Frameworks are crumbling everywhere.

I’m not talking about the places with “good bones” that can be revived through renovation, I’m talking about the places that are tumbling down due to disuse, or misuse, and especially about those built on faulty foundations.

For us who are watching, these events can feel earth-shaking. Maybe we’ve been expending our energy trying to prop up the architecture of a bygone era – the pillars upon which our societies and communities were built – doing what we could to delay the inevitable. Maybe we were escapees for whom the fall of these houses causes us to feel relief as well as “good riddance.” Maybe for some of us these were childhood homes, and we grieve their passing even as we know they couldn’t last forever – that the structures of the past aren’t always built to hold the future.

The collapse of a building is loud, messy, and even disorienting as the air becomes dense with debris. It challenges the stories we hold about what is sound, about what’s functional and needed, about what’s beautiful and worthy of building in the first place. Feelings can arise as thick as the dust that obscures our vision, making it hard to breathe: the fear of being exposed and vulnerable, the fear of letting go, the guilt of not maintaining and upholding the requirements the structure was built upon, the need to find someone else to blame for the fallout.

There’s a mysterious phenomenon here to engage in, however, which is the inextricable blend of two truths: first, that – apart from any human – every season has an ending just as surely as it has a beginning; and second, that, as humans, we are all responsible for not only what is built, but also the manner in which it comes down, as it is guaranteed to do. Nothing in this world can endure forever.

Now when the rubble comes to rest and we have come to terms with the reality that the old has passed away, we have a vital opportunity: not just to build something to fill the space that was left, but to learn from what had been and use that knowledge to realize new dreams.

What worked here? What didn’t?

What were previous limitations and standards? Do they still apply, or should they? Who was being sheltered and supported by the structure? Who was being kept in? Who was being kept out? Why?

What else is possible?

What are our current needs, and what are our hopes for the future? How can we go about creating in a supportive and sustainable way to produce something beautiful, functional, and founded in greater integrity? Can we release some of the rigidity of our grip knowing that what we build has a definite lifespan? Can we remember that the highest job of any edifice is to serve people and reflect their value, and not the other way around?

It’s a precarious time. Everything is on the table, but don’t lose heart.

What do you want to build?

We’ve been on a wild and crazy ride with our son that felt like all questions and no answers – all flailing and no stability. Was it autism? ADHD? Sensory Processing Disorder? Restless Leg Syndrome? Turns out it was retained primitive reflexes, and hallelujah, we’ve made it to the other side.
Here are all the steps in our journey from the beginning:

You’re playing the wrong game.
People are not mines from which you extract value for yourself.
Any good you try to wring from others for your own benefit automatically becomes counterfeit by virtue of the means by which it was procured. It turns to rot as soon as it comes into your possession. It does not fill the void; yet, for one who can only find pleasure in causing terror and harm, the rottenness is addictive. Plus, the numbers look good on paper, which makes you feel like you’re winning, so you double down.

You’re playing the wrong game.
Real power cannot be achieved through violence; real freedom cannot be achieved through oppression. Self-worth cannot be acquired by degrading others. Safety is not grasped by inflicting harm and seizing control.
True safety is Love.
But Love requires self-sacrifice, not self-preservation, and this is why it’s repellent to you; because true sacrifice is not a con you can run to serve yourself. True sacrifice serves the good of the other and the Joy of the whole.

You’re playing the wrong game.
To ensure you are never again the victim, you’ve become the victimizer. This lifestyle of extorting your value from others to bring fulfillment to yourself guarantees emptiness and self-destruction, but somehow that feels safer than facing your own hurt, all your shortcomings, and what you’ve been taught to believe about your inherent value – about what it means to survive, about what it means to succeed. Unfortunately, the game you’re playing has very real prizes; but, instead of being crowned the winner of self-made safety and freedom, your prize is the doom of a self-fulfilling prophecy:

“The thing I have greatly feared has come upon me.”

