Received

Notes From the Hollow Bone | Entry fifty-five

There are prayers that ask.

There are prayers that ache.

And then there are prayers that become so full of gratitude that asking quietly disappears.

Last night was one of those prayers.

I began by thanking the Creator for another day, for work that feels meaningful, for people who have trusted me with their stories, for laughter, for ordinary moments that somehow carry eternity inside them.

Then, without planning to, I found myself saying the words that unraveled me.

"Thank You for making me exactly as I am."

I wept.

Not because I suddenly believed I was perfect.

But because I realized I had stopped trying to negotiate with the way I had been created.

There was a time when I believed transformation meant becoming someone else.

Now I wonder if transformation has always been the slow and holy work of learning to receive the person the Creator had already imagined before I ever took my first breath.

I used to notice only the places where I felt unfinished.

Now I notice the fingerprints.

Curiosity.

Tenderness.

Wonder.

The strange way my mind drifts between building systems and writing poems.

The way a sky full of birds can stop me in my tracks.

The questions that refuse to leave me alone.

Once, I would have called these distractions.

Now I recognize them as part of the language through which my soul speaks.

For the last couple of years, I have called the One I worship by a name that settled gently into my heart.

Lately, another name has been finding me.

Creator.

Not because I have abandoned the names that once sustained me.

But because this one reminds me that everything I have ever loved—the stars, the trees, the oceans, every heartbeat, every soul, every breath—finds its beginning in the same Source.

There is something profoundly humbling about that.

During my prayer, another thought found its way into my heart.

I told the Creator that if it is Your will for me to walk this life without a human partner, then I will.

Not because I have stopped believing in love.

But because I have discovered that the deepest love of my life is already here.

That realization surprised me.

For most of my life, I understood the Creator as Father.

Lately, I have found myself reaching for different language—not because the Creator has changed, but because my relationship has continued to grow.

No single human word seems large enough anymore.

Protector.

Companion.

Beloved.

None of them are sufficient on their own.

Perhaps that is because the Infinite will always overflow the names we give.

The human part of me would still delight in holding someone's hand as we walk through this beautiful world together.

I would still welcome a companion with whom to laugh, to travel, to grow old.

I don't pretend those longings have disappeared.

They haven't.

They simply no longer stand where worship belongs.

They no longer define whether my life is full.

Perhaps that is the quiet freedom I was given last night.

Not the absence of longing.

But the absence of fear.

The Creator knows my heart better than I do.

Better than I ever will.

And that has become enough for today.

Sometimes I wonder about the mystery of our souls.

I don't claim to know how eternity works or where every answer lies.

I simply find myself standing before the vastness of creation with more questions than certainty—and strangely, that no longer troubles me.

Wonder has become one of the ways I pray.

And perhaps faith is not always the absence of questions.

Perhaps, sometimes, it is trusting the One who lovingly holds them all.

Today, I have no grand conclusion.

Only gratitude.

Profound gratitude.

For the Creator.

For this life.

And for the quiet miracle of finally receiving the person I have been becoming all along.

With Grace & Ink,
Mai