As hard as it is to believe, your body isn’t a bully or a betrayer.

Your body is a biographer. Every symptom and stress response you wish you could control or change is sacred speech. Your sensations are a fierce invitation into connection.

Maté wrote that trauma isn’t the horrible things that happen to us but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.

Why I dislike like the term “church hurt”:

Making pain more palatable does nothing to heal it.

And I believe you are worthy of more healing than half-truths can give. Hear me out: When you use the term “church hurt,” I know you aren’t trying to be dishonest. You are trying to be acknowledged without losing your acceptance.

When you know you are loved, you don’t have to be as afraid of getting hurt by others, because you sense that the hearts that hold you now will hold yours when it feels too shattered to hold together yourself. By “know,” I mean sense, see, and savor. For all its loftiness, love is mostly in the looks—the eyes who are willing to meet yours with compassion, the friends who text back to hold the hard thing w you, the sound of a voice saying, “You don’t have to go through this alone.”

Hey, it took me months to accept this privately and work up the courage to share it publically. In Jan I got very sick with what we way-too-late learned was covid. Covid triggered six (SIX!) new diseases/conditions, and I have started high-dose IVIG treatment every three weeks. On Monday, I took a moment to smile back at my reflection at the infusion center, to bless the bravery of my body to endure. Right now, she’s getting used to welcoming literally thousands of other human beings’ healthy antibodies to replace what she can’t make on her own.

Today, I dare you to own your power to connect others to the privileges + possibilities you have.

You can be a miser or the master of a feast. The choice is yours.

All I know is, you have more social capital for change + justice than you realize. One of the things that’s stuck with me most from my degree in community development is Putnam’s lens on social capital.

We can use our social capital to reinforce systems of power that already exist—a self-preserving cycle. OR, we can become bridges to the world we wish existed.

Just a friendly reminder that people lamenting the lack of integrity in Christian leaders is not indicative of them putting their faith in people more than God.

The lament I hear is a loud cry that Christian faith and community should never diminish human dignity. It is a false dichotomy to either put our faith in God or put it in people. As Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no body now but yours.” When we act as though it’s an either trust-God or trust-people situation, we downplay the sacred responsibility we all hold as bearers of Love.

#FaithOverFear is a narrative that bypasses the truth that God gave you a good body with good emotions that exist for good reasons. It also overlooks the context in which the command “do not fear” is given in Scripture: “Do not fear” is most often uttered in Scripture as an imperative statement—but one of comfort, not chastisement. When we detach this command from the context of God’s comfort, we make Scripture into a sword to cut off the very parts of ourselves that most need God’s friendship.

If Scripture was sufficient to heal trauma, why did the Word become flesh + dwell among us? Trauma isn’t healed by memorizing verses a biblical counselor gives as homework. It’s healed thru the embodied experience of restoring safety. Bypassing the body further divides the soul. Woe to false teachers, who demonize that which Christ has dignified.

Woe to pastors + theo-bros who disrespect the very bodies God so loves that Christ took on human flesh.

Woe to shepherds who are called to strengthen their sheep, but instead stigmatize and shame them instead.

The body count of believers who have been used and abused in the church is astoundingly high. But so many people hesitate to name their experience as “traumatic.” (For so many reasons).

Here’s some [non-exhaustive] help to name your experience: Were you overwhelmed by the expectations placed on you?

Did you feel pretty alone as you tried to face the pain of your church situation?

Did you have somatic symptoms during or after? (Panic attacks, more/sickness infections than usual, exhaustion)

Yes? It was traumatic.

After spiritual abuse, my mind wanted to be in church again.

But my body screamed that she didn't feel safe there. As a disabled woman, I already knew that healing is not a matter of trying harder to believe.

As a trauma-informed therapist, I recognized that being inside the church was pushing my body and her safety right out the door.

I’ve heard Psalm 23 my entire life. Yet no one ever taught me the feminine aspect of God in David’s prayer.

As theologian Kenneth Bailey says, “You prepare a table before me” is a clear depiction of a male engaging in activities that in David's culture only a female would do. I wonder
what comfort
we cut ourselves off from
by putting God in a box
marked male.

—from #TheLordIsMyCourage

Hello podcasting people! What are your favorite shows that cultivate nuanced conversations around faith, religious trauma, spiritual abuse, deconstruction etc? My new book’s coming out June 21st, and I have been saying no to interviews for so long I don’t know where to begin. 😂 Things this new book is about: Psalm 23, practicing courage even when you feel crushed, nervous system regulation, spiritual abuse, leaving harmful religious communities, finding a new expression of faith + safety with God, healing from religious trauma amzn.to/3w7duPH

I so want you to know that the parts of yourself that you most hate and blame and hide are the parts that hold great wisdom and the possibility of joy. Sensitivity is a gift to steward.

But for many years I would have called mine a curse.

In my new book, I decided to share some of my story of shifting from cursing my stress to blessing my sensitivity. Along the way, I realized just how many of us feel like we are too much.

Today the church remembers that *before* Jesus turned water into wine, cast out demons, or healed the blind, the Father publicly named him Beloved. The baptism of Jesus is the best news for those of us who keep getting stuck in the mud at the riverbank’s shore, hoping our work will give us worth, hoping we can do and be more.

a prayer for waiting rooms
and church pews:

as we wait
for news or help
or hope, we ask
that you would
cover us
with comfort
and fill us
with courage

for not all
who are meant
to help
help
and not all
who are called
to serve
serve

and our bodies know it. we’ve come to
expect harm
where there should
be help.

and we are afraid
to hope
for help
again.

I'm a complex trauma survivor, as are most of my clients. Many of us with trauma histories feel extra tender and easily overwhelmed right now, and I think our wise bodies are telling us something that's true for everyone: we were not made to hold the weight of global injustice. Psychologists like Paul Slovic have long identified the reality of psychic numbing.

Our empathy for suffering and loss declines exponentially as we're faced with more and more victims.

When we grow up w inadequate or inconsistent care, our nervous systems become locked into feeling a modicum of soothing from a stress state, rather than true calm + connection.

Striving becomes soothing—on a physical level.

But the body can’t sustain that kind of pressure. Constant self-protection through shutting your own needs down, achieving, being exceptionally “good” or “quiet,” etc. is something that helped you survive.

But the striving that helped us survive eventually ends up shriveling us inside.

When Jesus told the story
of the Good Shepherd,
and he talked about
seeking the lost sheep
and rejoicing over finding it,

he meant you. Every shamed and scorned
and stuck part of you
is a part Jesus seeks,
like a good shepherd
searches for his lost sheep.

The parts of you that feel lost, least-likely to succeed, and last to have faith, are the very parts that Jesus welcomes as honored guests at his table.

Abuse proliferates when the saints are taught to mistrust their senses + emotions. Across American Christendom, scores of believers abdicate their sense of discernment to pastors + leaders. We give away our Spirit-filled power to men who prefer throwing spears over shepherding. Great damage is done to the Body of Christ when pastors hide behind pulpits, gather yes-men to protect their power and suspect those who feel harmed. There is nothing more evil than throwing spears wrapped in Scriptures to pierce the souls of people who are already bleeding.

"Faith over fear" is a toxic half-truth.

There, I said it.

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. +

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.