Trying to escape that constant, internal state of threat ultimately creates an external environment upon which that danger is writ large. It becomes a monster of your own design, and there is no escape. Inevitably you will come to a place bursting with the consequences of your fear-based actions and lifestyle of self-loathing. You thought you were creating an unassailable fortress that could protect you, but its integrity was compromised from the beginning.

It’s too late – you are already vulnerable.
The writing is on the wall. The piper must be paid.

You’re playing the wrong game. But the Truth is for you.
No, you can’t escape consequence.
There will be justice, yes; there will be restitution, yes; there will be pain as a result of the life that you chose, dear God, YES. All of these things are guaranteed, and hallelujah for it. But underneath the beliefs and actions that richly deserve – that only deserve – an eternity in the screaming torment of hell is a soul that God created out of Himself: a creature made for the purpose of loving and being loved forever, a being that is completely worthy of that Love.

How far you have fallen. How monstrous you’ve become. But I know something: the monster is a mask; it’s a forged identity.

There is something deeper and truer about you that cannot be eradicated, no matter how you try. You could come home to it. The pain of punishment could also be the pain of radical transformation if you’d let it.
So, repentance. Please.
Revelation. Please, for the love of God.
Allow yourself to know the goodness that God created you to be; the Love that is the Truth of your calling. Allow them to shatter what you’ve accepted and created. Acknowledge how utterly, how ruinously, misaligned you have been – how much harm your rejection of Love has caused not only to you, but to the people of this world and to the world itself. For the sake of the Truth of the goodness and beauty of your own soul, stop playing God. Please.
For the sake of your humanity, open your eyes.

Please.

Happy birthday to my mom! This beautiful and zesty woman is my look-alike, my adventure buddy, and my theological sparring partner, and the fact that this day was chosen to be National Coffee Day is proof that she’s God’s favorite. She herself doesn’t need that little wink to remind or convince her, however, because she’s moved house and now lives in the dimension where the constant and abundant adoration of God flows untainted by doubt, or fear, or any kind of evidence to the contrary. I’m envious. I still live in a place where all kinds of things claim they can separate me from the love of God, and the ways that I treat myself and other people prove that I believe them too much of the time. How tiresome; how utterly vexing. What an immense relief it must be to suddenly become unencumbered by the weight of our own judgments, to have every limitation removed, and to be able to experience the full measure of Love in our beings. Can you even imagine? It sounds insanely euphoric, and I suspect that that’s an understatement.

In honor of my mom I’m sharing my cover of a song she loved:
Come to Jesus, by Mindy Smith.

I bet it resonates even more now. I hope you enjoy it, too.

I miss you, Mom. I love you so much.

Carefully
I lift the weight of the world 
down from my shoulders;
gather it
with its grief and helplessness
into my arms.

Swaying
like a mother with her child
I hold it to my heart;
whisper
as my own tears fall
“It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.”

Sending you this note from the cave. I hope you’re enjoying this fresh new year!

The night has covered me with frost. 
The dark is quiet and full of waiting.

Even as dawn tiptoes in, gently illuminating a silver world: 
every tree branch sparkling,
every stem of tall grass standing out in proud adornment,
even though the air itself is bracing! 
…it is not time to move mountains. 
It is not time to dig or build 
or march toward the world beyond this one. 
It is time to rest. 
It is time to imagine that future world 
with visions as bright as the glistening present,
as cozy as being tucked in by gloom and early sunsets. 

The Yes of spring is far distant from me.
I am encased in the No of bitter cold: 
the dormancy of frozen earth,
the arresting glimmer of the frost,
nurturing the atomic
yet everlasting
flame of dreams.

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Dear Subscribers,

A few weeks ago I could hear hibernation faintly calling my name, but I couldn’t tell how far away it was. I have projects in progress, so I just kept plugging away, wondering if I could publish some new things in the meantime.

Suddenly, the hibernation is here.

In the next few months I’m looking forward to lots of integration, and enjoying some quiet creative projects. There will also be naps, of course. I plan to greet you with some more fully-formed thoughts in the new year. Paid subscriptions will be paused until then.

