forgiveness
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Childhood was a house where I learned the weight of footsteps. I knew who was coming by the complaint of the floor. I knew when to become small. The wallpaper kept its little flowers. Morning arrived, offensively ordinary. I was sexually abused. I write it plainly because I spent years making a thicket of language…
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Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”Anyone who has tried to heal a family wound knows how inconveniently alive the past can be. We bury it, and it comes down to breakfast. We forbid it to speak, and discover that our children have learned its language.Long before we had scientific names…
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‘You weren’t born to be anything you want; you were born to be something quite specific.’ —Martin Shaw, Smokehole Somewhere along the way I was taught that freedom meant becoming anything I wanted. Build yourself. Reinvent yourself. Curate yourself. Keep every door open until life itself becomes one long hallway of mirrors. But God has…
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My body became a monument to everything I refused to say. For years I searched for what was broken in me, never suspecting it might be my soul crying out. Headaches. A neck so tight it felt like it was holding up decades instead of a head. It is a strange thing, how flesh becomes…
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When I was a little girl, I learned that silence could become a second skin. It wrapped itself around what had been done to me. It taught me to smile while my spirit folded itself into smaller and smaller corners. It whispered that survival was the same thing as peace. It wasn’t. Silence did not…
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The Lie of “Handling It All”… Somewhere along the way, someone started saying, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” It’s printed on mugs, shared in church hallways, and offered to hurting people as though it’s Scripture. It sounds comforting, but it isn’t fully true. God absolutely allows more than we can handle.…
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Teachers like Joyce Meyer and Beth Moore promote a form of absolution to sexually abusive parents. I would argue that absolution is not theirs to give. ab·so·lu·tion/ˌabsəˈlo͞oSHən/ Formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment. Definition from oxford language It goes on to say, “an ecclesiastical declaration of forgiveness of sins. Used in a sentence, “the priest administered…
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There are phases of life with Christ, and they do not look like what you expect. At first, everything feels big and loud and full of emotion. You feel called, inspired, changed overnight. You want to fix everything, learn everything, do everything. The world feels wide open. Then He starts narrowing you. Not to punish…
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King David is my favorite author of the Old Testament. He was a man that was real, honest, and raw with God. He mused and fussed with God, praised Him, and thanked him — all three rather quickly sometimes. An awesome man of God and King David asked God to keep him “as the apple…
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Once there were always people. Houses full. Cars in the driveway. The long gravity of family gatherings pulling everyone back to the same kitchen table. Someone always pouring coffee. Someone always arguing about politics. Kids slipping between the legs of adults while the grown-ups talked too loudly. People orbited your life then. Parents. Aunts. Cousins.…