She’s Not the Only One

Dear Fellow Pilgrim,

I wrote a prose poem recently. It was raw enough that I thought perhaps it had finally reached the hidden places. Someone told me it touched a depth most people spend their lives avoiding. And for a moment, I wondered if perhaps words had finally done what I had quietly hoped they would do.

And still—I felt unseen. Still unmoved. Still burdened. Because the critic still lives. Still breathes. Still speaks in my own voice.

You may know him too. She appears with an odd sort of devotion, carrying correction in his hands as though it were mercy. She studies every crack in the mirror. She circles every weakness. She promises improvement but somehow leaves only heaviness in his wake.

And yet—there is another voice. I hear him too. A low howl from somewhere holy and far within. Softer than before perhaps. Fainter. But familiar.

I know this wolf. I know where he leads. And still, I do not always follow.

I have long understood the old story of the two wolves—or at least I believed I did. But I am beginning to suspect that understanding a thing from afar and recognizing it within your own soul are entirely different matters. It is one thing to nod wisely at a story. It is another thing entirely to discover, in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, which voice your thoughts are nourishing. Which voice your fears obey. Which voice your habits have quietly chosen. Because that wolf—the one whose call I neglect—knows the way. And still I feed the other. Why?

I think I know, somewhere beneath the surface. Sometimes pain feels strangely like home. Sometimes old wounds become familiar companions, and familiar things possess a strange gravity even when they wound us. Some days it is stubbornness. Other days it feels more like exhaustion. Sometimes I feel as though I have wandered so long in certain patterns that I can no longer tell whether I built them or inherited them.

And lately, while asking why, another question has interrupted me: Does it matter? Part of me believes it does. Some wounds deserve tenderness. Some stories need names before healing can begin. Some tangled threads must be followed slowly and patiently into the dark. And for that reason, I suspect I will keep searching.

But I am beginning to wonder whether I have hidden inside the search itself. Whether explanation has quietly become delay. Whether my endless asking has become another way of standing still. Because while I am busy tracing every root and rehearsing every injury—the good wolf waits. Hungry.

So what is to be done? The answer feels almost too small. Feed him. Feed the wolf who knows the way. And yet I sit there sometimes and watch him weaken while I place food before the other. I feed him lies. Rehearsed accusations. Old resentments polished smooth from handling. Stories I tell myself that feel true simply because I have repeated them often enough. And thoughts that are neither true, nor lovely, nor worthy of praise.

And then, slowly—as though arriving not as thunder but as dawn—something occurred to me: Philippians 4:8 was never merely meant to be admired. It was instruction. A gentle map. A quiet invitation. A list not only of what to believe—but of what to place before my mind when I do not know where else to look.

Whatever is true. Whatever is noble. Whatever is right. Whatever is pure. Whatever is lovely. Whatever is admirable.

That is the food.

Not endless self-examination. Not the autopsy of every sorrow. Not the courtroom where I somehow stand both accused and accuser. The food.

And perhaps this is what I am only now beginning to understand: I do not need to feel truthful before choosing truth. I do not need to feel peaceful before reaching for peace. I do not need to feel lovely before receiving what is lovely. Because perhaps obedience has never depended upon feeling.

Perhaps I have been waiting to become the sort of person who naturally feeds the right wolf before allowing myself to begin. Waiting to feel sincere enough, healed enough, real enough.

But maybe Philippians 4:8 offers permission I had not noticed before. Permission to practice truth before I feel transformed by it. Permission to choose what is good even when it feels awkward in my hands. Permission to feed the right wolf while still feeling, in some strange way, like an imposter beside him. And perhaps that is not hypocrisy after all. Perhaps that is faith. Because I am beginning to suspect something beautiful: the more he is fed, the more familiar his voice becomes. The more natural it sounds. The more it begins to feel like home.

So perhaps this is where I begin. Not with grand transformation. Not with the sudden silence of the critic. Not even with the feeling of freedom. But with one small act of obedience. One true thought. One lovely thing received. One accusation refused. One resentful rehearsal interrupted. One step toward the voice that still knows the way.

The critic still lives. But she is not the only one.

The poem may have told the truth for me. Now I must live the truth it uncovered.