The Stories Beneath Violence: A Christian Reflection on Human Dignity

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After writing a Substack post, I realized I wanted to more fully explore the theology behind it and so below is what came from redrafting that post to include my thoughts on theology.

One of the things that has struck me over the years as a therapist is how often people think violence begins with a violent act.

When we hear about domestic violence, racial violence, child abuse, or even bullying, our attention naturally goes to the behavior itself. We focus on what happened, who did it, and how it could have been prevented. Those are important questions. But they are not the only questions worth asking.

The longer I have worked with trauma survivors, the more convinced I have become that violence rarely starts with violence. More often, it begins with beliefs about power, worth, and whose needs matter.

I have worked with survivors from many different backgrounds and life experiences. Some grew up in abusive homes. Some survived violent relationships. Some experienced discrimination or exclusion because of their race, culture, gender, or other aspects of their identity. Their stories were very different, but I found myself noticing a similar theme beneath many of them.

At some point, someone decided, whether consciously or unconsciously, that this person’s humanity mattered a little less.

That may sound like an overstatement, but stay with me for a moment.

When I sit with someone who has survived domestic violence, the issue is rarely just anger. Most people experience anger and never become abusive. The deeper issue is often a belief that one person has the right to control another person. The abusive behavior grows from a mindset that elevates one person’s needs, preferences, or authority above someone else’s autonomy and dignity.

The same pattern can be found in many forms of racial violence and discrimination.

I am not suggesting that everyone who holds a stereotype or a bias is violent. Human beings are more complicated than that. But history gives us countless examples of what happens when groups of people are viewed as less intelligent, less trustworthy, less capable, or less deserving than others. When those beliefs become normalized, harmful treatment becomes easier to justify and easier to ignore.

What interests me as a trauma therapist is not simply the behavior. It is the belief system underneath the behavior.

As a Christian, I find myself returning to a truth that appears in the very first chapter of Scripture. Human beings are created in the image of God. Before we accomplish anything, before we earn anything, before we belong to a particular nation, race, political party, social class, or denomination, we bear God’s image.

That truth has profound implications.

If every person bears the image of God, then human dignity is not something that can be granted by culture or withheld by those in power. It is not reserved for people who look like us, think like us, vote like us, worship like us, or agree with us. It belongs equally to every human being.

Violence becomes possible when we lose sight of that reality.

Trauma often develops in environments where people are not fully seen. Survivors frequently describe feeling invisible, dismissed, controlled, or unheard. They talk about being treated as though their thoughts, feelings, or experiences carried less weight than someone else’s.

In many ways, trauma is not only the experience of being harmed. It is often the experience of having one’s God-given dignity ignored, denied, or violated. Over time, those experiences shape how people understand themselves and the world around them.

A woman leaving an abusive relationship may struggle to believe that her needs matter. A child who grew up in a controlling home may have difficulty trusting their own judgment. A person who has repeatedly encountered prejudice may begin to anticipate rejection before it occurs. The circumstances are different, but the underlying injury often has something in common: the experience of being treated as less than fully human.

As Christians, this should concern us deeply.

Throughout Scripture, God consistently moves toward those who have been marginalized, oppressed, excluded, and overlooked. Jesus repeatedly crossed social, ethnic, religious, and cultural boundaries to restore dignity to people others had dismissed. He saw individuals where others saw categories. He saw image bearers where others saw outsiders.

His example challenges us to examine our own assumptions.

How do we view people who are different from us?

Whose voices do we instinctively trust?

Whose pain are we tempted to minimize?

Who have we quietly concluded matters less?

These are uncomfortable questions, but they are important ones.

Children are constantly learning from the environments around them. They notice who is respected and who is dismissed. They notice who gets to speak and who is expected to stay quiet. They notice who is protected and who is blamed when something goes wrong.

As followers of Christ, we have the opportunity to model something different.

We can create families, churches, workplaces, and communities where dignity is consistently affirmed. We can speak up when others are devalued. We can challenge systems and attitudes that diminish people. We can teach our children that every person they encounter bears the image of God.

The longer I do this work, the more I believe that violence grows wherever empathy shrinks. When people stop seeing one another as fully human, harmful behavior becomes easier to justify. When dignity becomes conditional, abuse becomes easier to tolerate.