Hey, I’m grateful for you! Merry everything and happy always. ✨❤️

Faith

Option to watch/listen below.

There will come a time when you'll revisit places from your life that broke you.

But instead of cowering,
instead of falling back into the old powerlessness 
that came from rejection, shame, and heartache,
you will walk into these places with easy grace, head held high,
knowing you are the very person you needed in that situation.

You have become the one you were waiting for.

You will understand that the past is not immune to the healing 
that's been unfurling through your being;
and your presence here, now, 
coaxes out and soothes the deep hurt
that has been sometimes hiding, sometimes lashing out,
but always longing to be comforted–
longing to be seen, from the very beginning.

It's redemption walking into these places on your two feet.

Song: “Before You Knew It Was Me” by SYML

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A share from the archives while I work on some things.

The Truth will not break YOU.

Truth breaks through the layers of shit 
–the lies, the shame, the fears– 
that have been plastered all over you, 
masquerading as your true self.

Truth pricks through those layers, 
shines its light through the holes that it creates,
so that the light of the Truth of you can shine back. 
Truth, externally, drawing out the Truth of who you really are, internally.

But then why does it feel like you’re breaking? 
Why does it feel like you’re dying?

Because! 
You thought you were all of those things. 
You thought you were the lies, 
you thought you were the fear, 
you thought you were the shame. 
It hurts when the things we’ve believed all our lives long about ourselves are ripped away. It hurts! 
It feels like we’re dying. 

But those things aren’t us. They never were us. 

They never were you. 

Truth is here to tear those things away 
and liberate you. 

Originally shared on TikTok, check it out!

@faith.integrates✨2 Corinthians 4:6✨ #faithintegrates #truthhurts

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My youngest child hits the halfway point of her childhood this week. This is mind-boggling.

God’s faithfulness to my family through the generations has been enormous; I’m always asking him to open my eyes wider so I can see it more clearly, and he does. The story I’m sharing today is not just a birth story – it’s really a giving-up story. How do God’s faithfulness and my giving up fit together? Read on, unless…

Disclaimer – if you don’t enjoy reading the words “tilted uterus” repeatedly, you may want to leave now.

My fourth baby was due October 15. Our family had moved in March of that year to the town we’re in currently to serve the local church. On hearing that I really like to birth my babies at home, one of our parishioners put me in contact with a midwife who was close by, and very kind. My pregnancy went well, and we got settled into our new home. 

Fall drew nearer, and wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, for my baby to share a birthday with my mom on September 29th? It seemed nuts – none of my babies had ever arrived early – but this baby must have liked my idea, because I went into labor the night of the 28th. I even called Ben home from an out-of-town conference because our new tiny person’s arrival seemed imminent; but by midday on the 29th, labor fizzled out. 

Ok, fine, I thought. It would also be cool if baby’s birthday was on my parents’ anniversary, October 10th. Baby seemed to also like this idea, and bam, when the 10th came I was in labor... but again, no baby was forthcoming. In fact, what followed for the next two weeks was prodromal labor, which would happen every other night from midnight to 5am. 

It was so awful. 

In one of the earlier nights of labor, before I caught on to the pattern, I asked my midwife to check my dilation. This was surprisingly difficult, because my cervix was pointed back toward my tailbone. Not only did she have to reach practically to China to find it, she had to manually move it (and my whole womb) back to its appropriate place. 

*heebie jeebies* 

Feeling my uterus rotate was one of the weirder things I’ve experienced... and I’ve experienced some weird stuff. 

Nights pass. Labor is unproductive. I am exhausted and so discouraged, but at least I’m getting a night of actual sleep in between my labor nights. My dear midwife, pregnant herself, actually slept over at our house probably every night for a week straight. Our community was so kind in watching my kids, bringing food over, and giving me encouraging words. Instead of telling me to have a good day, my husband, when leaving for work in the morning, would tell me “Have a baby.” Thanks, Dear. You too. 

