Who checks on the handrail?

Four calls today, and every one of them needed something. Someone's appointment. Someone's money trouble, again. Two more that couldn't wait, because you always pick up. You handled all of it. Now the room's quiet and there's nothing left in you. Nobody asked you one real question today.

You're the handrail on everybody's staircase. People grab it without looking. It isn't loneliness, exactly. You're surrounded, and still unmet. On a night like this, memory offers up a cigarette as the one thing that never asked you for anything. It was billing you the whole time.

God doesn't address you by your role. Not the fixer. Not the reliable one. Not the voice on the line at eleven at night. Every role you carry, someone else handed you. Underneath all of them is a person nobody needs anything from. You can come to Him with nothing to fix and still be welcome. That's the person He's been talking to.

Tonight, do one small thing only because you want it. The long way around the block. An album you haven't played in ages. A chapter of a book with the ringer off. It won't make you more useful to anyone. That's the point. That want is the free person underneath all those roles, raising a hand.