The gospel calls us in the opposite direction. It calls us to see people as God sees them. It calls us to recognize the image of God in those who are easy to love and those who are difficult to understand. It calls us to remember that every person we encounter possesses inherent worth because they were created by the same God who created us.

That does not solve every problem. Human beings are far too complicated for simple solutions.

But I believe it is one of the places where both healing and prevention begin: in the decision to see every person as an image bearer whose dignity is worthy of protection, respect, and care.

What the Church Protects Reveals What It Fears

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There’s something I’ve been sitting with lately that feels difficult to name out loud, though I suspect many women inside the Church have felt it in their bodies for years.

Sometimes the same systems that struggle to protect women are also the systems most invested in silencing them, not always intentionally and not always maliciously, but structurally, culturally, and theologically.

And I think that distinction matters.

Over the years, I’ve watched many churches ask extraordinary things of women. Women disciple children, organize ministries, hold communities together emotionally, show up when people are grieving, teach Bible studies, coordinate meals, visit the hurting, lead behind the scenes and carry relational labor that often goes unseen and unnamed.

Women are often expected to pour themselves out endlessly in service to the Body of Christ.

But when conversations begin about authority, leadership, accountability, abuse, or institutional power, the tone can shift quickly. Then the language becomes about “biblical order,” and about submission, not causing division, and protecting the church.

And somewhere inside that shift, many women begin to recognize a painful reality: sometimes what is being protected is not humility, faithfulness, or even Scripture itself, but hierarchy.

That realization can feel deeply disorienting for people who genuinely love the Church, especially because many of us were raised to believe the Church would be the safest place to tell the truth.

The recent debates within the Southern Baptist Convention have brought some of these tensions painfully back into view. The conversations around restricting women from leadership roles are happening against a larger backdrop that many people cannot ignore: decades of struggling to address abuse, institutional protectionism, and the silencing of survivors.

For years, appeals to “church autonomy” were often used to resist centralized accountability around abuse and predatory leadership. But now, some of those same structures appear willing to exercise denominational authority when the issue becomes whether women may lead, teach, or serve in visible ways.

That contradiction is difficult not to notice and, for many women, it lands not merely as a theological disagreement, but as something far more personal.

Because when people repeatedly experience being dismissed, overexplained to, interrupted, spiritually scrutinized, or mistrusted, those experiences do not remain merely intellectual. They become embodied. Over time, people begin learning what parts of themselves feel safe to express and what parts do not.

Trauma always shapes voice. People learn when speaking honestly creates danger. They learn when asking questions creates relational rupture. They learn when visibility carries punishment. And eventually many stop speaking not because they have nothing to say, but because silence begins to feel safer than honesty.

This is part of why these conversations matter far beyond denominational politics. They shape nervous systems. They shape identity. They shape people’s capacity to remain spiritually connected without abandoning themselves.

I keep thinking about Jesus and the way He consistently interacted with women in the Gospels, not performatively or symbolically, but relationally.

He spoke to women publicly in cultures that often did not.
He listened to them.
He allowed women to travel with Him and support His ministry.
Women remained near Him at the cross.
Women were entrusted with the first witness of the resurrection itself.

Again and again, Jesus seemed remarkably unconcerned with protecting male religious status. The people most threatened by women in Scripture were often religious systems themselves and I think that’s important to sit with honestly because it’s possible to defend a structure so fiercely that we stop noticing what kind of fruit it is producing.

Jesus said we would know things by their fruit.

So it is fair to ask:
Does our theology produce humility?
Safety?
Honesty?
Mutuality?
Compassion?
Freedom?
Christlikeness?

Or does it sometimes produce fear, silence, image management, and the protection of institutional power?

Those are uncomfortable questions. But I don’t believe they are unfaithful ones.

I also think many of these conversations flatten Scripture into something far smaller and more rigid than it actually is. The New Testament presents women praying, prophesying, teaching alongside husbands, funding ministry, leading house churches, serving as deacons, laboring alongside apostles, and participating actively in the life of the early Church.

And perhaps one of the most striking realities is this: spiritual gifts in the New Testament are never categorized according to gender. The Spirit gives gifts according to grace, not hierarchy.

That does not erase distinction nor does it erase embodiment or difference, but the Gospel repeatedly dismantles systems of spiritual status and superiority.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul’s words in Galatians were radically disruptive because the Gospel was radically disruptive.