Finally, on a Wednesday morning while I was at school with my kids, my water broke. Yay! Something was happening! I called my mom and my family planned to come down that day to help. 

I then proceeded to have three laboring nights in a row – with still no baby to show for it – and I was OVER. IT. 

On Saturday morning, October 24th now, 3am, I went into the bathroom, telling my people that I was not coming out until this baby had been born. Joke was on me – labor stopped at 5 like it always did, and I was so, so tired, and angry. I wanted to scream. Why did labor keep quitting on me, in spite of my being well dilated, effaced, my water broken, and all my efforts?? 

Then, the lightbulb went on.

I remembered my midwife barely being able to reach my cervix. If my uterus had tilted again, with my cervix pointing at my back, no baby would be able to get out. It’s like with every stint of labor, my body was checking to see if that tilt had been resolved yet, and when it found that it hadn’t, labor would stop.  

Welp. That was it. I had come to the end of me.

I went back to my room and told my family and my midwife my suspicions, and asked them to lay hands on me and pray that my uterus would get back in line. I also told them that they’d have to do all the believing because I just could not. My faith and I were completely exhausted and I was tagging out.

So they prayed. 

My family had been planning to return home (a state away) that day, but changed their minds. Sweet relief.

I spent the day resting, and feeling the amazingly bizarre sensation of my uterus repositioning itself at regular intervals. 

By dinner time I felt contractions. 

By 9pm I was in the kitchen with Ben, leaning against the fridge and crying because I was SO DONE and I couldn’t take another minute, let alone whole night, of unproductive labor. (Hello, transition.)

At 12:30am, she was here. 

Glory to God. He can be trusted, and we’re safe to give up. 

Our sweet baby Laidey
born October 25th; 9lbs, 21in long;
with one intervention: Divine. 

If this is the weirdest birth story you’ve ever heard, and you repeatedly wondered “WHY didn’t that woman go to the hospital and just get it over with? Water broken for three days? She could have been in danger!”, valid questions. 

I had people I trusted around me (including a doctor), good resources (especially this article), peace with my decisions (considering the circumstances), and a strong rebellious streak (this has remained). 

And now I have a story to tell. 

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Is the Gospel the good news of Christ crucified and resurrected to give us a chance to escape eternal condemnation in spite of who we are? Or is it the good news of the restoration of who we are?

Updating, reposting, and adding to the TIG compilation.

(Full disclosure: I’m feelin’ spicy. Let’s goooo)

What do we do with the wrath of God in a descriptive Gospel?

If the truth of the Gospel is that we're adored and whole and cherished from the beginning as God's favorite creatures, and that none of our sinfulness can ultimately keep us separated from him, where does a destructive and condemning wrath possibly fit in? Am I denying the reality of God's wrath against sin and injustice by claiming the Gospel is descriptive?

Nope. But am I going to explore the topic with different lenses? Yep, I sure am.

We usually think of Jesus as being peaceful, being meek, and being the buffer that saves us from direct impact of the wrath of God, and for good reason*, but in this thought experiment we’re going to explore the way Jesus also plays the role of The Wrath™ itself. If you’re resistant to that, don’t forget that Jesus is the master of double-duty. Remember that time he was both God and man? Mkay. Let’s continue. (1)

If Peace is the perfect fruition of all things in right relationship with each other, and Justice is the action Peace takes to bring things back into alignment, I would say that Wrath is just Peace, dressed to kill.

Ack! But kill who, tho? Kill sinners? Is the wrath of God the executor of eternal condemnation?

Mmm, not for sinners, no.

Here, let me explain my premise, starting with my definition for sin:

Sin is misalignment from Love. 

Think about it like your body and chiropractic care: when your body is in perfect alignment, health and peace are what you'll experience, because your blood and all your body's systems are flowing and operating smoothly to nourish and detoxify itself without interruption. When you're out of alignment – when you have subluxations and therefore blockages – your systems are being disrupted in either small ways or big, and you start having backups, stagnation, pain, loss of health, and in the extreme, death itself.

