I craved to make my faith as real as possible, which meant being recklessly honest in His presence.
We cannot experience free joy and happiness without experiencing the depths of pain.
…the sweetness of grace and freedom comes hand in hand with the uncomfortable, bitter-rawness of honest emotions and grief.
I wanted to forgive my mom and my dad so badly for the deep hurt they caused, the fear their broken marriage invoked in me, but I also didn’t want to pretend anymore. Pretending is exhausting.
I wasn’t there yet, I wasn’t finding joy and gladness in my barrenness, but I believed I would. I believed He would make my barren soul as beautiful as His perfect garden.
Time and time again, I find I cannot skip the night to arrive to the morning. Joy comes in the morning, but the morning comes after the dark night. Sometimes the night lasts longer than we want it to.
Jesus came emotional and raw, scandalously gracious. I want to be like Him.
In my gut-wrenching honesty and by acknowledging our big, big God, I found peace.
Fast forgiveness is a part of Christian culture I want to help change and transform. I ache for a journey of Jesus-like forgiveness. The kind demanding time and suffering in the process.
Loss of any sort should stir up emotion; if it doesn’t, it’s because we’ve trained ourselves to be numb. We’ve bought into the great societal lie that emotional and sensitive is bad, is shameful, is weak, and worse yet is unlike Him.
Wholeness is birthed through vulnerability and sensitivity, which is often conceived in brokenness. Jesus taught me this.
…when I decided to be fully honest about whatever my heart undergoes, I found immense peace among the chaos of uncertainties. In my honesty and by acknowledging our big, big God, I found peace.
Too many men I know experience shame because society places pressure on them to withhold emotion: emotion and sensitivity is weak. I have found the opposite is true: emotion and sensitivity is what makes us strong.
I love them both as though I birthed them both, but also as though I adopted them both.