The Kingdom of God consistently moves toward shared dignity rather than protected status and honestly, I think part of what makes these conversations so emotionally charged is that they are rarely just about theology. They are about power, belonging, fear, identity, and whose voices are considered trustworthy.

Sometimes institutions become so afraid of losing control that they confuse control with faithfulness but the Spirit of Christ has never seemed particularly dependent on coercion.

Jesus did not build His Kingdom through dominance. He built it through servanthood, truth-telling, humility, and love and perhaps the Church is healthiest not when certain people are protected from sharing power, but when every believer is invited to participate fully, responsibly, and humbly in the life of the Body of Christ, not because hierarchy disappeared, or because discernment no longer matters, or because every role is identical, but because the Gospel was always meant to move us toward deeper mutuality, deeper humility, and deeper recognition of the image of God in one another.

Honestly, I don’t think most women are asking for status. I think many are simply asking to exist fully in the Body of Christ without having to shrink in order to belong.

The Slow Return of Hope

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There are seasons when the soul does not sing easily. Seasons where faith feels less like soaring and more like sitting quietly in the dark, trying to remember what light once felt like.

I think that’s why I keep returning to Book of Lamentations, not because it resolves suffering neatly nor because it offers quick comfort, but because it refuses to lie about pain.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare that is.

We live in a culture deeply uncomfortable with grief. We rush people through heartbreak. We hand out silver linings while wounds are still open. Even in faith spaces, we sometimes move too quickly toward redemption language because suffering itself makes us uneasy. We want resurrection without sitting at the tomb. We want healing without fully acknowledging what was lost.

But Book of Lamentations lingers in the ruins. It lets the smoke rise, the silence ache, and grief breathe.

And strangely, that honesty feels sacred to me.

Because there are losses in life that cannot be reduced to inspirational lessons. Some grief changes the architecture of a person. Some suffering rearranges the nervous system, the body, the assumptions you once held about safety, love, God, or the world itself.

Sometimes you survive something, but you do not emerge untouched.

I think Scripture knows this better than we often allow ourselves to admit.

The writer of Book of Lamentations does not sanitize devastation. He writes from the middle of collective trauma and from the collapse of what once felt stable, holy, and secure. The language is visceral. Raw. Almost disorienting at times. Hunger. Abandonment. Exhaustion. Despair.

And yet the very existence of lament tells us something important:

God would rather receive our honest grief than our polished pretending.

That matters deeply to me.

Because I think many of us learned to perform wellness long before we actually experienced healing. We learned how to sound faithful while silently unraveling inside. We learned how to quote Scripture while dissociating from our own pain. We learned how to smile while carrying grief our bodies never fully got permission to release.

But lament interrupts performance. Lament tells the truth.

It says:

This shattered me.
This mattered.
I do not know what to do with this pain.
I do not understand where God is in this moment.
I am angry.
I am weary.
I am grieving.

There is something profoundly courageous about that kind of honesty.

And maybe that is part of why lament is not faithlessness. Maybe lament is actually a form of relational trust. After all, we only cry out toward someone we still hope might hear us.

I think about this often when I consider trauma and grief work. People sometimes assume healing begins when pain disappears. But many times healing actually begins the moment someone finally feels safe enough to acknowledge what hurt.

That is true spiritually too. Sometimes the holiest thing we can do is stop minimizing our sorrow and to sit quietly before God without trying to edit ourselves into acceptability.

To admit:
I am disappointed.
I am exhausted.
I am lonely.
I do not understand why this happened.
I miss who I was before this loss.
I miss who I thought would stay.
I miss the version of the future I once believed in.

There are griefs we carry not only for people, but for innocence, safety, belonging, certainty, trust, health, relationships, communities, and dreams.

And some grief does not resolve cleanly. Some grief becomes something we learn to carry with tenderness instead of something we “get over.”

I think Book of Lamentations gives us permission for that too.

And then, in the middle of the sorrow, comes that quiet turning:

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope…”

Not because circumstances suddenly changed.
Not because the suffering vanished.
Not because the writer forced himself into toxic positivity.

Hope emerges almost like a trembling act of resistance. A remembering. A choice to keep turning one’s face toward mercy even while standing in the ashes.

