Status Updates From The Lord Is My Courage: Ste...

an older definition of courage that dates back to the 1300s is “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.”

Your anointing is a gift given not for what you have done but out of God’s love. Divine love ensures who you will become.

This is what I know: the betrayal of another cannot take your belovedness away. Darkness cannot steal your inheritance. Evil cannot revoke your anointing.

Because Goodness made his home in the middle of humanity's hurt, Divine Love is always meeting us in the middle of what seems diametrically opposed to knit us back together by kneeling at the foot of the cross.

Prayer is not constant positivity. It is honesty held in our hands and hurled at the sky. Strangely,
honesty about our hopelessness is what revives our hope.

Courage is not the absence of anxiety but the practice of trusting that we will be held and loved no matter what happens.

Fear is just courage's preamble. When we practice remembering that the Spirit of Christ is our companion, fear simply becomes one more prompt to pay attention to the voice and presence of Love. Fear doesn't have to be an enemy to conquer. It can be a place to be companioned by Love.

In the silence, our bodies learn
to trust that God is more near than we feared and we are more loved than we imagined.

Porges teaches that lowering auditory stimulation helps the nervous system develop trust.
When it comes to developing trust, less is more. Less noise. Fewer words. Less effort.
As Porges has said, " 'Less' enables the nervous system to catch up."

You cannot should yourself into being soothed. You cannot shame your way out of stress. You have to love your way there.

The most damaging story in the world is not of a creatorless creation but a creation that must be transcended. We pit our souls against our bodies, even though God strangely chose embodiment as the artistry of salvation.

When the energy of fighting to survive becomes too much for our bodies to bear, we shut down to stay alive. The paradox of the pain of being in a state of dorsal vagal shutdown is that it can feel so hopeless that you want to die.

Christ's empathy is our empowerment. I will not allow myself to be less human than Christ.

At its core, fear is not a lack of faith. It is a lack of perceived safety.

The power of the phrase "do not fear" is found in participating in the story where the presence of God goes with and before us everywhere we go, all the days of our lives.

Giving pain a name and a voice is a giant act of courage in a subculture that privileges positivity.

When we bypass the darkness, we kill courage. When we avoid our anguish, we bypass our healing. When we anesthetize our ache, we end up letting wounds fester that could be the place of our greatest healing and hope. We cannot heal what we will not feel.

Why do we race past our pain and anger and grief when they are what fueled Christ's compassion? Why do we silence grief when God incarnate paused to feel it? Why do we push down our protests when Christ himself prayed through his? Why do we attempt to be holy without allowing ourselves to be human first?

The way to the water the sheep most need is through the dangerous, dark valley.
Psalm 23 shows us that our dark nights of the soul are not punishments or problems but places to walk closely with the Shepherd while all other comforts fall away. Here we are shown the daring path named Through. The only way to a life without lack is through the darkest valley.

"When the members of a community of faith cannot truly know and love their shepherd, shepherding quickly becomes a subtle way of exercising power over others and begins to show authoritarian and dictatorial traits." Henri Nouwen

the burden of reconciliation was placed on the person whose trust and safety were ruptured by someone with extensively more power. No one in a shepherding role went after the sheep who was bloodied.

"When we are in a moment of courage-whether we call that God's voice, or indigenous bravery-it is the body that tells us a deep truth; it is the body that speaks to us, and it is from the body that courage comes."

Deception can be dazzling, and like Eugene Peterson warns, it is "nowhere more common than in religion. And the persons most easily and damningly deceived are the leaders."

What we call unruly and disruptive is often just a plant looking to be healthy, needing a bigger pot.