After two weeks of unpacking the last session, my soul was relieved to meet my therapist’s couch again this morning. Crying has never come naturally for me, but exhaustion softened every wall I built to survive, and for once, I let the tears fall without apologizing for them. I think I cried holy tears — for the little girl who learned to endure before she learned to rest, for the unseen woman who carried worlds on her back while silently breaking underneath them, and for the “silent partner” who poured love from empty wells until abandonment, disappointment, and depletion became familiar companions. When my therapist asked about my prayer life, I mistook the question for judgment. So I offered polished prayers — careful words, safe words, the kind that sound faithful without requiring vulnerability. But she challenged me to pray differently. Not just for strength, endurance, and resiliency but for protection as well. Because healing at t...
Everyone loves a beautifully weaved redemption story— the kind wrapped in applause, stitched together with survival, polished enough to make pain look poetic. But this is not a story. This is real life. My life. There’s a narrative we rehearse so often it becomes a ritual— a sedative disguised as safety. A false womb. A padded prison. A dim-lit shelter where we convince ourselves that hidden means healed. So we stay covered. Covered from truth. Covered from exposure. Covered from the God who keeps calling us out of hiding. And we cling to repetition because repetition feels holy when fear is preaching. We tell ourselves the outside world is only destruction, only danger, only teeth waiting to consume us— yet never question whether the real death has been happening within. Because we reach for weapons before we understand the war. We fight shadows without discerning spirits. Swinging at flesh while darkness feeds from our blindness. Truth is— everyone believes in something. ...