Honestly, I think we misunderstand hope sometimes. We imagine hope as certainty or confidence or emotional brightness. But biblical hope often feels much more fragile and stubborn than that.

Hope is the widow planting flowers anyway.
The grieving father making coffee the next morning.
The trauma survivor learning to breathe deeply again.
The person praying with tears instead of eloquence.
The exhausted soul whispering, “I still want to believe love is real.”

Hope is not always triumphant. Sometimes hope barely whispers. Sometimes hope is simply refusing to abandon yourself completely. And maybe that is why lament matters so much. Because real hope cannot exist where truth is forbidden.

When we suppress grief, numb pain, spiritualize suffering too quickly, or shame ourselves for hurting, we do not actually create hope. We create disconnection. From ourselves. From others. Sometimes even from God.

But lament keeps the relationship open, keeps speaking, keeps reaching, and keeps breathing. Even through tears. Especially through tears.

I think that is what moves me most about Book of Lamentations now. It reminds me that despair is not proof of spiritual failure. Grief is not weakness. Questions are not rebellion. And sorrow does not make us less faithful.

Sometimes lament is simply what love sounds like when the heart is breaking.

And perhaps hope is not found by avoiding grief, but by allowing grief to soften us without destroying our capacity for connection, compassion, or wonder.

Perhaps hope grows slowly there in the honest telling, in the staying, in the remembering, or in the quiet decision to believe that mercy still exists, even if we cannot fully feel it yet.

Maybe that is the invitation of lament, not to remain forever in despair or to glorify suffering, but to stop abandoning ourselves inside our pain.

To let grief speak.
To let God meet us there.
And then, slowly, sometimes very slowly, to practice turning our faces toward hope again.

The Sound of Staying: What I Carried Home from Ukraine

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There is a moment each morning in Lviv that stays with me. At exactly 9:00 a.m., everything shifts. Not stops, just deepens. A low, steady tone begins to echo through the streets. It’s not quite a siren, not quite a bell. More like a pulse. A remembering. For one minute, the country collectively pauses. And then the national anthem rises.

The first time I heard it, I didn’t fully understand what was happening. But I felt it deep in my chest. That rhythmic, steady beat moving through my body like a second heartbeat.

Grief.

Defiance.

Remembrance.

All at once.

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn…

Macon told me about a book he had read, The Beatitudes and Terror. I didn’t read it until I got home, but I think in some ways, I was already inside it. Because here, the Beatitudes are not abstract. They are lived. You see them in the quiet strength of students who come to class carrying stories they don’t fully tell. In the way grief is not something they visit, but something they live alongside.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Not someday.

Now.

A Conversation I Can’t Shake

One morning, before class, I met with a student at a small coffee shop just across from the seminary. It was early. The city was just beginning to wake up. There was the soft clinking of cups, the smell of strong coffee, and that quiet hum of conversation that feels almost sacred in its ordinariness.

She sat across from me, hands wrapped around her cup and then, gently, she began to share.Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just honestly. Pieces of her story. The weight she’s been carrying. The questions she doesn’t have answers to. The exhaustion that doesn’t go away with sleep. nd as she spoke, I found myself noticing something familiar, not just in her words, but in her body.

The subtle tension. The scanning. The way her nervous system stayed just slightly on alert, even in a safe space.

Trauma has a language and I recognized it.

So we slowed it down. We talked about what her body was doing, not as a problem, but as protection.

We named the responses:

  • This is your nervous system trying to keep you safe.
  • This isn’t weakness. This is adaptation.

And I watched something shift, not a full resolution, and not a dramatic breakthrough. Just a softening. A breath that went a little deeper. A moment where she wasn’t alone inside her own experience anymore.

And I thought to myself: This is the work.

Trauma, Faith, and the Body That Remembers

I came to teach about trauma and about how the brain and nervous system respond to overwhelming experiences. About why grief doesn’t follow a timeline. About why the body holds what words cannot.

And they leaned in because this isn’t theoretical here. It’s lived.

We talked about pendulation, titration, and how healing happens in small, manageable moments, not all at once.

And again and again, I found myself saying:

“You are not broken. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do.”

And you could feel it land.

The Church That Knows Its Mission

If I could describe the Church here in one phrase, it would be this: They know why they are here.

There is a clarity that comes when everything unnecessary falls away.

