self awareness on Scars

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?...

He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of sel...

The road to character often involves moments of moral crisis, confrontation, and recovery. When they were in a crucible moment, they suddenly had a greater ability to see their own nature. The everyda...

One helpful, practical tool to understand our blind spot is what’s called the Johari Window, an image developed as a counseling tool in the 1950s. Subjects were given a list of fifty-six adjectives, a...

George Garrett, a novelist and amateur boxer wrote about a transformation that often takes place for fighters who stick with the sport. Throughout their journey to boxing excellence, in which they mus...

Have you ever noticed that we often see ourselves, specifically our bodies, our facial features differently? In 2013 the soap company Dove decided to explore this phenomenon by hiring an FBI-trained f...

Leader: The good news in Christ is that when we face ourselves and God with the awareness of our need, we are given grace to grow, and courage to continue the journey. Friends, believe the good news o...

In his poem Cocktail Party , T. S. Eliot captures a fundamental truth about human nature and the source of much hurt in the world. People’s actions are rarely driven by outright malice—intended t...

"One learns of the pain of others by suffering own’s own pain, my father would say, by turning inside oneself, by finding one’s own soul. And it is important to know of pain, he said."

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that ...

Holy God, we realize that You know us more intimately than we know ourselves. We come before You now asking You to show us our sin, to make us aware of our failings, to open our eyes to our brokenness...

I was born into this world with a tortured sensitivity. For long I have puzzled over the causes of my psychological anguish.

Without the binding force of memory, experience would be splintered into as many fragments as there are moments in life. Without the mental time travel provided by memory, we would have no awareness o...

Holy God, You are the anchor amidst our fears. You know the sins we can’t even admit to ourselves. You show your faithfulness even when we reject You. You offer grace even when we offer judgment. Forg...

Peter's and Isaiah's Confessions Jesus calling the disciples from their fishing appears in Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20, and Luke 5:1-11. Yet only Luke makes the beautiful connection between...

People can say one thing and do something totally different. You see the darkness that is often hidden from polite society. The thing that you see is a widespread insecurity. I think people put on a f...

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

Preaching Commentary Peter's and Isaiah's Confessions Jesus calling the disciples from their fishing appears in Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20, and Luke 5:1-11. Yet only Luke makes the beaut...

To believe that you have already reached perfect sanctification, R. C. Sproul says you must do one of two things: 1. “reduce the demands of God’s law to such a low level that they can obey them” or 2....

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

In the heat of leadership, with the adrenaline pumping, it is easy to convince yourself that you are not subject to the normal human frailties that can defeat ordinary mortals. You begin to act as if ...

In her book Confessions of a Beginning Theologian , Elouise Renich Fraser discusses how crucial it has been to listen to her body throughout her personal and theological growth. My body, once...

The examen makes us aware of moments that at first we might easily pass by as insignificant, moments that ultimately can give direction for our lives.

The more enlightened we are, the more greatness and vileness we discover in man.

Calling People often give me weird looks when I talk about being “called” by God. A pastor can be “called” to devote their working time to shepherding a church. A parent can be “called” to invest in ...

I fyou look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. If you look at God, you’ll be at rest.