overcoming
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I would love to hear from you! A Jewel: Do you believe God holds all of us accountable or do you see His love like milk toast? If your image of God’s love does not include judgment how can there be ultimate justice? Don’t hear what I am not saying. I did not say God…
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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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For a long time, I thought peace would arrive as a feeling. I imagined that healing would eventually make me calm. My body would stop bracing. My mind would become quiet. I would wake up one morning and discover that the internal weather had finally cleared. It seemed reasonable. If I could understand myself well…
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There are two rather foolish ways of raising a child in a dangerous world. The first is to tell him that there is no danger. The second is to tell him that danger is everywhere. The first produces innocence without wisdom. The second produces fear without peace. Neither is particularly useful. We have become strangely…
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There is a strange thing that happens when you have spent most of your life surviving. You become very good at it. You learn to read the room before anyone speaks. You learn which footsteps mean trouble. You learn to anticipate moods, swallow needs, stay useful, stay busy, stay alert. You become capable. Independent. Productive.…
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Some families pass down money. Mine passed down fear. Addiction. Violence. Abuse. Broken marriages. Children who became victims. Adults who became victimizers. People who disappeared into drugs. People who hurt children. People who spent their lives trying to survive what had been done to them. For a long time, I thought this was simply what…
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We have become a civilization obsessed with taking care of ourselves, and somehow we have become remarkably bad at living. Every feeling requires a name. Every discomfort requires an explanation. Every difficult season requires a diagnosis, a boundary, a retreat, a podcast, a bath, a journal entry, or three business days of “protecting our peace.”…
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Every family has a door nobody talks about. It may be painted over. It may be hidden behind a bookcase. Everyone may insist there is nothing behind it. But the children know. They know by the way certain names are spoken. By the sudden silence at dinner. By the joke that isn’t really a joke.…
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The woman I am now would have terrified me then. Not because she is extraordinary. Because she is quiet. She wakes before the house does. Makes breakfast. Teaches her children. Folds small clothes. Washes yesterday from the dishes. Prays over ordinary things. Keeps showing up when there is no applause for it. She has learned…