Please.

Please don't.

Please don't go.

Love beckons to you here. Now. In his arms, beneath his sky. Not there. Not someday. Not in that other place. Yes, you can paint a beautiful scene on the inside of your prison walls. You may fill those walls with flowers and butterflies and birds of every color. But will the birds truly sing for you? Will the flowers smell sweet? The butterflies flit from flower to flower? Perhaps they will be very life-like. Perhaps they will even wish they could live for your sake. But they will be inanimate representations. They will only look like life.

Yes.

Yes, you.

Yes, you are right.

This is not my concern. Not my decision. None of my business. Only once I stood where you stand, my back up against a gilded wall, my soul in chains. Someone showed me a Book of Rules and pointed to the very first entry. "Thou shalt not break the rules," it said. Who made up these rules, anyway? Not I. Who shall obey them? The birds must warble in my world. The flowers must share their lovely bouquet. The butterflies must flap their tiny wings, darting here, darting there.

Reach.

Reach out.

Reach out for his love.

Here, take my hand. I'll walk beside you. I'll walk beside you every step of the way. Do not be afraid. It is only a Rule Book, after all, and not meant for us. We did not write it. So easy to sit on the sidelines, beating one's chest about the rules. Not so easy to take heaven in our grasp; to recognize that heaven is ours if we will but spread our precious wings and soar aloft on the winds of change. They blow now for you.