There was a season when a single bloom inside the fence was enough to tell the truth:

life in me was still there.

The Sanctuary was written from that season.

Not after every fence had fallen.
Not after every door had opened.
Not from some distant place where the ash could no longer be seen.

Life in me was still there.

That was the miracle.

A bloom can remain in captivity.

It can reach toward light through wire.
It can press itself through a narrow opening.
It can live where there should not have been enough room to live.

But the life does not come from the fence.

The stone does not make the bloom.

The captivity was not fertile ground.

The life was preserved in spite of it.

And the garden does not grow in captivity.

I know that now.

The garden is on the other side of the fence.

Resurrection did not mean Real Jesus carried me somewhere I would never see the fence again.

It happened here.

In the same landscape.
Along some of the same roads.
Within sight of places my body once knew as danger.

The fence can still be visible.

The ash can remain part of the truthful history.

But I am no longer growing inside it.

Now there is air.

There is a floor inside me.

There is room to walk.

There is a garden where the living woman can receive what Real Jesus gives without having to force a bloom through the bars just to prove she is still alive.

The bloom inside the fence mattered.

It bore witness that captivity had not extinguished the life God preserved in me.

But survival was never the whole promise.

The bloom was preservation.

The garden is resurrection.

And the garden is outside the fence.

Thank you, Jesus.