I saw it in:

  • students preparing to sit with trauma they cannot fix
  • leaders building care in the middle of uncertainty
  • worship that feels less like performance and more like offering

And it quietly asks something of me:

What would it look like to live this clearly at home?

Beauty That Refuses to Disappear

And still there is beauty. Chestnut trees beginning to bloom along the walk to the seminary. Cappuccinos made with care at Papa Joe’s. Laughter echoing in the hallways between classes. Sunlight stretching across cobblestone streets.

It doesn’t erase the pain but it stands beside it, faithfully.

Faith That Stays

There is a kind of faith that tries to explain suffering and there is a kind that stays. Ukraine is teaching me about the second kind. The kind that doesn’t rush to answers, that makes room for grief, and that trusts that presence matters.

What I’m Carrying Home

I didn’t come home with neat conclusions but I came home changed.

I’m carrying:

  • a deeper trust in the wisdom of the body
  • a clearer understanding of resilience
  • a quieter, steadier vision of faith

And a question that lingers:

What does it look like to stay present to what matters most when life feels comfortable again?

The Sound I Didn’t Expect to Carry

On my last morning, everything was packed. Somehow, the suitcases closed, though I was still holding extra bags filled with gifts pressed into my hands by students, faculty, friends. Small tokens that somehow carried so much more than their weight.

I stepped out of the hotel and began the walk. The wheels of my suitcase caught the cobblestones immediately. That familiar, uneven rhythm. Loud. Unignorable. Clattering behind me as I made my way back to the seminary one last time.

And with every step, I became aware of something I hadn’t let myself fully feel yet:

I was leaving.

The city was just waking up, cool air, soft light, sidewalk sweepers moving along their paths as if tending something sacred. Life continuing, as it always does.

And there I was being pulled forward by the weight of what I was carrying. Not just in my hands, but in my body and in my heart.

The conversations.

The stories.

The resilience.

The grief.

The faith.

The sound of those wheels on the cobblestone felt like a kind of translation. A physical reminder that some things don’t leave quietly. They echo.

Even now, back home, far from Lviv, far from that street, I can still hear it. That uneven, persistent rhythm.

A quiet invitation:

To remember.

To stay.

To live awake.

Not All Easters Come at Once

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And what that might teach us about faith, time, and belonging

Every year, somewhere between March and April, Easter arrives. Except it doesn’t arrive the same way for everyone.

Some years, Western churches celebrate the resurrection weeks before Eastern churches do. Other years, more rare and somehow more beautiful, they fall on the same day, like a quiet moment of global agreement.

If you’ve ever wondered why this happens, the answer is part astronomy, part history, and part the long story of a divided Church still holding the same hope.

But maybe more than anything, it reveals something about how faith lives in time.

The Calendar Beneath the Resurrection

Easter is what’s called a “movable feast,” meaning it doesn’t have a fixed date like Christmas. Instead, it’s tied to creation itself:

Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.

It’s poetic, really, light overcoming darkness, life emerging again, and the rhythm of resurrection written into the sky but here’s where things begin to diverge.

Western churches like the Roman Catholic Church and most Protestant denominations use the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced in 1582 to correct inaccuracies in the older system. Eastern churches like the Eastern Orthodox Church still calculate Easter using the older Julian calendar and additional traditional rules.

Same resurrection.
Different calendars.

More Than a Date Difference

At first glance, it can feel like a logistical quirk and just a matter of math but underneath it is something more tender. The split traces back, in part, to the Great Schism which was a fracture in the Church that was as much about culture, language, and power as it was about theology.

And yet, even across that divide, both traditions have held onto the same sacred center:

Christ is risen.

The dates may not align, but the hope does.

Faith That Isn’t Bound by Synchronization

There’s something quietly humbling about this. We like things to line up. We like clarity, agreement, shared rhythm.

But Easter reminds us that resurrection doesn’t depend on our synchronization. It isn’t less true because it’s celebrated on a different Sunday. It isn’t diminished because the world marks it in different ways.

If anything, it expands the witness.

Across continents, across traditions, and across languages, over the course of several weeks, the same story is told again and again:

Death does not get the final word. Love does not stay buried. Hope rises.

A Trauma-Informed Lens on Time and Resurrection

If we step into this through a trauma-informed lens, there’s something even more meaningful here. Healing doesn’t happen on a fixed timeline. Resurrection, in our own lives, doesn’t come on a scheduled Sunday.

