When Joy With God Feels Off-Limits: Reclaiming Delight in a Faith That Was Mostly Serious
If your relationship with God has been about obedience and endurance, the capacity for delight may have been buried by your story.
If your relationship with God has been about obedience and endurance, the capacity for delight may have been buried by your story.
If concentration has always felt like fighting your own brain, the problem might be a nervous system trained for threat, not focus.
If growing older feels less like a natural process and more like a reckoning, your relationship with time may be shaped by trauma.
If your relationship with God feels more like surveillance than rest, your story may have shaped your image of God.
If global crises land in your body like they’re happening in your living room, your story and the world’s story may be entangled.
If you regularly feel unmoored or lost in ways that don’t match the circumstances, your body might be replaying an older experience.
If food has become something you endure rather than enjoy, your body may be remembering something through your taste buds.
If picking up an instrument activates dread instead of delight, your body may be replaying a story that has nothing to do with the music.
If your voice disappears when it matters most, the silence might not be shyness. It might be a survival strategy from boyhood.
When group prayer triggers your alarm system, your story may be shaping what happens when you open your mouth before God.