One Final Entry in My Journal
Rainy's Journal - Day 233
A Page Found in the Cottage of the Wise One
Tucked between worn pages of a leather-bound book, beside the hearth where the fire had long since gone out, they found it.
A single page, scrawled in the slanted, delicate hand of the old woman once called Rainy—now long gone.
It was a confession. A lament. A love letter. A prayer.
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There is a paradox I have never been able to leave behind. Once, I wrote: “God will punish the wicked.” It was a small sentence, one that seemed so certain at the time. But now I know I should not have written what I did not yet understand.
Because I do not know who the wicked are.
All people have hated. All have loved. So which act defines us in the end?
Can a man walk in light his whole life, and still fall in his last breath? Can another live in bitterness, but find mercy at the end? If this is true, then are we all at the mercy of our final moment? If so, is even God subject to chance?
But if our lives are weighed instead—if the good must outweigh the bad—then it is not grace that saves us, but our works. And what hope then is there for the weak?
What of the children? The little ones who die before they can choose? Are they judged by the lives they never lived?
No.
I believe now that wickedness is not measured in deeds, but in distance. It is to be without the presence of the Divine.
But even then… there is something deeper, something harder to say.
If the Holy One allows some to be lost, then He must also make a way for every soul to be found. Otherwise, He is not just. And I believe with all I am that He is.
He must be.
Still, I confess—I have wept for the lost. Often. Sometimes in secret. Sometimes so deeply that it shook me from sleep.
And yet, the One who holds all things wept too. And gave everything.
Which means they mattered. Which means they can still be gathered home.
And so I am left with this aching mystery: if the Creator is all-powerful, then He allowed the cost. He allowed the sorrow. He allowed the freedom to choose—even when the choice would break His own heart.
This is the agony of true love.
It is not the kind of love that insists or forces. It waits. It hopes. It bleeds.
I cannot imagine a father who lets some of his children perish. But perhaps this is not a story about fairness. Perhaps it is a story about freedom. And a love so wild, so holy, that it refuses to trap even those it longs to save.
I have always believed that every soul receives an invitation. Not the same one—but a real one. A whisper in the night. A hand reaching through the dark. A thread in the ruin.
And if I am lost, it would not be by accident. I would have to choose it—knowing, and still walking away.
So who is to blame?
If I say the Divine, then I make a mockery of the offering. If I say myself—then I accept the truth of free will. I choose to bear the weight.
And even that—even that—is love.
Because I only know how to love because it was given to me first.
It was placed within me. I became a vessel of it. I have never been able to stop giving it, because it was never mine to withhold.
Even when no one listened to my stories. Even when I could not save the ones I wanted to save. Even when I was forgotten.
Still, I loved. Because I was first loved.
To live in the way of the Holy One is to carry what you do not deserve. To absorb pain that was not yours. To forgive what no one asked you to forgive. To hold hope even when the sky breaks apart.
To believe—always—that the light will return.
So if you find this page, if you read these words, know this:
I do not fear being forgotten. I only fear that love might be.
Because it was never about me.
It was always about Him.
He was the story. He was the thread.
And He is still calling.
—Rainy
Daughter. Teller. Beloved.