I’m leaving tough girl behind. I don’t need her anymore. Today is new.
Hope
Soul Sister
Dear sister,
I looked at you and I saw myself. I saw your beauty and I saw my flaws, I saw your weakness and I saw my strength. I smiled at you but I guarded my heart so you couldn’t hurt me and so you couldn’t see that I’m not perfect. I hugged you but held you at arms length ready to turn and run because you could prove to be more skillful, more beautiful, more valuable than me.
I saw you as a rival not a sister.
But then you proved to be a friend, you saw my walls and you didn’t let them stop you, you kept pursuing me and showing me that though I’m flawed I’m also beautiful, you taught me how to dance to the rhythm of my own heartbeat and you showed me how to be my own kind of beautiful.
I saw you as a rival, you saw me as a friend. You believed in me when I was at the end of my rope, you told me that I am strong and capable and that my dreams are my compass for the life our Father planned long ago for me.
I am seeing in you what you saw in me all along. We are a team, and when we join hands and walk together with our Father God we are unstoppable.
It’s not about trophies and medals and being the most attractive or the strongest. We are sisters with separate identities and individual callings and giftings that blend beautifully when we are a team.
I love you sister, thank you for loving me even at my worst
-KD
I See You
There are many things I see when I look at you.
Shame
Hurt
Rejection
Lies
Depression
Longing
Performance
There are also deeper things I see. Good things.
Beauty
Tenderness
Desires
Love
Dreams
Hope
A good heart
A passion for people
So many good things. Things that are hidden deep in your soul. Things hidden so deep you can’t even see them and you certainly can’t believe them. All the bad feelings, all the lies have smothered the truth. Shame has convinced you that you aren’t valuable. Rejection has told you that you are not worth loving. Depression sucks away the dreams. It has you convinced that you are nothing more than a failure. Just one big mistake.
You can’t see what I see when I look at you. You see bad. I see good. Maybe on the surface I can see the bad, but your heart is good. I want to see the good things about you. I want to find the true you. The one God created and called good. I wish you could see you for who you really are. You would be beautiful. You would be unstoppable. You would be free.
~ Your sister, Hope
The Things We Don’t Know How to Tell You
We sit in your church pews every Sunday convinced that we are a misfit. We believe we’ve been rejected by God and are living on death row. We don’t want to hear the latest news on abortion and divorce rates or your favorite rant on same sex marriage. We all know the Bible is clear, it’s sin and God hates it.
He will punish it.
We know…
We’ve sat in your office and told you our worst fears, that God has signed us off as unpardoned and we’ve tried to accept your reassurances but as hard as we both tried, we’re still here.
Some of us have turned away and left because the pain was unbearable then got written off as a rebel or an airhead.
No one is just a rebel. There’s an aching and lonely heart inside that person and you can glimpse it when you look in their eyes.
We are lonely and afraid and some of us have gone silent, pretending we now believe but we don’t.
Not everything is as it seems, speak to your people. We’re not the heathens of the land, we’re the children of God. We need to be fathered and cared for. We need training and discipleship not another history lesson or the latest doom and gloom.
There is no quick fix as much as we both wish there was but there is time, love, and relationship. That’s what we all need.
I’m lonely and afraid, not that rebelious girl who wears tight clothes and likes to flirt, or the quiet man who has a porn addiction, or the depressed mother whose children are loud and unkempt, or that perfect church girl who does everything right.
We’re all crying for help. Please hear us.
-KD
Heal
Water flow
Down over my heart
Wash the pain away.
Leave the wounds –
Clean
So they can heal.
Wash away,
The shame,
The guilt,
The loneliness.
I want to leave
It all and
Walk away
Brand new.
Whole because of
Your love.
I want
To start again.
Dear Scrupulous Soul
I know that life is undeniably hard. It’s one of the most outstanding facts I’ve learned in my 24 years of it. Living is aching for more and fighting with every breath but learning to release and let go.
Life is a combination of what God gives, what God allows, what God takes away, and what you make of it.
Life is a gift from your creator to you, his masterpiece but the gift is tainted with sin and redeemed by grace.
Grace is the key to your incredible life. Choose it, take it, breathe it in and let it wash over you.
Grace is God’s favor and it’s offered to you freely and bountifully.
The question is can you receive it?
Listen Love, life is what you make it to be and God gave you this life and it’s hard to bear it. He knew all the curses that you’d face long before He even formed your grandma but He created you in spite of those things because he wrote overcomer in your DNA. He made you a mighty warrior and He offers to train your hands for war.
Yet you lay there in the stillness of the night trembling in fear because you don’t think you have what it takes. Your life feels like it’s falling apart and you’re crippled by your fear of death and hell.
You don’t know that you’re in the palm of His hand and in the breath of His grace.
Breathe Love, breathe in His goodness and grace and listen to his heartbeat. You are safe, you are loved, you are chosen, you are enough.
Don’t let this fear be the end of your story, the rest of your life is waiting.
-KD
Old Westerns and Church
I may or may not have a slight addiction to old western movies. The drama, the suspense, the solid ending get me just about every time. And when there is a band of men fighting together to save the story – my heart leaps and wants to be a one of them. That’s the part that really gets me. I wonder what it would feel like to know that no matter how despondent or how captive I am, that someone will fight through for me. One of my own will come for me.
The Christian church is messed up. I don’t have to be smart to figure that out. I love the church dearly so please don’t think I’m a hater. There are too many people walking away from the church. Do you know why? Its because the church doesn’t have answers. They don’t know how to help people and they don’t know to help people heal.
I wish church were more like old westerns. How would it change your life if you knew no matter what happened, that someone, maybe even several people had your back? That even if you were tied up in the desert held by evil forces because of a mistake you made, that your ‘brothers’ would come for you. There would be no battle too hard or too dangerous that would keep them from securing your freedom. You would always know that they were convinced you were true and you knew the same about them.
That sounds more like church to me than what’s going on right now.