The presence of misalignment is death at work in us (however slowly), whereas alignment is life at work.

I'll also assert that being in perfect alignment with Love is the Truth of who we are. That state of being is the Truth of who God made us to be. Any misalignment that occurs may be a fact of our experience, but it isn't Truth, and while it can assume our identity, be very convincing, and cause us to behave in atrocious ways, it can't ever fully subvert the Truth. The Truth about you is still true no matter what your experience to the contrary. You were created as Love, by Love, for Love, and that is who you inherently are. 

So let's get back to who exactly that Wrath has it in for, and the hint that I'll give you is it's not you.

What did Jesus come to do? 

Conquer Sin, Death, and the Devil.

Huh. Are you any of those things? (This is not a trick question, don’t raise your hand.)

What is working death in you? 

Sin: misalignment from your source of being – from Love, the Truth of your very self – by way of the devil, who questions and accuses his way to convincing you to give up your alignment with Love.

What actually p––d Jesus off?

1. Anytime people were gatekeeping love, forgiveness, and wholeness from the hurting, vulnerable people who were seeking them, or

2. When anyone tried to stand in the way of him doing the job he came to do in order to reach those people.

Both the pharisees and the disciples came in for his exasperation and his ire, but I think the situation was bigger than it being about them personally. The thing that was causing the pharisees and disciples to try to hoard the prestige of God’s favor by keeping out everyone they deemed unworthy was in fact holding them hostage, trying to keep them from receiving the kingdom of God. The perpetrators are also victims – they’re perpetrators because of what they’ve become captive to – and the Lord hates the one who holds his children hostage.

In order to “finish it” (as in: “I don’t care who started it, I’m gonna…”), Jesus embodied the wrath of God and dealt death to Death, to do violence to what was doing violence to us. The Wrath of God was satisfied, because Jesus as the Wrath did everything he needed to do** to subvert the Subverter, to overthrow the Overthrower, to free us from the chains that kept us captive, stunted, and wicked (twisted, broken, and breaking). He completed his objective, and now eternal condemnation need not, and truly, cannot, apply.

BUT. What about all the wickedness we still experience, and even embody and commit ourselves?

Healing and adjusting (aka, “sanctification”) take time, but rest assured, the Lord is coming for every manifestations of misalignment in us. And even though sometimes it feels like we’re suffering the wrath of God when they’re removed, he continues to release us from the things we are not so we're free to be the full, true expression of who we are – of who he is.
(For a lot more on this, see my Trauma-Informed Gospel Compilation.)

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*(ex: it’s the blood of a perfect lamb that causes the wrath of God that’s meant for the Egyptians to pass over the Israelites, just as it’s the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, that causes his wrath to bypass us on its way to the enemy of our souls)

**which of course, ironically, didn't look like being dressed to kill in any way, and instead started out looking like being stripped to be killed. He is a wily Jesus.

Click here for the entire series, plus bonus supplemental posts.

The trauma-informed Gospel doesn’t look at you and see a person deficient or worthless or broken and try to sell you some Jesus in order to fix you. No, that’s what the serpent in the garden did: told Eve she was lacking and sold her a product to “fix” herself. Unfortunately, a lot of religion parading as Christianity thought that was a great idea and adopted it as their business model method of evangelism.

The Gospel sees YOU in your wholeness. Sees you in your fullness. Sees you flourishing in goodness, truth, beauty, health, power, wisdom, and freedom.

The Gospel says “Hey!! You’re not THAT stuff – the stuff that’s been hurting you and hurting others through you and keeping you small and tormenting your family – nope, that’s absolutely not you! And you don’t have to believe that it is or behave like it is.

Come with me, I adore you. Let’s put those things to rights. Let’s shed old, faulty stories; let’s heal, let’s grow, let’s flourish. I’ve taken care of everything that that thinks it has an eternal claim on you, you are now free to learn and safe to rest and also to mess up.