Some people experience renewal early like an early Easter. Others are still in the long stretch of Holy Saturday, waiting, aching, wondering if anything will rise again. Different timelines. Same possibility of life.

The Church, in its varied calendars, quietly reflects this truth: God is not confined to a single moment in time. Resurrection meets us where we are.

When Our Presence Becomes Easter

And maybe this is where it turns personal because if Easter is not just a date but a reality, then it’s something we can carry.

We can become people who hold resurrection space for others.

People whose presence says:
There is still life here.
There is still hope, even if you can’t feel it yet.
You are not too late.

In that way, we become a kind of living Easter, not tied to a calendar, but rooted in a Person.

A Gentle Invitation

This year, whether your Easter comes early or late and whether it feels full of joy or still marked by waiting, you are not outside the story.

Resurrection is not a single day.

It is a promise that keeps finding us in different seasons, on different timelines, and in ways we don’t always expect.

And somehow, across all our differences, the Church still whispers the same truth:

Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.

Good Friday: The Love That Stayed

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This morning felt quieter than usual.

Not silent, there were still the small sounds of life unfolding, but quieter in a way that felt intentional, as if the day itself was holding its breath. The light came in softer, filtered through the window in that early way that doesn’t rush. I wrapped my hands around a warm mug and just sat for a moment longer than I normally would.

It’s Good Friday.

And something in me knows this isn’t a day to move quickly.

I’ve been thinking about how easily we move past this day. We know what’s coming. We know the ending. Resurrection is already waiting on the other side.

But today asks something different of us. It asks us to stay with the weight of it, with the ache., and with the kind of love that doesn’t rush to relief.

Because when you slow the story down, really slow it down, you begin to notice things.

The loneliness of it. The way Jesus was misunderstood, even by those closest to Him. The way the crowd turned. The way injustice unfolded in plain sight, unchecked and uncorrected.

The physical suffering is there, of course.

But so is the emotional pain of betrayal, abandonment, and humiliation.

And He didn’t step out of it. He stayed.

There’s a moment in the story that always catches me. He could have stopped it. At any point, He could have stepped away from the pain, from the cross, from the slow unraveling of His own body and breath.

But He didn’t.

Not because He was powerless, but because He was choosing something greater than relief.

He was choosing love.

And not the kind of love we’re used to, not love that waits until someone is worthy, withdraws when it’s not returned, or protects itself at all costs.

This is a love that moves toward the broken places. A love that enters into suffering rather than avoiding it. A love that sees the full reality of who we are, every hidden place, every wound, every way we’ve learned to survive and doesn’t turn away.

I think, for many of us, this is where it gets tender. Because if we’re honest, this kind of love can feel unfamiliar.

We’ve learned to brace ourselves. To earn love. To anticipate distance when we’re not at our best.

But Good Friday quietly interrupts that story. It tells us that God did not wait for us to become whole before drawing near. He came close in the middle of our humanity, in the middle of our fear, n the middle of our failure, and in the middle of our not-enoughness.

And maybe what undoes me most is this:

He knew.

He knew the cost.
He knew the pain.
He knew the weight of what He was choosing.

And He stayed anyway.

There is something deeply personal about that. Not abstract. Not distant. But intimate in a way that reaches into the places we often try to hide.

The cross is not just a moment in history. It is a declaration. That there is no depth of suffering, no complexity of story, no part of you that is too much that will cause God to turn away.

So today, I’m not rushing. I’m letting the quiet do its work. I’m letting the story unfold slowly, even the hard parts. I’m noticing where I want to skip ahead and gently choosing to stay instead.

Because Good Friday is not just about what was done. It’s about what was revealed.

A love that does not leave when things get hard.
A love that does not withdraw in the face of brokenness.
A love that stays.

And maybe the invitation today is simple. Not to fix anything, prove anything, or rush toward resolution.

But to sit, even for a few moments, and let yourself be seen by that kind of love. The kind that knew. The kind that chose. The kind that stayed.

Even now.

The Small Graces of an Early Tennessee Spring

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There are seasons when gratitude feels like something you must search for. And then there are weeks like this one in Middle Tennessee, when it seems to be rising quietly from everywhere.

