Tedder's Blog, page 17
August 24, 2023
Gentleness
What comes to your mind when you think of gentleness?
A common misconception is that gentleness is weakness or passivity. True gentleness, however, is just the opposite. It requires great strength and self-control.
Gentleness comes from a state of humility. Therefore, someone who lacks gentleness is often prideful and easily angered, or feels the need for revenge.
In order to be gentle, we must not view ourselves as better than someone else. Rather than asserting superiority, someone who is gentle wants to help others, even when they have been done wrong.
An example of gentleness can be seen in John 8, when the Pharisees bring a woman who was caught in adultery to Jesus. The Pharisees told Jesus that the Law of Moses commanded them to stone such a woman, to which Jesus responds, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).
After everyone left, Jesus did not condemn the woman, and said to her, “Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11)
Being gentle with myself is new, but I kind of like the places it’s taking me, the kinds of relationships I’m forming, and what becomes possible for me in my life and work because of it.
B 
August 23, 2023
WWW | Wednesday Words of Wisdom | God Has the Final Say
Many of us are familiar with Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” It’s a great scripture. This Scripture brings comfort, direction, and hope to Christians every day.
While God can turn ugly situations around and use them for good and for His purposes, that does not mean he simply excuses the bad behavior and sinful ways of abusers. They are still responsible for their misdeeds. God will hold them accountable.
This is the ultimate irony, an emphatic display of God’s absolute rule!
August 22, 2023
Anxiety Can Help You?
“There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself, and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.”
Anxiety is a horrifyingly destructive emotion that can run your life. We see it all over – on social media, in movies, and in the lives of the people we know.
And I get it, I’ve been there: I’ve suffered extreme panic attacks, passed out, lost control of my hands that clenched so hard I could not physically unfold them. I’ve been pursed by anxiety all of my life. But I’ve learned how to coexist with it. It doesn’t control my life like it once did.
But one concept that we rarely consider is the practical benefits of anxiety. Because all too often, we characterize it by the negative effect it has on our lives, instead of taking a moment to think about how anxiety may be beneficial.
We also tend not to consider how to live alongside anxiety, how to make friends with it and how reducing fear around it’s existence can actually lessen its hold on our lives.
You can either let anxiety consume your thoughts & plunge your mental health into a bottomless abyss of pain. Alternatively, you can use it as an opportunity to identify your fears and hurts and pains & overcome them, and live a life that you once considered to be impossible.
The choice is always yours.
Will you still feel anxious? Most likely. But by accepting, reframing, and acting on your anxiety, it can feel more like a helpful friend and less like a disruptive rival
B
Teaser Tuesday ~ Dad Didn’t Want to Rape A Fat Girl
From A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own. Incest. Rape. Murder. Then, I turned Four. The journey of healing.
Grab your copy here (paperback or Kindle):
Audiobook free with trial membership here:
August 21, 2023
Mirror Mirror ~ Disappointment
Introspection — what better way to start a week.
Is disappointment the opposite of hope?
Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Hope is a feeling of trust.
What than is disappointment? It is sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one’s hopes or expectations.
So, disappointment is the failed expectations of hope. Hope is deferred when we lose trust.
Trust is the theme that always needs a repair in me it seems.
Gentle Father, I pray today that you would continue to heal that broken area in me. I do trust in you and need your unfailing love to surround me today. Thank you. Amen.
August 18, 2023
A Little Note
However you’re feeling…whether you feel peaceful about your path right now, around your day-to-day, or not, please hear me when i remind you, that you are not broken. you are worthy of empathy & love.
Remember:
The antidote to shame is disclosure.
That’s why I love this community of sharing the struggles…giving voice to questions and worries and fears and agonies. Also the victories & triumphs.
Sharing the stuff that drags us down and makes us question ourselves – the fear, the brokenness, the exhausting quests for peace.
It helps.
It Matters.
Sending love and light to you all.
B
August 17, 2023
Watch “Let’s Talk About It | Investigating Incest & Destigmatizing Childhood Sexual Crimes”
A new interview with Juanita who joined me from Wales UK to discuss the abuse she received from the Head Master of her childhood school that carried on until she was 13. She contiues her brave story with more sexual abuse in her life and the journey she is now on to regain, heal, and restore.
Here’s a clip from that interview:
Subscribe and watch all the interviews here:
August 16, 2023
Beauty in the Brokenness
I think that the rawest, most brutal parts of our humanity… can be incredibly beautiful if we’re willing to see it that way. That’s the great disparity. … When we can really embrace every bit of our humanity, even the parts that shame us the most, there’s such great beauty in being cracked open. How much beauty there is in our brokenness.
— Joe Henry, interviewed by Krista Tippett on On Being
Trust me when I say things always get better.
You may not see it. You may not believe it but life is straightening itself out as we speak right now. God is aligning things for you. Every missed opportunity, every loss, every painful incident is being made up for. Bigger things are at work for you. Better things are coming your way.
When you know for sure that you have the power to change and it’s your choice to become someone who took a messy life and created something beautiful out of it, someone who took the hardships, rolled with the punches and learned how to punch back, how to fight and how to save yourself when you had no one else to save you.
Sometimes it takes everything going wrong for you to find what’s right and most probably you will find it within, no one comes back the same after a few losses or after major traumas but if you can collect all your scattered and broken pieces and start polishing them and start sharpening their edges, they find other ways to work for you, you piece them back together and form a new shape; a new stronger, more refined version of yourself.
B
#grief #pain #uncovered #promises #truth #choosetruth #resistdenial #walkawayfromincest traumarecovery #healing #incest #riseabove #jesuslovesyou #prisonerbynocrimeofmyown #evil #noincest #godisgood #cptsdsurvivor
WWW | Wednesday Words of Wisdom | When Your Denial Causes Damage
Denial is the gift that helps us survive as children. I get it. I lived it. However, when we have children of our own or have a responsibility around children, denial most often becomes a tool of destruction.
“Trauma denial may be helpful in the short term. It allows the trauma survivor to stand up and get back on their feet,” says Sabina Mauro, a psychologist in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
article in pysch central, Trauma Denial: How to Recognize It and Why It Matters By Hilary I. Lebow
Yet, just like a trusty old pair of shoes, the comforts we learn to rely on may start to fall apart, if given enough time.
“Ongoing trauma denial causes more suffering than there needs to be. Although trauma survivors may learn how to suppress this unpleasant experience from their past, their body and mind will continue to carry it until the trauma is confronted,” says Mauro.
Denial begins to hurt us and block healing. Deeper still, it often allows abuse to continue around us because we have blocked our unique skill to see harm.
Denial blocks the ability to spot an abuser. It just does. How, then, are you supposed to protect a child if your skill to determine good and evil has been hijacked through denial?
Sadly, you won’t protect the child by you because you are not equipped to see. Break denial as soon as you can for yourself and those children around you that you love. It’s the only way to healing, freedom, and protection.
I pray added strength to you today. God, open the hearts of the broken person reading this. Allow them to understand you stand beside them, with them, strengthening their inner being. Father, speak words of comfort that allow them to walk out of the prisons of denial into the light of truth.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
