I think one of the most dangerous things about me is how well I’ve learned to survive things that should have changed me.
Not because I’m particularly strong. Not because I’ve mastered resilience. Certainly not because I’ve made peace with everything that has happened to me.
I’ve just gotten exceptionally good at bleeding without making a mess.
I can be wounded and productive. Exhausted and dependable. Disappointed and gracious. I can encourage somebody else while privately questioning whether I even believe the encouragement coming out of my own mouth.
I’ve become so accustomed to functioning through pain that sometimes I don’t recognize something is wrong until God puts His finger on it.
Then I have the audacity to be surprised that it hurts.
Ma’am. You’ve been walking around with an open wound and calling it a personality trait.
This morning, I found myself sitting with Acts 19:1-7, and I don’t think I was prepared for how personally I would take a conversation Paul had with twelve men nearly two thousand years ago.
Paul arrives in Ephesus and encounters some disciples. He asks whether they received the Holy Spirit when they believed, and their response is astonishing.
They hadn’t even heard that the Holy Spirit had been given.
They weren’t necessarily rebellious. They weren’t deliberately rejecting something God had for them. They were operating according to what they knew, and what they knew was incomplete.
They knew John’s baptism, which pointed people toward repentance and the One who was coming. Paul explained that John had been pointing toward Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and through Paul’s laying on of hands, the Holy Spirit came upon them.
They were willing to receive what they hadn’t previously understood.
I read that and felt something in me become painfully uncomfortable.
Because I wonder how much of my life I’ve spent faithfully practicing an incomplete understanding of God.
How many things have I accepted as normal simply because nobody ever showed me anything different?
How many behaviors have I defended because they were familiar?
How many limitations have I mistaken for boundaries God established when they were actually walls I built to protect myself?
I have spent years asking God to change my circumstances while quietly negotiating how much of myself I was willing to let Him change.
That’s an ugly confession.
Especially for somebody who loves Scripture, enjoys studying, and can find a biblical parallel in just about anything. Give me a movie, a mildly inconvenient Tuesday, and a cup of coffee, and I can probably find a spiritual lesson before breakfast.
Yet I am beginning to understand that being able to explain transformation is not the same as surrendering to it.
I can have language for liberation and still be living in bondage.
I can recognize somebody else’s generational patterns while defending my own because mine have a tragic backstory and, apparently, excellent legal representation.
Your Honor, my client has been through a lot.
Girl, so has everybody else. Sit down.
The more I sat with this passage, the more I thought about exposure.
Sometimes God allows me to encounter something I didn’t even know I was missing.
A different kind of peace. A healthier way of communicating. A relationship where love doesn’t require me to abandon myself. A level of discipline I once thought was impossible. A kind of spiritual maturity that doesn’t need to announce itself.
Exposure can awaken desire, but it can also expose dissatisfaction.
Because once I’ve seen that something different is possible, I have to confront why I’ve been so comfortable with what I’ve always known.
I don’t particularly enjoy that part.
I have a history of getting offended when God shows me something I don’t yet possess.
I’ve watched other people experience things I desperately wanted and quietly wondered why their lives seemed to be moving while mine felt like it was standing still.
Sometimes I called it waiting on God.
Sometimes it was comparison wearing church clothes.
Sometimes I was genuinely being patient.
Other times I was afraid to admit that receiving something new might require releasing something familiar.
I’ve prayed for new seasons while maintaining emotional leases on old ones.
I want the new life without always wanting the discomfort of leaving the old one.
And that realization led me somewhere I didn’t expect.
Back to the little girl who lost her father before she was old enough to know him. Back to the eleven-year-old who lost her mother and discovered that life does not stop to explain itself when something devastating happens.
Back to the girl who learned that people can leave, homes can become unsafe, and love doesn’t always come with the security it should.
I learned to adapt.
I learned to read rooms.
I learned to anticipate disappointment.
I learned to be strong because, at different points in my life, strength felt less like a virtue and more like the admission price for surviving another day.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped distinguishing between what helped me survive and what would help me live.
That distinction is breaking my heart this morning.
Because some of the things I still do were developed by a version of me who was simply trying to make it through.
