personal growth
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Sometimes I take inventory of my body and find my jaw clenched, my shoulders tense, my hands balled into fists. It’s like I’m hanging on for dear life to something slipping through my fingers. What if I let go? Let myself be cracked wide open? Let myself melt into rest? What if—instead of holding on…
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When my heart is overwhelmed and things get really real, I want to be led “to a rock that is higher than I” not to my own familiar devices—an attempt to self-soothe. Self produces that which is of the self. I’ve lived enough life to know I don’t need a self-production; I need an impartation…
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You pull me close, I won’t resist, My heart was made for Love like this. An empty cavern; a desert plain, Nothing to offer but all of my pain. You take it in stride, both hands on my face, Breathe life in my lungs; You fill in the space. Where the world left me empty,…
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This month marks a year that my husband and I have been separated; six months since we’ve sought divorce. This bitter pill has been excruciating to swallow, but I’m washing it down little by little, trusting God to make it make sense when I get to the other side. Although I’m very much “in the…
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Written December 4, 2019 Let your guard fall. You don’t have to be the strong one here. My love isn’t fragile. It doesn’t hinge upon your ability to “get it right.” My love is a tower of strength; a place of refuge where your heart is safe. I understand you. I know you. I love…
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You rode into my life, a knight in shining armor; pulling me out of my own miry pit. A hero in my eyes, until you sliced me with your sword. It wasn’t intentional, you’d say.In fact, how dare I assume it was even about me at all? This invalidation lodged a dagger in my heart,…
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This year came in relentlessly swinging, like a heavyweight boxer fighting for a championship title. It knocked me upside down and kept me there, blood rushing to my head as the punches kept coming. It wasn’t the blows themselves that caused the most damage. It was the disorientation in the wake, when my world was…
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Journal entry: December 9, 2022 How do you come out from the cocoon of survival and emerge as a butterfly? I once slinked along the ground, carrying the DNA of a butterfly but looking nothing of the sort. I tucked myself away in hidden-ness, allowing You to turn me into goo; trusting You & “trusting…
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It was halfway through the previews when my childhood best friend Amanda and I stumbled through the dark theatre, leaving a trail of spilled popcorn, tipsy off laughs and shared margarita flights. We were meeting our sisters and moms on the opening night of the live-action depiction of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The cartoon version…
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The ride home from middle school pick up was filled with angst, yelling, manipulating and arguing. My eleven-year-old daughter Quinn wants to sign up for tackle football but the rule in our house—one we held her older brother Zaiden to—is no tackle football until you turn twelve. Because of Zaiden’s May birthday, he was able…