It’s not always going to be easy, because learning to trust me will take time, and so will learning to respond differently when you’re triggered and your alarm bells are going off, or when your insecurities are feeling exposed. Relationships can be scary and life is hard, but as you grow in feeling secure in my love and my acceptance of you, you’ll begin to be able to also love and accept yourself without having to fix yourself in order to earn it first. You’ll be able to love and accept others without having to change them.

You’ll make mistakes, maybe even huge ones, and you’ll come to know that they don’t change the truth of who you are, but they’ll show you what inside you wants to be healed. You’ll see the value of the sacrifice of repairing relationships with people, whether you were in the wrong or they were in the wrong or both, but you’ll also learn that neither acceptance or forgiveness equal unconditional access between people. Boundaries are an act of love toward yourself and those around you, they’re even an act of love toward those you don’t like. You will always have unconditional access to me, however.

Your life isn’t going to become magically easy: there will be hard times and difficult situations, but know that they can’t have the final say. I won’t leave you when you’re hurting or angry or despairing. I will be there supporting and loving you. You’re going to learn how to feel, and how to release control. You’re going to learn how to experience joy without fear.

I can’t wait for you to realize how special and important you are to me, and how much I delight in making life work out for you.

Are you ready to begin? Let’s start with this: I. Love. YOU.”

You were slated to leave
the day I played my 13th round of baby-fake-out.
The pattern had remained consistent –
every other night, midnight to 5 am, prodromal labor –
until that night, which was the third in a row.

It was early Saturday morning now and I was so furiously exhausted
I slammed the bathroom door in a desperate rage,
asserting that I would not come out until this baby had been born.
As the hours slid by and she did not appear, the lightbulb came on:
the doorways were not aligned, her path was not clear.
Midnight to 5 am, every other night, she came knocking, insistent:
“can I come out now?”
and was met with a wall of spine.

I reached the end of myself with this devastating revelation:
she was stuck. She could not get out.
I emerged, defeated.

You were there, planning to go home that day.
It had been so long since your arrival that a baby had not joined us,
it seemed like it just must not be time yet, though she was long overdue.
You heard me explain, and beg for your prayers.
You prayed, and then
“We’ll stay,” you said.

I needed you.
I had given up.

There was nothing I could do for myself but rest, and so
there was nothing to distract me from what was happening inside that day:
my womb wandering homeward, rotating inch by inch
to take up its own residence and orientation once more.

Completion, exhaustion, transition, deliverance.

Via opened portals and by train, baby girl made it through:
I needed you.

Pain for weeks. Mystery of mysteries:
the suffering was persistent, the answers elusive.
How is it possible that an explanation doesn’t exist
for someone in this much agony?
And adding bureaucracy to suffering is the most inhumane form
of adding insult to injury.

After days on end of being miserable inside the house
without seeing the sun, without stepping out even once –
despair was all but complete.
Visions of euthanasia danced in your head, hope was a thing of the past.
How could there be a life beyond this wretchedness?

You had given up.
But the prayers of the merciful reignited a spark of vitality,
and I found a way to make my way to join you.

I could not remove your affliction, but I could stave off the depression.
I could not remove the hurt,
but I could take you on a day trip to a beautiful little town.
The people were smiling, the flowers were blooming, the ice cream was melting.
We found a secret place:
an alley within an alley
outfitted with oodles of playful art and delightful whimsy
and two comfortable, old, wingback chairs that were vastly preferable
to the hard seats waiting for us down the block.
Was this place conjured here just for us?
Of course.

I will feed you, I will sing for you,
I will clean your kitchen and your cat’s box.
And on the day I plan to leave for home, I will drive you to your appointment
and take notes, and ask questions, and crack jokes, and make suggestions
…and I will hear what the doctor is not saying,
his eyes flickering toward me as he tells you with grave certainty
where the answer doesn't lie.

And when the moment of devastating revelation threatens to overpower you,
and all you can do is cry tears of fear and grief and pain,
I will cry with you.
Together, we’ll pray –
then “I’ll stay,” I say.