She wasn’t thinking about emotional maturity, spiritual development, or what kind of woman she would become.
She was trying not to hurt anymore.
I have compassion for her.
I also have to stop letting her make every decision.
And that is where the conversation about generational patterns becomes painfully personal.
In Genesis, Abraham twice represented Sarah as his sister while fearing for his own safety. Isaac later did something strikingly similar with Rebekah. Jacob’s story also contains deception, including his scheme to receive Isaac’s blessing.
These are different situations, and Scripture doesn’t tell me that every behavior was inherited in some automatic spiritual way.
What it does show me is how familiar patterns of fear and deception can appear across generations.
That made me wonder what I have inherited, observed, normalized, or developed in response to what happened before me.
Because generational dysfunction doesn’t always announce itself through dramatic behavior.
Sometimes it looks like assuming everyone will eventually leave.
Sometimes it looks like spending money to comfort the child who remembers going without.
Sometimes it looks like remaining in relationships long after wisdom has told me to leave because loneliness feels more threatening than mistreatment.
Sometimes it looks like being so fiercely independent that receiving help feels like an accusation of incompetence.
And sometimes it looks like being able to forgive somebody in theory while continuing to punish them emotionally for something I insist I’ve released.
Whew.
I don’t like that last one.
I also don’t like how many times I’ve used my history as an explanation and then quietly allowed it to become an exemption.
My pain explains some of my responses.
It does not automatically make those responses righteous.
I can understand why I became defensive without defending every defensive thing I’ve done.
I can acknowledge that abandonment shaped me without making everybody I love responsible for proving they won’t abandon me.
I can recognize that I was hurt without giving myself permission to keep hurting people.
And I can be grateful for the survival instincts that carried me through childhood while admitting they may be interfering with the woman God is developing now.
I think that’s one of the hardest parts of healing.
Sometimes the thing that protected me in one season becomes the thing that imprisons me in another.
And because it once kept me safe, I struggle to recognize when it is no longer serving me.
I thought about Mark 9:43, where Jesus uses the severe imagery of cutting off a hand that causes someone to stumble.
He wasn’t instructing people to physically mutilate themselves. He was communicating how seriously sin must be addressed.
Yet here I am, wanting to preserve every familiar part of myself while asking God to remove the consequences those parts keep producing.
I want freedom without loss.
Healing without exposure.
Growth without discomfort.
A new season without a goodbye.
Apparently, I would like sanctification with the return policy still attached.
And God keeps confronting me with the reality that I cannot keep everything and become everything He’s calling me to become.
Some things have to go.
Not because they were never useful.
Because they are no longer healthy.
I think about how long I’ve lived with certain emotional wounds.
How I’ve learned to work around them.
How I’ve developed routines that allow me to avoid touching them.
How I’ve convinced myself that because I can function, I must be fine.
And then I think about the difference between regeneration and liberation.
Titus 3:5 speaks of the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. In Christ, I have been given new life, not merely an improved version of my old identity.
Yet Romans 12:2 calls believers to the ongoing renewal of the mind.
That means I can belong to Christ and still have patterns of thinking that need to be confronted.
I can be made new and still need to learn how to live in that newness.
I can genuinely love God and still react to pressure like somebody who doesn’t trust Him.
That last sentence is especially difficult to write.
Because pressure has a way of introducing me to parts of myself I thought had already been surrendered.
I can be gracious when I’m comfortable.
Patient when things are going according to plan.
Generous when I don’t feel threatened.
Understanding when nobody is challenging my perspective.
Then let me feel rejected, misunderstood, overlooked, or uncertain.
Suddenly, the woman who has been studying Scripture is preparing a closing argument, complete with supporting evidence, character witnesses, and exhibits dating back to 2007.
I can remember a conversation from seventeen years ago with frightening accuracy, yet somehow forget Proverbs 15:1 when somebody gets on my nerves.
The Holy Spirit is still working on me.
And I am beginning to wonder whether some of the things I call spiritual warfare are actually invitations to confront behaviors I have refused to address.
Not every uncomfortable moment is an attack.
Sometimes my pride has been challenged.
Sometimes my impatience has been exposed.
Sometimes my expectations were unreasonable.
