What's in Your Emergency Mental Health Grab Bag

What’s in Your Emergency Mental Health Grab Bag

A crisis hits and the scaffolding around your life seems to shake, but you have a Mental Health Grab Bag, and so you know you can get through this.   An emergency hits, or maybe it’s just seeing certain family members. Something gets added to your stress load, and the […]

Good Conversations don't leave you Feeling Judged

Good Conversations don’t leave you Feeling Judged

Feeling judged can make you want to hide. Why put yourself out there if people are going to judge you? What you want is a good conversation.    They didn’t have the conversation because they knew they would feel judged. Feelings of being dismissed, ridiculed, ‘shot-down’, laughed at, mocked would […]

Risking a Sacred Conversation

Risking a Sacred Conversation

We all want to be known, held and loved, but to find this requires a level of risk to have a sacred conversation. Are you ready for that?   I once had a conversation with someone, what I would call a sacred conversation, and they couldn’t handle the fire. They […]

they make me feel stimulus and response

They make me feel

They make me feel … (add in your emotional extreme), but there is a space between stimulus and response. Use it. I was watching the news the other night and the first item was about a mother complaining about how a politician made her daughter feel. She claimed that the […]

It's Hard to Put into Words

It’s Hard to Put into Words

There is an internal world to every one of us with words that need sharing, but it’s hard to put into words, so we need someone safe to help us. They wanted him to tell them what was going on inside, but it felt more like he was in the […]

Finding that Still Small Voice

Finding that Still Small Voice

It’s a noisy world with lots of stressors wanting our attention, but there is a still small voice longing to be heard, so quiet yourself and listen. I have a pendulum clock on a bookshelf near me. Yesterday, I noticed the pendulum was swinging back and forth freely, but now […]

Opened Too Early

Opened Too Early

There is a time for everything, and some things get opened too early, but there is hope, and God can bring release and recovery.   They had been opened too soon. They weren’t ready yet. Her deep beauty had not been allowed to fully mature, but now it had been […]

God is Compassion

God is Compassion

It’s a broken world where we desperately need hope, but God is compassion, and so we get to live again.   The other day I found some mouse droppings in my kitchen. Concerned about the hygiene of the kitchen, I set a trap. Peanut butter would be the temptation that […]

I am Waiting for the Shroud to be Lifted

I am Waiting for the Shroud to be Lifted

Something was wrapped over them. A shroud. But there is a waiting to be found and a rich party to one day be found.    There was something draped over them, or at least that was it felt like. A shroud. What’s a shroud? It’s something that envelopes or obscures. […]

Sitting with Shame

Sitting with Shame

Sitting with shame can suffocate life, but sitting in solidarity with someone in soul talk can break its control.   It’s there if you want to hear it. A sneaky, whispery voice from the past. You hear it in others. They may have said nothing directly to you, but it’s […]