I remember being sixteen, curled by my bedroom window with my spiral bound notebook. I don’t remember why, but I was angry at my mom. I wrote “Mom is a bitch” in neat pencil print. I looked at that sentence, my stomach rolled a little, and I erased the words.

Mom is great.

But the truth of that tiny moment was that I thought she was awful and I wrote what I would never say aloud to a lunch table of girlfriends. That adolescent admission, erased, still etched permission to write what I do not say aloud. My sin surfaces. I don’t pretend it isn’t there. My salvation works out on the page, heart change charted through years of journal entries.

Sometimes I think what would happen if you read my notebooks. If you read what I do not say aloud. You would see

I am so ugly,

and beautiful

at the turn of a page.