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Language: 5 Types of Abuse and How to End It
At first, I was going to write about the various layers of healthy boundaries we have, beginning with our skin and ending with our renewed spirit. But I got stuck at language. Most of our boundaries are either created or destroyed by language. We forget that language is first and foremost a creator of reality. It is through language that we discover and articulate our identities. Language, too, is the creator and sustainer of relationships, creating bridges of understanding between people. Redemptively speaking, how we speak and the words we use, even the tones we employ while we communicate, are in their best sense, intended to create community. The end…
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How to Build a Marriage: His Needs, Her Needs
Sometimes the over-consumption of books can lead one to mistake knowledge for wisdom. This was surely the case for me when we decided to attend a home group on the topic of marriage at our church, Harvest Cathedral, in Macon, Georgia. We attended the group on the strength of our fondness for our pastors, Steve and Debbie Sawyer, though without any high expectations. I remember asking a fellow professor once how his marriage was. It was an appropriate question in the context of our conversation. His response was disarmingly honest. He called it, “functional”. I was still in the throes of our honeymoon at the time so I remember feeling…
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Eight Signs You are a Trustworthy Person
Finding trustworthy people these days can be difficult. I believe this is not because fewer trustworthy people exist than in previous generations, but because many of our relationships are transitory. People move around, switch jobs, and live at a furious pace. Trust takes time to incubate. Trust requires a certain amount of intimacy and transparency. To make matters more difficult, nearly everyone has made the mistake of judging the wrong person trustworthy. Betrayal can hinder our ability or willingness to make the leap. But the fruits of being a person worthy of trust far outweigh the difficulties. If we ourselves can be trusted, then we will draw others whose characters…
Healing Through Art & Words
