No one tells you this either.
When survival ends, your body doesn’t just exhale the way you expect it to.
It doesn’t collapse into relief by saying, “thank the lord i can breathe again!!!
No…
It doesn’t celebrate.
It hesitates.
Like someone who has been at the Highest level of survival attention possible
they don’t remember how to just sit, relax, feel the moment.
No….
They watch You, instead
This is not weakness.
This is muscle memory of endurance, Perseverance, Unequivocal survival at it’s finest.
The Body Learned your mind escaped
Your body learned survival long before your words truest meaning could ever escape your mind.
It learned in your posture.
beneath the cracks of tension.
In your silenced grinding of your jaw.
as you anticipate your next blow.
Your next motion
Your next calculated deep breath.
So when the danger leaves,
the body keeps listening for it.
Your shoulders stay lifted.
Your stomach stays tight.
Your sleep stays shallow.
Not because you’re broken—
but because your body was loyal to you, you may not think it is.
You still feel your heartbeat, right?….
It learned how to protect you
when no one else did.
Even when your mind escaped your present reality. Your mind yes, was elsewhere… You remember don’t you?
Why Rest Can Feel Like a Threat
Here’s the quiet truth:
Rest asks your body to trust the present moment and the moments to come. the moments of life we are given.
Trust is hard
when vigilance once kept you alive, Isn’t it?
Stillness can feel like exposure.
Slowing down can feel irresponsible.
Joy can feel suspicious—
like something bad must be waiting behind it.
So you stay busy.
Alert.
Half-braced.
Not because you don’t want peace,
but because peace is unfamiliar terrain to you.
This Is a Relearning, Not a Failure
If your body doesn’t know how to relax yet,
that does not mean you’re doing healing wrong.
It means your body hasn’t been taught
that the war is over.
This stage isn’t about “letting go.”
It’s about re-education.
Teaching the nervous system—gently, repeatedly—
that the ground beneath you is stable now.
That you don’t have to earn safety.
That nothing is about to be taken from you.
Integration Is Slower Than Survival
Survival is fast.
It’s sharp.
It’s decisive.
Integration is slow.
It moves at the pace of the body, not the mind.
It happens in small permissions:
- letting your shoulders drop for a moment
- allowing one full breath without bracing
- noticing when you’re safe instead of scanning for danger
This is holy work.
Quiet work.
Unseen work.
God Is Not in a Hurry With You
The world pressures healing to be visible.
Productive.
Proven.
But God does not rush the body.
God meets you in breath.
In grounding.
In the slow return to yourself.
Not demanding transformation
but offering orientation.
Order after chaos.
Truth after confusion.
Presence after survival.
Don’t worry
If your body hasn’t caught up to your freedom yet,
you are not behind.
You are standing in the recalibration phase
where safety is being relearned
cell by cell.
Survival shaped you.
But it does not get to define you forever.
The body will soften again.
Trust will return.
Rest will become possible.
Not all at once.
But honestly.
And in time.
You are not failing at peace.
You are learning how to live inside it.
If this felt familiar, take a moment.
Not to fix anything—
just to notice where you are right now.
The fire didn’t take you out.
It revealed you.
— Awakened Embers
