I'm cleaning the apartment because Jennifer mentioned something about "spring energy" and "clearing stagnant chi," and while I'm not entirely sure chi is something I believe in, I am sure that the dust bunny situation behind the cozy chair has achieved sentience.

The journal falls out when I move the chair—wedged between the cushion and the wall like it was hiding. Which, knowing what's inside it, makes sense.

I recognize the cover immediately. Floral. Cheap. The kind you buy at a gas station because you need somewhere to put the thoughts that are eating you alive and the closest Target is twenty minutes away and you're not sure you're allowed to go to Target alone yet.[^1]

Month One.

I sit down in the chair that displaced it, dust bunny genocide temporarily forgotten, and I open it before I can talk myself out of it.

October 3rd

I wore jeans today. Again. The third day in a row. I keep waiting for something to happen. Lightning. A phone call. The conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Nothing.

Is this what freedom feels like? Because it mostly feels like waiting to get caught.

I'd forgotten how small my handwriting got when I was scared. How I pressed so hard the pen nearly tore through the page, like I was trying to carve the words into something permanent before someone could take them away.

Mabel watches me from the foot of the bed, suspicious of my stillness. I'm usually knocking things over by now.

October 7th

Questions I'm afraid to ask:
- Am I allowed to drink coffee after 6pm?
- Is it a sin to watch movies with swearing if I don't repeat the words?
- Does God still hear me if I pray lying down?
- If I wear tank tops in my own apartment, does that count as immodesty if no one sees?
- If I order pizza past 10pm, is that gluttony or just Tuesday?
- What if I'm wrong about all of it?

The list goes on. Seventeen questions. I remember writing them at 2 AM, sitting on the floor because I didn't have the cozy chair yet, wrapped in a blanket that wasn't Linda's blanket because Linda's blanket hadn't arrived yet either.

I was so afraid.

Not of God, exactly. Of getting Him wrong. Of discovering I'd traded one set of rules for another and there was no actual freedom anywhere, just different cages with different locks.

I reach for my coffee—reheated Guatemalan from a French press I made hours ago, which is a crime against everything I believe in but sometimes you survive on crimes—and knock the journal off the arm of the chair.

It lands open on the floor. Mabel startles, judges, resettles.

"Sorry," I tell her. "Still me."

I pick it up. Find a pen in the side table drawer, underneath a Riverside Coffee receipt and a button that fell off something I never identified.

And I write.

Dear October Rena,

I found your journal behind the chair. The one Mom sent. Yes, she sent you a chair. She also sent a blanket, and dish towels with wildflowers instead of Bible verses, and eventually a scarf in the exact green of your accent wall because Jennifer has a big mouth and a bigger heart. You'll understand eventually what that means.

I want to tell you it gets easier. I want to give you a list—permission slips, signed and notarized, for all the things you're afraid to do. Yes, you can drink coffee whenever you want. Yes, you can watch movies. Yes, God hears you lying down, sitting up, standing in a puddle of oat milk you didn't notice until Patricia pointed it out with characteristic disdain.

But here's the thing I've learned—and I'm sorry, because it's not the answer you want:

I can't give you wisdom you're not ready to hold.

I stop writing. Stare at the words.

That's the thing, isn't it? That's the whole thing.

I wanted someone to hand me the answers. A new rulebook, clearer than the old one. I kept looking for the person who could tell me how to do this—how to be free, how to be faithful, how to be both at once without the terror of getting it wrong.

But wisdom doesn't work like that.

James 1:5 says if you lack wisdom, ask God. I asked. I asked and asked and asked, those first months. And the answers didn't come in lists. They came in Patricia's particular order and Walter's smiley faces and Todd showing up with his toolbox and not flinching when I knocked it over. They came in Mabel claiming my lap before she trusted me. In Mom's chair arriving with no note. In Grace staying past 3:30 because she wanted to, not because she had to.

The wisdom was in the living. I just couldn't see it yet.

You survive this, I write. I can't tell you how. I can only tell you that you do.

The questions don't go away. You just stop being afraid of them.

And sometimes—not always, but sometimes—you stop needing the answers quite so badly. Because you're too busy making coffee and cleaning up spills and watching people become family in the cracks between your disasters.

That's wisdom too, I think. The kind you can't explain. The kind you just live into.

You're doing it right now. The surviving. The becoming.

You just can't see it yet.

Love,
Rena
(The one who still knocks things over but has stopped apologizing quite so much)

I close the journal. Don't throw it away.

Some things you keep. Not because you need them, but because they're proof you were there. That you made it through.

Mabel stretches, yawns, and claims the warm spot I've left on the cushion.

The dust bunnies will keep until tomorrow.

[^1]: I did eventually go to Target. Alone. I bought throw pillows and cried in the parking lot for fifteen minutes. Growth is complicated.