Sometimes I was simply wrong.
I don’t particularly enjoy being wrong.
I enjoy being right with supporting documentation.
But the Pharisees remind me of how dangerous it is to become more committed to defending my understanding than receiving correction.
In Mark 3:1-6, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. Rather than celebrating the man’s restoration, the religious leaders are watching for grounds to accuse Him.
Their commitment to their interpretation had become so rigid that they could witness restoration and still respond with hostility.
That frightens me.
Because I wonder how often I have been more concerned with proving my position than recognizing what God was trying to show me.
How many times have I judged somebody else’s weakness while excusing my own?
How many times have I wanted mercy for my motives and accountability for everybody else’s actions?
How many times have I mistaken being knowledgeable for being teachable?
I don’t want to become so familiar with the language of God that I stop allowing His Word to correct me.
I don’t want to be the woman who can identify everybody else’s strongholds while furnishing and decorating her own.
And perhaps the most painful revelation of this morning is that I need something I cannot produce.
I have spent so much of my life depending on myself that I sometimes approach God as though I only need Him to supplement what I’m already doing.
As though I can handle most of it and He can just step in for the particularly difficult parts.
I will pray, then strategize.
Surrender, then investigate.
Trust, then quietly develop three backup plans in case heaven doesn’t meet my preferred timeline.
I say God is my source, but my behavior sometimes suggests I believe He’s my emergency contact.
That is difficult to admit.
Especially because I know what it feels like to have nobody come.
I know what it feels like to need help and discover that the people who should have protected me were unavailable, incapable, or unwilling.
So I learned to become the person I needed.
I became resourceful.
I became responsible.
I became the woman who figures it out.
And somewhere along the way, I started treating dependence like a weakness.
Even dependence on God.
I know that sounds ridiculous coming from somebody who prays as much as I do.
Yet there is a difference between inviting God into my plans and allowing Him to lead my life.
Romans 8:11 reminds me that the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in believers.
The same Spirit.
And somehow I have access to the presence and power of God while continuing to behave as though my own strength is the only thing standing between me and complete collapse.
Maybe that’s why I’m so tired.
Not because every responsibility is unnecessary.
Not because life hasn’t genuinely been difficult.
But because I keep trying to carry things I was never equipped to carry independently.
I keep confusing self-sufficiency with maturity.
And I think God is exposing how much of my exhaustion comes from trying to be my own deliverer.
I cannot heal every wound by understanding where it came from.
I cannot discipline myself into never feeling afraid.
I cannot outthink every insecurity.
I cannot manufacture the peace of God through better planning.
I cannot save myself.
And if I’m being painfully transparent, I don’t know that I’ve fully accepted how much I need to be helped.
I know how to be useful.
I know how to be needed.
I know how to be the one people call when something goes wrong.
But being the person who needs something?
That still makes me uncomfortable.
I would rather bring God a completed project than admit I don’t know where to begin.
Yet the men in Acts 19 couldn’t receive what they didn’t know they were missing until they were willing to acknowledge the limits of what they understood.
They listened.
They learned.
They responded.
And I keep returning to that simplicity.
Maybe I don’t need to have an impressive answer this morning.
Maybe I don’t need to turn every revelation into a five-step plan for personal development.
Maybe the most honest thing I can do is admit that there are areas of my life where I have no idea what I’m doing.
I don’t know how to stop bracing for disappointment.
I don’t always know how to receive love without questioning its permanence.
I don’t know how to release every version of myself that learned to survive without feeling like I’m betraying the little girl who needed those defenses.
I don’t know how to distinguish every legitimate concern from an insecurity that has learned to sound like wisdom.
And I don’t know how many opportunities I’ve missed because I was so busy protecting myself from what might go wrong that I couldn’t recognize what God was placing in front of me.
I just know I’m tired of calling familiar things healthy simply because I’ve learned how to live with them.
I’m tired of confusing exposure to truth with obedience to truth.
I’m tired of being able to explain freedom better than I experience it.
And I am especially tired of allowing old wounds to have the final word over a life God has already declared new in Christ.
Maybe this is what improvement requires.
Not simply wanting something different.
Being willing to acknowledge what has to change.
