wanted to be the one to crack the fragile glass of trust. My heart breaks as I say this: I never wanted harm to carry my name. But my name has too often stood for  pain. You— you were the mirror that showed me how my actions ripple outwards. You taught me that kindness isn’t an idea, it’s a practice. That love— the real kind, the agape...