Life Vest (A Poem Rooted in Service)

Service

Recently, I found myself in a place of quiet need.

Not the kind you announce.
The kind you carry privately.
The kind you bring to prayer.

So I prayed.

Not for anything specific
just for support,
for strength,
for reassurance that I wasn’t carrying everything alone.

And slowly, gently,
help arrived.

Not in the way I expected.

But in the way I needed.

A close friend of mine, someone whose life is now facing its own storm, has shown up for our family in ways both big and small. And in her vulnerability, in her sharing, I recognized something familiar.

I have walked through fire before.

I know the terrain of divorce.
The confusion.
The fear.
The decisions that feel impossibly heavy.

And now, standing on the other side of that season, I realize something sacred:

Sometimes our prayers are answered by being given the opportunity to serve.

To give what we once needed.
To offer what once saved us.

To extend a life vest.
To make space.
To offer quiet in the storm.

This is the love language of service.

Not loud.
Not performative.

But deeply spiritual.

It has filled our home with a new kind of peace.
A village kind of peace.

The kind that reminds you:
we were never meant to do this alone.

In serving, I have felt held.
In giving, I have felt seen.
In offering refuge, I have found my own prayers answered.