After months of pain, this week the CT scan showed a lot of cancer in my mom’s body.
There are many things we’re feeling about this, but what we know in spite of all we feel is that God has done some crazy stuff in our lives, from giving babies where there should be none to bringing us back from the brink of terminal illness, and he’s not going to stop now.

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Welcome to the home base for all the TiG posts, as well as supplemental articles. I’ll add to it as time goes on.
❤️ Faith

So what actually is the trauma-informed Gospel?

Firstly, it’s Christ’s declaration of our identity of wholeness despite all the work of the enemy to keep us in pieces.

Secondly, it’s that Love = Safety.

Traumas of every kind cause us to believe certain things about what love is and how we attain it that are completely skewed, like:

• love is something I have to work for or earn

• I have to become somebody other than who I am in order to be acceptable and worthy of love

• love might hurt, or shame, or leave me

But the truth is that even when life is difficult, even when it’s terrifying, and even especially when we feel completely alone, we are safe because we are inside of Love, and Love is present with us through every single thing. There is nowhere we can end up that Love can’t go, or won’t go, or isn’t already waiting.

“But Faith! How can you claim that we’re safe when SO MANY people are literally in danger every day??”

Here’s the thing, and it’s not an easy thing: the dangers we experience in this world at the hands of other people, or ourselves, or because of nature or natural causes, are not ultimate dangers, even if they kill us. The ultimate danger is utter separation from Love, our Creator, and that separation began to manifest after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. That separation is what results in all the other dangers and sufferings that we experience, but that separation is the one Jesus put the kibosh on when he was resurrected.

The safety Christ instated at the time of his resurrection is a safety so immense and absolute that it cannot be affected by the mere circumstances of our lives. That’s not me downplaying the pain and loss and terror we experience, that’s just how massive the safety is. It cannot be crushed or nullified or disempowered by any of the monsters that we face.

The safety of Love is not a circumstantial safety, it is an existential safety, and it lies not in what’s happening around us, but in the truth inside us: the truth of Love, and who we are created to be.

Jesus, the only perfect man to walk the earth, was lied about, tortured, and brutally killed. He suffered horribly. He was not safe, and yet, ultimately, he was. And ultimately, so are we.

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Now to repudiate some of the inaccurate, harmful ways we view love:

We don’t ever have to work to earn love. Love works to meet us everywhere we are and bring us to Itself.

We don’t have to be someone else in order to be lovable.

Love does not put us to shame.

Love does not abandon us.

Love does not hurt us.

And most of all, Love does not exploit our fear and pain in order to stroke Its own ego. Love doesn’t back us into a corner and force us into making declarations of belief we aren’t actually comfortable with – but will acquiesce to as another desperate act of self-preservation – because we’re terrified about what It’ll do to us if we don’t. That system isn’t Gospel. It’s abuse.

Love is not in a rush. Love is in it for the long haul, and will do everything it takes to earn our trust and heal our hurts; and little by little we’ll learn to tolerate and accept the truth of Love toward ourselves and within ourselves, until one day we are flourishing, convinced that Love is with us – that Love is for us.

This is our second stop on the scenic route to the next part of the trauma-informed Gospel series. Originally published August 11th, 2020.

Do you believe that Jesus can be trusted with your fear?

Often I’ve operated under the assumption that if I ask God to help me with something, that I then need to “be strong” in my faith by not admitting any nerves or anxiety I have about the situation – as if the presence of uncertainty or doubt somehow invalidates my request, or proves that I don’t really believe God would want to, or be able to, help me.

What fear actually proves is that there’s a piece of my being that needs to be flooded with love.

What I’ve come to realize is that I don’t have to fake my faith with Jesus and hide my fears... as if he wasn’t already fully aware of them. I can tell him exactly what my concerns are, because he loves me. He welcomes them, and gives me peace in exchange – even before the situation I’m worried about is resolved.

How subtle and clever is the liar who says that if I share my fears with my Creator I’ll be condemned, when the truth is that admitting and giving our fears to God frees us from them, and it’s actually the hiding of our fears that keeps us imprisoned.

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