Accepting yourself, accepting love

I’ve struggled with self-hatred for many years. I have a very difficult time giving myself any grace or forgiveness for the mistakes I’ve made and the struggles I’ve had. I hate my character defects and the way I’ve succumbed to fear and panic; the pain they’ve caused others. Over a year ago, a good friend […]

Alone

Grey into black in the unseen horizon Reflections a mere echo through piercing, small rays. Dull roar hypnotizing a trancelike induction Words without meaning flow numbingly true. Lost in the specter of waking and sleeping My impotent heart finds no solace without but within is a tempest of sullen refraction Redemption a cry from parched […]

Seeing yourself, owning your guilt

It’s sometimes painful to look in the mirror. Anyone who knows me can attest that I do a lot of self-reflection, sometimes way too much. There are a lot of reasons I do it, and one of the least important of those is because I don’t like to be blindsided by my own culpability when […]

Why you should love the church

I’ve been pretty critical of the American Church in several posts, and it strikes me that those who don’t know me extremely well may get the wrong impression regarding my esteem for the Church. It’s true that I’m concerned that American evangelicalism has essentially lost its soul chasing political power and has been consumed by […]

The point of Christmas: draw near

I’m worn out and depressed. I’ve been going through a lot of changes lately, and I’m not happy with many of the results. I lost a job and am adjusting to a new one with a long commute, and subsequently I moved apartments to cut down on said commute, so I’ve been packing and unpacking […]

Leaving Christianity

I’ve had doubts about my faith for as long as I can remember. I didn’t sleep well as a baby and small child, and one of my earliest memories comes from around the age of three or four, when one of my late-night wanderings into my parents’ room was initiated by a terrible thought that […]

Alone in church

I’ve felt mostly by myself in church during two periods of my life, neither of which have been the fault of the specific church I belonged to. The first time was in my mid-20s when I’d become burnt out through ministry and questioned the validity of the whole “church experience” as I knew it because […]