Even This: A Soft Place to Return To

There are some beliefs we choose not because they’re provable,

but because they become shelter when the storms come.

For me, one of those beliefs is this:

Everything is unfolding for our greatest good.

It’s not a rule.

It’s not a law.

It’s not something I can explain in bullet points or prove in data.

It’s something I choose, again and again—especially when it’s hardest to believe.

Because life doesn’t always make sense.

It doesn’t always feel fair.

Sometimes it breaks your heart and leaves you breathless.

Sometimes it asks you to walk through fire and still find grace.

And if we wait until life looks good to believe it is good,

we’ll spend a lifetime on the edge of despair.

This isn’t about ignoring pain or bypassing truth.

There are horrors happening in our world.

There is grief that feels bottomless.

This week alone has cracked many of us open.

And I won’t pretend that every moment carries an obvious lesson or gift.

But what I’ve come to see is this:

The frame we hold matters.

Not because it changes what happened—

but because it transforms how we meet what happened.

Framing is how we choose to hold the weight of the world.

It’s how we decide whether to harden or soften, to collapse or rise,

to isolate or reach out, to numb or feel.

When we believe that somehow, in some mysterious way, life is unfolding for us—

not against us, not in spite of us, but for us—

we make space for healing, for meaning, for breath.

We make space for love to do its slow work in the soil of suffering.

We are not talking about a big, capital T Truth here.

We’re not making proclamations from mountaintops.

We’re sitting in the dirt beside one another,

offering our cracked voices, our quiet prayers,

our willingness to stay with what is long enough for something new to grow.

This kind of faith is not loud.

It’s not flashy.

It won’t trend.

It won’t win arguments.

It’s not about “being positive” or spiritual bypassing.

It’s a lived, raw, trembling commitment to keep returning—

to our own hearts.

To one another.

To a deeper wisdom we may never fully understand.

To say:

I don’t know why this is happening.

But I will not give up on life.

I will not give up on love.

I will not give up on the possibility that this too might serve some greater unfolding—

even if I cannot see it yet.

So if today finds you numb or angry or devastated—

I see you.

If you’re questioning everything—

you are not alone.

There is space here for all of it.

You don’t need to believe this right now.

You can rage.

You can doubt.

You can grieve.

Just know there’s a small place inside you—quiet and steady—

that hasn’t forgotten who you are.

That hasn’t forgotten why you came.

That place still believes.

And when you’re ready,

you can return to it.

Again. And again. And again.