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Body Memory: Relearning Safe and Happy
That our body can retain memory is probably no surprise to most women. We look at our grown children and remember the sweet weight of their infant bodies in our arms and how soft their little cheeks were to kiss. Thanksgiving is upon us and our mouths water remembering familiar holiday dishes or when the fragrance of pumpkin pie fills the house. The highway between smell and memory is a short one. But the tendency to store memories in our body can work against us, causing anxiety or dread to pop up in unexpected and inconvenient places. For me, to be in the presence of anger caused my body to…
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How to Have Gratitude without Faking It
My ability to have gratitude has grown with my capacity to tell myself the truth. I used to think that offering the sacrifice of praise that the book of James recommends meant I had to pretend to be thankful for some really awful things. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 we read In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. So occasionally I would wind up my thanksgiving machine and thank God for things for which to this day I am not thankful. What I have since learned about the sovereign hand of God and gratefulness is life-changing, but really could only come at with the…
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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…
Healing Through Art & Words