This morning I stepped out onto the back porch with my coffee, and the air held that particular softness that only comes when winter finally loosens its grip. Not the thick humidity of summer. Not the sharp chill of January. Just that gentle, almost hesitant warmth that says, spring is on its way.

All around the neighborhood the trees are beginning to stir.

The Bradford pear trees are the first to announce the change, bursting into bright white blossoms before their leaves even arrive, like scattered clouds caught in the branches. They are one of the earliest bloomers each year, their flowers appearing suddenly and dramatically across Tennessee landscapes as winter fades.

Drive down almost any road this week and you’ll see them, whole streets dusted with white.

The redbuds are beginning to blush purple along the edges of the woods. The maples are pushing out tiny red buds. And if you look closely, the bare gray limbs that felt so lifeless just a few weeks ago now hold the faintest haze of green.

It is that quiet miracle that happens every year and somehow still surprises me.

And as I sat there this morning, I realized how many things I am grateful for in this particular season of life.

I’m grateful that Lowell is healing well. There is a deep kind of relief that comes when someone you love comes through a medical scare and begins to mend. Healing has a quiet rhythm to it, slower than we wish sometimes, but steady.

I’m grateful for Macon. For his steadiness. For the way he carries things calmly when life gets complicated. For his loyalty, his patience, and that quiet strength that doesn’t make a lot of noise but somehow holds everything together.

I’m grateful for simple days that hold no great drama. Today was one of those, just a good day of shopping, moving through errands without hurry, and the kind of ordinary day that reminds you life doesn’t have to be extraordinary to be good.

I’m grateful for the warmer weather this past week. For windows cracked open. For sunlight lingering a little longer in the evenings. For the way the light falls across the patio furniture that sat unused all winter.

That back porch and patio have become small sanctuaries again. A place for coffee in the morning. A place for quiet conversations in the evening. A place where the birds seem to hold committee meetings in the trees while the neighborhood dogs offer their occasional commentary.

Spring in Middle Tennessee doesn’t arrive all at once. It unfolds. First the light changes. Then the air softens. Then one morning you realize the trees are waking up.

And if you’re paying attention, gratitude seems to bloom right alongside them.

Not because life is perfect. But because grace often arrives in the small, ordinary moments — the ones we might miss if we aren’t looking.

A healing body.
A steady husband.
A warm afternoon.
White blossoms on the roadside.
Coffee on the porch.

Sometimes that is more than enough.

Saturday Night Gratitude

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It’s Saturday night in middle Tennessee.

The air is softer than it was a few weeks ago. I sat out on the back patio earlier and just enjoyed it there for a minute with no agenda, no fixing, no planning. Just breathing.

Tonight I’m grateful for:

• The slow return of warmth in the air and in my body.
• A week full of meaningful conversations about trauma, healing, and hope within work that still feels sacred to me.
• Draft pages of a textbook spread across my table, messy and alive.
• The quiet steadiness of Macon beside me, sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting close.
• Friends near and far, from Tennessee to Ukraine, who remind me that this work is bigger than one person.
• A glass of wine at the end of a full day.
• The deep privilege of getting older and caring less about proving and more about becoming.

Gratitude doesn’t erase the weight of the world. It just steadies my nervous system enough to hold it.

Tonight feels calm. And that feels like a gift.

What are you noticing tonight?

We Were Never Meant to Carry It Alone

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There is a quiet lie many of us learn early:
Be strong. Don’t need too much. Figure it out yourself.

It can sound responsible. Mature. Faithful, even. But it is not the story Scripture tells. From the very beginning, God looks at a world still untouched by sin and says something is not good:

“It is not good for the human to be alone.”

Before failure. Before fracture. Before fear. Loneliness was already named as a burden too heavy to carry solo.

Community is not a bonus feature of faith. It is part of God’s design for how we survive, heal, and remain human.

The Myth of Self-Sufficiency

Somewhere along the way, many of us were taught, explicitly or subtly, that needing others is a weakness. That mature faith looks like quiet endurance. That prayer replaces people.

But even Jesus did not live that way.

He gathered friends.
He ate with them.
He wept in front of them.
And on the night of His deepest anguish, He asked them to stay awake with Him.

Jesus did not say, “I’ve got this. Go home.” He said, “Remain with me.”

