I consider myself a non-denominational Christian. I grew up in a Bible church and still hold those beliefs very close to me.
Do you light up when your kids are coming in the room or do you become the instant critic?
Wholehearted living is not like trying to reach a destination. It's like walking toward a star in the sky. We never really 'arrive,' but we certainly know that we're heading in the right direction.
When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.
Joy, collected over time, fuels resilience - ensuring we'll have reservoirs of emotional strength when hard things do happen.
Effort + the courage to show up = enough.
If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive.
If we give God things in hope that they'll earn us blessings, we're really not doing anything for him. It's for ourselves.
Thought-habits can harden into character. So watch your thoughts.
It's surprisingly nice out here, peaceful and pretty-strange to be standing in the middle of a little garden while enclosed by the massive stone walls of the prison, like being at the exact center of a hurricane, and finding peace and silence in the middle of so much shrieking damage.
I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another.