growth on Trauma

What is the shape of your pain? Is your pain a gaping wound? Is it stuffed into the back corner of a closet, or is it neatly categorized and filed away with annotations that no one but you understand?...

Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as i...

Sometimes the process of growth looks a lot like destruction and pain. But you’ll realize with time that you’re not breaking; you’re healing.

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story.

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffe...

We are being shaped into either the wholeness of the image of Christ or a horrible destructive caricature of that image—destructive not only to ourselves but also to others, for we inflict our brokenn...

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

There is no growth without change, no change without fear or loss and no loss without pain.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a great definition of how we change: We change when the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of changing .

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life…. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for pe...

In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...

Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that...

The truth is, that more spiritual progress is made through failure and tears than success and laughter.

In any given moment, we have two options: to step forward into growth, or to step back into safety. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself.

Lord, forgive us for the times when we have chosen safety and comfort over fidelity to you. For the times when following you requires us to stretch, grow, and be challenged, give us courage. Renew our...

In their excellent book, Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “form...

Gracious God–who opens Your arms wide to welcome us just as we are but who’s too loving leave us that way: in response to Your invitation we come humbly and boldly with our broken hearts and weak hand...

Faith does not grow in spite of suffering, but through suffering, when hope learns to contradict reality.

Nail in my hand From my creator You gave me life Now show me how to live.

Fear and growth go together like macaroni and cheese. It’s a package deal. The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus you must re...

We should neither court suffering nor complain about it. Instead, we should see it as one of the means God chooses to employ in order to make us increasingly useful to our Master.

Out of the depths of darkness and despair we have cried out for your mercy, O God. Instead of marking our iniquities with the just weight of our condemnation, you have forgiven us, breathed new life i...

Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib...

The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.

Grateful people learn to celebrate even amid life’s hard and harrowing memories because they know that pruning is no mere punishment, but preparation."

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

It’s hard to see, but sometimes the greatest barriers to our spiritual growth and flourishing are the things we’re already carrying or that we assume are essential. We may have picked them up on our o...

You can be saved without suffering, but you cannot be sanctified without suffering. That doesn't mean you seek it out, but it does mean you see it for what it is. It's an opportunity to glorif...

Any experienced gardener has heard of a botanical term called Apical (ah-pick-ul) dominance. In most plants that grow from a central stem, from maple trees to bush peas, whatever branch is at the top ...