telling your story
-
The Small Permissions Most life-shattering failures do not arrive like lightning. They seep in like water through the foundation. They begin with tiny permissions no one else can see. Just this once. I deserve this. It helps me cope. For the child who grew up in safety, these permissions may remain small. But for the…
-
People often imagine God’s miracles as lightning bolts. A flash. A spectacle. A man wakes blind and goes to sleep seeing. But there is another kind of miracle that receives far less applause because it happens so quietly that, for years, no one notices they are standing in one. It is the miracle of the…
-
Before the house fully woke up, before the questions and snacks and little feet hitting the floor, I carried my unrest outside like a basket too heavy for one arm. Motherhood with small children has a way of thinning you out. The broken sleep. The constant touching. The noise. The invisible labor of remembering everything…
-
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…
-
I have lived on the margins twice in my life, and from the outside I know it looks the same. That’s the strange part. Same distance from the center, same refusal to live the way everyone tells you to live, same sense of standing slightly outside the flow of things, watching instead of participating. But…
-
If comfortable were my mantra, I’d never heal. I’ve done my best to be comfortable without truly diving into reality but none of them were natural. Overdrinking, overeating, overthinking, bad abusive relationships and on and on went the game. Comfortably numb through skills of denial, addictions and disassociation – these were my tools to stay…
-
For me it was a long way down the line, after years and years of healing work, of prayer, and of raging (in therapy and in prayer) at my abusers, that I was ready to open myself to the possibility of forgiveness. No amount of willed or false or hopeful forgiveness was going to fix…
-
I have qualities in this life that I would not have if I didn’t come through tragedy. Tragedy has engaged some of the finest characteristics that I just wouldn’t have found without the experience. Because I am alive and another woman is buried 20 or 30 feet under the ground and will never see the…
-
If a parent chooses not to look at and find their own pain, they will not and cannot see the pain of their child. If a parent chooses to ignore reality, they will ignore the reality of their child’s life, too. When you begin to explore your own pain, when you find the desire to…
-
True healing made me feel like a fish out of water. A comfortable coat of denial was what I grew up with; it’s old feelings enveloped me for years. Stepping away from the comfort of making up stories that I could live with only happened when my life stalled time and time again with dysfunctional…