Grace in the Fire: Faith Through Transformation

Grace doesn’t always feel like grace.

Grace can sound like silence after begging for answers.

Sometimes, it looks like loss,

or watching the life you prayed for

collapse in slow motion.

Sometimes, grace comes to your doorstep

not dressed in comfort or mercy,

but in fire.

Photographed by Marguerite Maire |10.26.20

Unraveling

For me, grace didn’t arrive in a shimmering moment of certainty. It came in a season of collapse and slow unraveling. It came when I was forced to recognize that the truths I had inherited didn't fit the shape of my soul. When the scripts I had memorized about how to be good, how to be worthy, how to be loved, finally crumbled, and all that remained was the desperation to be wholly myself.

Letting go of who I was didn’t feel like bravery. It felt like betrayal of everything I had once clung to for safety. The strangest thing about outgrowing the mask is it happens all at once. You can no longer uphold a persona when people can see the real you under the cracks. Eventually you just rip it off and say, "Here I am!" Not only are people shocked, but I found that they were just as relieved as me. Because in the depts of our human nature, everyone longs for authenticity, especially when it's out of reach.

The rawness of reality hits without warning. One day, you just wake up and know: I can’t carry this person anymore. Not because you don’t care, not because it's too heavy, but because you’ve outgrown who you had to be. Because the version of you you’re walking toward was always there, buried beneath a lineage of lies you once believed.

Who I am isn't palatable or polished, it was the suppressed self. The one that doesn’t please the eye, the ear, or the world at large. It’s the child who cries, “Mommy, look!” The wife who says, “Do it yourself.” The woman who finally dares to declare, "I am perfect the way I was made, whether you agree or not."

Becoming

Becoming, I’ve learned, is not romantic. It is inconvenient. Uncomfortable. It’s challenging in ways that no one applauds. People don't see the internal death that has to happen for the external manifestation. No one throws you a party for setting down your coping mechanisms, for picking up new ones that are unpopular, but work. No one notices the pain of walking away from comfort or for not calling them back. People only notice their own projections, and when you're called to be a mirror, a black hole of hope, the unhealed are bound to misunderstand, and even hate you.

I didn’t know it at the time, but God was already sowing purpose into the cracks of my soul. He was teaching me how to be faithful without recognition. How to move without external proof. How to choose the next right thing even when it didn’t feel good, only true. Because truth isn't comfortable. Truth challenges your own ideas and beliefs. And truth seekers love to be wrong, because being wrong leads to wisdom.

When you’ve been trained to perform, to please, to preserve other people’s comfort at the expense of your own, truth is the only way out. I’ve learned, especially recently, that peace built on suppression is not peace. It’s erosion. And you don’t need to live underground and disconnected from yourself just to be loved.

Rising

There came a moment when I had to decide: Would I keep editing myself for belonging? Or would I tell the truth and let the real ones find me? That decision broke me. That decision then built me, brick by burning brick. Purpose didn’t pour in like light through stained glass. It rose more like smoke from smoldered ground, slow, steady, and hazy at first. But it was there. I saw it in the way I started choosing integrity over impression. In the way my voice stopped shrinking. In the way I let silence settle instead of rushing to fill it with apologies.

Purpose doesn’t look like the mountaintop. It looks like discipline. It looks like doing hard things, over and over, without recognition. Like getting out of bed when every bone in your body begs for rest, when your heart can’t match the pace or pressure of life. It’s washing your face, brushing your teeth, feeding yourself breakfast, and writing even when the words won’t come. It’s letting go of someone when every part of you wants to keep holding on, because deep down, you know they won’t grow if you don’t release them. Purpose looks like walking into a room with your head held high, not because it’s easy, but because you no longer have anything to hide.

Reflecting

Faith isn't for the gentle, blessings are. Real grace, the kind that costs something, the kind you build your life on, doesn’t whisper. It roars. It tears. It strips. It hurts. It declares. It sacrifices.

Faith looks like saying yes to the unknown, like trusting the pull in your belly more than the noise in your head. It’s sifting through that noise, naming it, and uprooting what no longer belongs. It’s believing that The Divine can work through your mess even more than through your mask.

That grace, doesn’t always catch you. Instead, it dares you to jump. Because real faith doesn’t comfort what’s false; it burns away what no longer serves and casts what’s ready to rise.

Now, I see faith not as perfection, but as presence. Not as a tidy belief system, but as a rhythm, an agreement between me and God to show up fully, even when I’m afraid. Especially when I’m afraid.

Photographed by Marguerite Maire |10.26.20

Returning

And when it’s time, when God says you're ready, He will send people who do see you. Not the costume, but you. The phoenix from the fire. The devotion to hope. The prayer you can’t put into words. These angels don’t shrink back. They do what you do. They heal the healer. They speak to the speaker. They hold up a mirror to the mirror and say, “Her. I see her. Don’t hide her again. She was made for eternity. Now, go. Reflect this. You matter.”

I thought I would find myself while alone. But the truth is, I found myself in communion. Not with the many, but with the few who could handle truth. The ones who didn’t confuse softness with silence. The ones who mirrored my soul with tenderness and accountability. Because that’s what love does when it’s divine. It doesn’t flatter. It refines. It calls you into your purpose without shame.

Healing doesn't always arrive with ease, or happen naturally over time. And I now know that writing my way into transformation is not like exhaling into a soft pillow, but screaming into it with snot and tears running down my face. It’s not pretty, it’s purposeful.

And in that crucible, I found something I never expected: a deeper self. A truer voice. A soulful romance with life, not rooted in ritual, but in reverence. This is the kind of grace I serve now. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s real. And truth, no matter how much it strips from me, has never left me empty. Truth is what makes me whole.