The hashtag #faithoverfear has 1.6 million posts on IG. Clearly, *so* many people believe fear is something that ought to be fought. I don't do many threads, but this deserves one. +
We want to preach ourselves into courage, but courage begins with compassion. You won’t experience *your whole self* being embraced by the kind arms of Christ if you are busy battling your feelings with a sword.
"Preaching to yourself"
can easily become
punishing yourself. +
The #faithoverfear narrative overlooks the truth that God gave you a good body with good emotions that exist for good reasons.
Fear is a physiological state God made to protect you from danger and bring you to safety. +
Real faith in the risen Christ turns toward fear to soothe it into safety.
When it comes to insecurity,
you need to set down your sword. +
Fear is a physiological prompt to remember the presence of Christ and your place in his heart. Your tight shoulders, pounding heartbeats, and even your panic attacks are all prompts to treat yourself like someone who is truly worthy of love, safety, and care. +
“Do not fear” means *do not only fear*. Feeling fear is a fact of having a body. It’s what you do with it that matters.
When you are feeling fear, your body needs compassion and regulation to experience wholehearted faith. +
Don’t just slap a bible verse over your stress; embody its content—the compassion of Christ—through deep breathing, grounding exercises, walking, or seeking out the presence of a safe, kind person. This is how God wired your nervous system to welcome you home. +
I’m ready for you to experience better news than #faithoverfear:
Your fear can become fuel, prompting you to pay attention to just how loved you are.
May your faith *include* your feelings.
May you refuse to do battle
against the pieces of yourself
that need love the most.
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Long thread on Holy Saturday, but it's one of the most stunning stories in my life:
One ago my best friend got divorced. Her marriage died under the blade of her spouse's choice to turn away. Our culture has no way of grieving losses like divorce or abuse or the death of dreams
So Mish decided she needed a witness.
She asked few of us women who are closest to her to plan a marriage funeral. Women—because like the women who were faithful witnesses to Christ's death, women have historically been the ones who prepare bodies for burial.
We became the witnesses of the death of her marriage. We honored the body of the union that died. We made space—together—for the hopelessness of being abandoned.
As an adult, perhaps like many of you, my spiritual imagination was shattered by pastors who believed themselves to be above serving the smallest. But today, on Maundy Thursday, as I put my feet up after vacation where we walked miles + miles, I remembered I have a better story.
When I was a girl, we'd observe Maundy Thursday in a circle at church, kneeling to wash each other's feet. In the quiet, we'd encircle ourselves in the story of a God who was not above washing his followers' grimy feet before serving them the Passover meal before his death.
Grown men would stoop to wash the feet of elderly widows. Friends would wash the feet of friends. No stinky feet disqualified a soul from receiving care. No foot left that sanctuary unwashed.
I remember my pastor kneeling down in front of me, asking if he could wash my feet...
Thoughts on John Crist + our adoration of people we later learn are abusive:
There is a reciprocal relationship between consumerism and abuse. People who treat others as objects become less human. +
There are people you love—writers, authors, pastors, comedians—who, behind closed doors and in private emails and messages, are treating others as objects instead of people. +
In private, many of the people we adore as wildly hilarious commenters on Christian culture or experts on wholeness are treating human beings as objects to collect or crush—depending on whether we are perceived as contributing to or taking from their own fame and acclaim. +