I keep thinking about how many times I’ve asked God why He allowed me to see something I wasn’t ready to receive.
A healthier relationship.
A different way of living.
A possibility I couldn’t yet afford, understand, or sustain.
I used to interpret that distance as cruelty.
Why show me something if I can’t have it right now?
But perhaps some exposure is preparation.
Perhaps God can use what I encounter today to develop an appetite, understanding, or capacity I will need tomorrow.
That doesn’t mean every desire is a divine promise. It doesn’t mean every opportunity I see belongs to me.
It means I don’t have to resent everything that reveals where I still need to grow.
I can learn from it.
I can allow it to challenge me.
I can stop making somebody else’s season an indictment of my own.
And I can stop demanding that every part of my present make sense before I agree to be faithful in it.
Because some things God is developing in me may only become clear later.
Still, I don’t want to romanticize this process.
Healing hurts.
Correction can be humiliating.
Leaving familiar patterns can feel like losing pieces of myself, even when those pieces were hurting me.
And there are mornings, like this one, when I don’t feel particularly strong or inspired.
I don’t have some extraordinary declaration.
I don’t have an eloquent conclusion about how everything I’ve survived has made me better.
Some things made me bitter before they made me wiser.
Some things made me fearful before I learned to trust again.
Some things left wounds I am still asking God to help me address.
And some things I survived have become habits I now have to take responsibility for changing.
I don’t want to pretend otherwise.
I think about 2 Corinthians 3:17, where Paul writes that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Then, in verse 18, he describes believers being transformed into Christ’s image with ever-increasing glory through the Spirit.
Freedom and transformation.
Not merely relief from what happened to me, but an ongoing work within me.
And I realize that I have sometimes wanted God to free me from the pain of my past without confronting the ways I’ve allowed that pain to shape my present.
I wanted the memories to stop hurting.
I didn’t always want to examine the behaviors that grew out of them.
But I can’t keep asking God to heal what I insist on protecting from examination.
I can’t keep praying for maturity while refusing correction.
I can’t keep asking for a new appetite while feeding the old one.
And I cannot keep blaming the woman I am today entirely on what happened to the little girl I used to be.
She deserved protection.
She deserved stability.
She deserved more time with her parents.
She deserved to be a child without learning so early how cruel life could become.
I cannot go back and give her those things.
And that grief is real.
But I can stop making her responsible for every decision I make now.
I can love her without allowing her fear to lead me.
I can honor what she survived without insisting that survival remain the highest standard of my existence.
I can let God teach me how to live.
I don’t know why that sentence makes me want to cry.
Maybe because I’ve spent so much of my life simply trying to make it through.
And maybe because somewhere underneath the independence, the humor, the knowledge, the productivity, and the ability to keep going, there is still a woman who is terrified of what might happen if she stops holding everything together.
I don’t have much in me this morning.
No clever solution.
No polished testimony.
No triumphant announcement that I’ve conquered every stronghold and officially entered my healed era.
I haven’t.
There are still places in me where the old nature tries to speak louder than the new life I’ve received in Christ.
There are still reactions I regret, fears I entertain, and habits I know need to change.
There are still moments when I choose control over trust because control feels familiar and trust requires vulnerability.
But I don’t want to keep living this way simply because I’ve learned how.
So my prayer this morning is painfully simple.
God, show me what I don’t know I’m missing.
Show me where I’ve confused familiarity with truth.
Show me where I’ve made peace with things You are calling me to confront.
Show me where I have used my pain to excuse behavior that needs to change.
Teach me to recognize the difference between the strength You give me and the self-sufficiency I keep trying to manufacture.
And when You expose something in me that needs healing, help me resist the urge to defend it simply because I understand how it got there.
I don’t need another opportunity to prove how much I can survive.
I need to learn how to live the life You’ve given me.
Because I am beginning to realize that one of the saddest things I could do is spend the rest of my life being proud of how well I’ve learned to function while wounded.
I don’t want to become so skilled at surviving that I never learn how to be free.
And perhaps that’s the confession I’ve been avoiding all along.
I have spent years asking God to make me stronger.
This morning, I think I’m finally ready to admit how badly I need Him to make me whole.