“Too Small”
I apologized so often
I forgot there was a difference
between having broken something
and merely being present
when someone else was unhappy.
I carried shame like a locket,
close enough to my heart
that I forgot it was not born there.
I learned to fold myself
the way a letter is folded
before it is slipped beneath a door,
small enough to enter,
careful enough not to disturb
the people on the other side.
I sat at the edge of chairs
as though the rest of the seat
belonged to someone more deserving.
I began mistaking
the weather in other people's faces
for evidence of my own wrongdoing.
I learned to read the room
before I entered it.
To measure my voice.
To soften my footsteps.
To make myself smaller
before anyone could ask me to.
I placed an apology
at the beginning of every sentence,
like a doormat
before anyone had even decided
whether I was welcome inside.
I thought if I laid it down early enough,
I might spare myself
the trouble of being accused.
If I said I'm sorry
before the glass could break,
before the fire could start,
before anyone had found
a reason to point at me,
perhaps I could finally prove
that I had not been the one
to ruin everything.
So I will apologize
before the deed is done.
I will make myself
so small
there is nothing left
to blame.
And somehow,
I carried this into prayer.
I trimmed my prayers
until they could fit
through the narrowest door.
I called it faith
when I asked for less
than I needed.
I brought You my pain
with the edges tucked in,
apologizing for the weight of it.
I returned with the same wound
and labelled it failure
that I had not yet learned
how to heal it myself.
I hid my questions
beneath the hem of my prayers,
afraid You might mistake
my needing to understand
for refusing to trust You.
I thought perhaps
even with You
I had to be careful.
Careful with my grief.
Careful with my questions.
Careful with how much I needed.
Careful with how much space
my existence occupied.
As though heaven, too,
had a limit
for how much of me
it could bear.
But Jesus says
I did not ask
for the receipt.
I did not ask you
to be more careful.
I did not ask you
to prove you were worth
the trouble of loving.
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Look to the cross.
I was not squeezing you
into a space
I reluctantly made.
I was not resenting
your presence.
I was bringing home
the one I wanted.
When I endured the cross,
I was not making room
for someone I could barely welcome.
I was bringing home
the one I loved.
There is a place for you here.
You do not have to earn
the right to sit in it.
You do not have to arrive
with your hands full of proof.
You do not have to apologize
for the space your body takes,
for the weight of your grief,
for the questions you carry,
for needing to be held.
I never asked you to become smaller.
You are Mine.
And I did not die
to make your existence
tolerable to God.
I died
because I wanted you home.
So I sit down.
Not at the edge this time.
I let my hands rest
without reaching
for an apology.
I take the seat
I thought belonged
to someone more deserving.
And for once,
I do not say
I'm sorry
for being here.
I think there are some wounds we learn to carry so quietly that we eventually mistake them for personality.
For some of us, “I’m sorry” becomes more than an apology. It becomes a reflex. A way of entering rooms. A way of asking for love. A way of making ourselves smaller before anyone has even asked us to.
I wrote this for the person who has spent so long trying to be easy to love that they have forgotten they were never asked to earn it.
And perhaps, most of all, I wrote it as a reminder to myself:
Jesus did not go to the cross to make room for a version of me that was easier to bear.
He wanted me home.
Maybe grace is not learning how to take up less space.
Maybe grace is finally believing that there was a place for you all along.
