Anna White

I am still not good enough. I am still not whole enough. I am still not pure enough. I am still weakness and sharp edges and broken, but He is good and pure and whole, all that I strive for but am not. I wake up every morning and I sit in silence and I choose to believe. I may speak. I may not. I let Him wrap up all my broken in to His grace. He takes me imperfect. This is the great mystery I never knew.

I believe God lets us stumble along, slowly finding our way, and giving us chances to pick each other up.

My fear of being real, of being seen, paralyzes me into silence. I crave the touch and the connection, but I__ not always brave enough to open my hand and reach out. This is the great challenge: to be seen, accepted, and loved, I must first reveal, offer, and surrender.

There are lots of real reasons to decide to leave something or someone, but there are lots of other reasons that are less valid and less real and less about a relationship than our own minds: Fear (of screwing up, of being left, of not being good enough), restlessness, resistance to growing up, PMS, not knowing how to live without drama, fearing that you're getting happy, and happiness is boring. The thing that scared me the most was the knowledge that if I stayed, something was going to change, and that something was probably me. I didn't know what changed me would look like, or if I would like her more or less than I already did. Would I still recognize myself? Would I still be myself?

Love lights our darkness. It is forever tries.

Everything we have, everything we are, is a gift. How can we judge and shame ourselves if this is true?

God wants to take the fears that you and I are holding onto with both hands. He throws them aside, effortless, and then takes our empty hands in His and fills them with his love. He is not a hard driver. He wants to provide.

I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the deep, because the women around me showed me what healing looks like.

I've had a lot of therapists, so I've had the opportunity to approach my fear in many different ways. I've faced it head on and sideways and tried to tiptoe up behind it.

I know what it's like to sleep in fear, to starve myself to be worthy, to be ashamed of my voice, to want to sleep forever. To question why I deserve to live.

The most amazing thing is that all my sorrows, all of my darkest moments, are becoming my gifts.

I name you today, heart fears. I am small, but you are smaller. You will not stop me. You have a voice, fears, and I must listen, but then I will open my heart. I will love you right to death.

The shadow is dark and the woods are cold, but they are not endless. No matter how lost you are now, you are not lost forever. You are findable.Love just keeps on looking. Love is forever tries.

Maybe it__ not about having a beautiful day, but about finding beautiful moments. Maybe a whole day is just too much to ask. I could choose to believe that in every day, in all things, no matter how dark and ugly, there are shards of beauty if I look for them.

Father, be near as we are surrounded by this cloud of deep suffering. Open our eyes to see that you are all things, the light and the darkness, not only those things that seem good in our eyes, but the horrifying unexplainable. Wrap us up inside of the cloud and reveal the mysteries that can only be learned in places of sorrow, that when we walk out we will be as Moses, transformed by the shadow and beaming with the radiant light of your glory. Give us the strength to love on, though our hearts are broken.

It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in.

In this week I see such a picture of life, hard and joyful pressed up together and sleeping in the same bed. They come knit together. The lines of pain run through the joy and remind us to go all in, because life is short. The joy edges the pain and gives us a reason to rise.

This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.