If the Son of God did not choose isolation, why do we believe holiness requires it?

Why Community Heals What Faith Alone Cannot

God absolutely meets us in solitude. But healing often requires witnesses.

There are places inside us that only soften when they are seen. Grief that loosens when it is named out loud. Shame that shrinks when it is met with compassion. Fear that quiets when someone steady stays near.

Community does not fix us. It holds us.

Scripture reminds us: “Carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

Notice the word carry, not advise, correct, or rush through. Carry implies weight. Time. Shared effort.

Some burdens are simply too heavy for one nervous system, one heart, one body to hold.

The Risk and the Gift of Letting Others In

Community is beautiful. And it is risky. People disappoint us. Misunderstand us. Leave. Some of us learned early that connection comes with cost.

So we adapt. We manage alone. We spiritualize our isolation and call it strength. But avoidance is not the same as safety.

True community does not mean constant closeness or forced vulnerability. It means chosen connection. Safe people. Honest pacing. Mutual care.

It might look like:

  • One friend who knows the real story
  • A small group where you don’t have to perform
  • A counselor, pastor, or spiritual director who can hold what feels too heavy
  • A table where laughter and lament are both welcome

Community grows slowly. Gently. With consent.

And it often begins with a quiet, brave prayer: “God, show me who is safe.”

You Are Not a Burden

If you’ve ever held back because you didn’t want to be “too much,” hear this clearly:

Your need does not disqualify you from belonging.
Your weariness does not make you a burden.
Your longing for connection is not a failure of faith.

It is evidence that you are human.

And God, again and again, chooses to meet human need through human presence.

The early church understood this instinctively. They shared meals. Resources. Tears. Hope.
Not because life was easy but because it was hard.

Community was how they endured.

A Gentle Invitation

You don’t have to build community all at once.
You don’t have to trust everyone.
You don’t have to tell your whole story today.

But you might consider this small step:

Who is one person you could let a little closer?
One place you could show up as you are, not as who you think you should be?

God often answers prayers for strength by offering companionship.

May you notice the hands reaching toward you.
May you have the courage to reach back.
And may you remember on the days it feels hardest: You were never meant to carry it alone.

Melanin Is Not a Moral Category

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There are moments when faith calls us to slow down and return to what is most essential.

At the heart of Christian belief is a simple, sacred truth: every human being is created in the image of God. This is not a metaphor. It is a theological claim about worth, dignity, and belonging. Before we hold opinions, assumptions, or fears, we are first image-bearers who are made, known, and loved by God.

“So God created humankind in his image; in the image of God he created them.”
—Genesis 1:27

To see another person as an image-bearer is to recognize that their life carries inherent value, independent of how familiar they feel to us or how easily we understand their story. It invites us to look beyond the surface and trust that God’s handiwork is present in every face we encounter.

When Fear Distorts Our Vision

Scripture is honest about how easily fear can shape our perceptions. Fear narrows our vision. It tempts us to rely on appearances rather than truth, on assumptions rather than relationship. Over time, fear can harden into prejudice and a quiet distancing of the heart that keeps us from seeing others clearly.

But God consistently calls us away from that way of seeing.

“People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
—1 Samuel 16:7

God’s gaze is deeper, more patient, more discerning. And as people formed by faith, we are invited to let our vision be reshaped by God’s own way of seeing leads not to suspicion, but to compassion.

Love That Refuses Partiality

The New Testament speaks plainly about favoritism and fear-based judgments:

“My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.”
—James 2:1

This is not a call to ignore difference, but to honor humanity within it. Difference was never meant to divide us into categories of worth. Instead, it reflects the breadth of God’s creativity and the richness of God’s world.

When we reject prejudice, we are not losing anything—we are recovering something precious: the ability to love our neighbor as ourselves.

A Gentle Turning of the Heart

Faith does not demand perfection from us, but it does invite reflection. It asks us to notice where fear has taken root, where assumptions have gone unchallenged, and where love may have grown cautious or selective.

Repentance, in its truest sense, is not about shame. It is about turning toward love again—toward truth, humility, and grace.

“Perfect love casts out fear.”
—1 John 4:18

As we move through a world marked by difference and division, may we be people who pause, who look again, and who choose to see one another as God does: with mercy, dignity, and deep respect.

Because when we honor the image of God in others, we also honor the God who made us all.