Let's Heal Together!

Here is what I want to say to her, and to every version of her reading this at whatever stage of the journey she is currently in: the hollowness is not evidence that your faith is broken. It is evidence that your obedience has a motive you have not examined yet. And that motive, once you are willing to look at it with honest eyes, is going to explain a significant amount of the exhaustion you have been carrying, possibly for years, possibly for decades...

That belief did not appear out of nowhere. It was not dramatic or irrational when it formed. It was the conclusion your nervous system drew in a season of your life when that was actually true — when someone's disappointment in you did mean something important was withdrawn. When the emotional temperature of a room could change everything. When keeping someone comfortable was less about love and more about what you needed to feel safe.