Introduction: Benediction to the Unseen

Do you know who this woman is who is touching you?

The question hung in the air like incense turned bitter. It was never just a question. It was accusation. Contempt disguised as concern. The Pharisees weren’t warning Jesus; they were warning us. There are people who are clean and people who are not. People who are holy and people who should never be near the holy. Their words were sharp enough to slice identity from bone. They wanted to shame the woman into silence, into invisibility.

But Jesus knew. He always knew. And He did not recoil. He received her touch. He called it worship.

This book is for the ones the world passed by. For those who were never given a seat at the table. For those who were labeled, reduced, dismissed, erased. The ones whose stories were too heavy for polite conversation. The ones who disappeared because it was safer. The ones who learned to fold themselves small before they had a chance to stretch wide.

But here, you are not asked to perform. You are invited to be.

This is not a book of answers. It is not a formula for healing. It is not a roadmap. This is a companion. A witness. A slow exhale into the places where breath was once taken. It is an honoring of what has been endured, and a holding open of space for what may yet come.

This book was written from within the ache. Not after the healing. Not from the mountaintop. From within. From the quiet middle. From the dissonance of rupture and the holy resistance of staying.

If you've found yourself in the valley of dry bones—scattered, unsure whether anything can live again—you are not alone. If you have lived in the land of death-shade, the place where faith was fractured, body forgotten, voice buried—you are not invisible here.

Here, we do not rush to resurrection. We walk with reverence through the shadows. We sit with Jesus in the garden, in the silence, in the betrayal, in the tomb. We remember that even in the void before creation, the Spirit hovered. And that is where this book begins: in the dark. In the unformed. In the real.

We will walk through themes of personhood, sacred embodiment, the stories we were told not to tell, and the slow return to wholeness. We will confront the ways the church has failed to hold our pain—and we will not stop there. We will listen for what God is still saying in the wilderness.

My hope is that these pages offer you a place to rest. A place to feel seen. A place where you are not too broken, too late, too complicated. A place where your breath matters.

This is not a manual. It’s a witness. A companion for the ones still learning how to speak while holding the weight of silence.

This wasn’t written from hindsight. It was written mid-night. Mid-question. Mid-collapse.

And if you’re still in it— still holding your breath, still unsure if morning will ever come—

You’re not too late. You’re not too much. You’re not alone.

Let there be light.