I think this is what we all want to hear: that we are not alone in hitting the bottom, and that it is possible to come out of that place courageous, beautiful, and strong.
Now I know this is going to seem counter to every instinct that you have, but I’m going to ask you to sit still, or I’ll put you in the trunk.
This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.
It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in.
I know what it’s like to sleep in fear, to starve myself to be worthy, to be ashamed of my voice, to want to sleep forever. To question why I deserve to live.
I name you today, heart fears. I am small, but you are smaller. You will not stop me. You have a voice, fears, and I must listen, but then I will open my heart. I will love you right to death.
I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the deep, because the women around me showed me what healing looks like.
I’ve had a lot of therapists, so I’ve had the opportunity to approach my fear in many different ways. I’ve faced it head on and sideways and tried to tiptoe up behind it.
The most amazing thing is that all my sorrows, all of my darkest moments, are becoming my gifts.
The shadow is dark and the woods are cold, but they are not endless. No matter how lost you are now, you are not lost forever. You are findable.Love just keeps on looking. Love is forever tries.
God wants to take the fears that you and I are holding onto with both hands. He throws them aside, effortless, and then takes our empty hands in His and fills them with his love. He is not a hard driver. He wants to provide.
Everything we have, everything we are, is a gift. How can we judge and shame ourselves if this is true?
I believe God lets us stumble along, slowly finding our way, and giving us chances to pick each other up.
I’ve always let my imagination run free, but now I try to rein it in. Things never turn out the way I imagine, so I am letting them rest. Instead, I am holding just what is in my hand.
It is a beautiful and scary thing to sit open-handed and let all your plans float away like dust.
Love has no demand of us but to keep practicing, to do the next hard thing. Love says, Come dear. Take the next step.
I believe in beauty. I believe in goodness. I believe in the power of turning: the other cheek, time, curve of the earth.
I think this is the essence of life: to be willing circle back, to fall in deeper, to relearn what I thought I already knew.
Being broken isn’t the worst thing. We can be mended and put together again. We don’t have to be ashamed of our past. We can embrace the history that gives us value, and see our cracks as beautiful.
I love that there’s no cutoff where we get labeled and sent off to a home for hopeless, cranky, depressives. Every day is a new chance to listen longer and be braver and love more. We get to try again and again and again.
I doubt that anyone has a Damascus moment after experiencing discrimination. Most people seem to have shining moments of change after experiencing grace.
The first night in the hospital with a snuffling baby girl, I learned that my family was not the only thing that had expanded. There was now a whole new world of opportunities for judgment and self-doubt.
I grew up believing Christians didn’t just believe in Jesus. To be saved, people had to look and speak a certain way. They followed a long list of nots to ensure their holiness. They fit the mold. They followed the rules.
I was taught growing up not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, to withdraw myself from the sinful ‘others’. But we are all others. We are all sinners in someone’s eyes.
The road to the heart is not a long, linear path, but this turning. There is no race or competition, just me and God going deeper, carving a canyon to the soul.
Every day is a new beginning, the building of a habit. Every action is a step in some direction. There is no pause in living.
I’m broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think I’ll fall down and never rise again.
All I’m saying is that I don’t want to sort of fall in love with fifty different people. I’d rather find one person and fall completely, deeply in over my head.