valerie cossette

“It's not that,” I said, trying to figure out the words to explain, when I only partly understood how I was feeling about it myself. “I know he'd be okay with it... and we might end up going there, eventually. But once he knows, there's no taking that back. I... I just need more time to think about it, first, before we go there. Right now, he's just my Grandpa, nothing else, and I'm just his innocent little baby girl... I'm not sure I'm ready to give that up, not yet.”

The second error is taking silence for an answer. When you pray to God and get only silence, that is neither a yes nor a no. It is simply the absence of a response. Whether or not God has heard your prayers is impossible to know, so however you interpret the silence, it is due to your own feelings. If you do something wrong and God doesn’t punish you, does that mean your actions are condoned or forgiven? How could you possibly know if God doesn’t explicitly tell you? God hasn’t deemed you unworthy; you deemed yourself unworthy. Do not try to find meaning in silence. All you hear is your own conscience.”

The thought popped into her mind that she should probably pull away and that sneaking into her dad’s bed and smelling him was already a bit off. But her mind was already beginning to ask some more questions.Did it look like mine?How much hair does he have?What does it look like?What does it feel like to rub my fingers through it?What does it smell like?