From Numb to New: The Courage to Face What Hurts
To overcome addiction is to slow down enough to notice: Why am I reaching for this? What am I trying not to feel?
To overcome addiction is to slow down enough to notice: Why am I reaching for this? What am I trying not to feel?
The meetings weren’t wasting my time—I was. I had been squandering the opportunity to love, to connect, to lead.
Do I have to reach the limit to be enough? The answer came back swift and clear: No. Let it be what it is. Trust that it is good. Trust that what is is enough.
Why worry when I can pray? Why worry when I can safely forget because You—the God who knows, hears, and sees ALL—will and does remember?! Thank You, God, for this freedom. For this liberation. For this knowing. For this understanding.
This is why we keep losing ourselves in love: because we search for something outside of us that can only be found within. The more I love myself, the more I experience God. And the more I experience God, the more I experience heaven on Earth.
I’ve been torn down, misused and abused for long enough and it wasn’t until I began to change my words and speak lovingly to myself that I began to live so different. I’ve seen for myself the power of words. The power of love!
Endurance isn’t passive. It’s active. It’s faith in motion. It’s knowing that even when I was failing chemistry exams, even when I doubted my ability, even when I thought I wasn’t smart enough—God already knew I would make it. And I did. Not because I was the strongest or the fastest, but because I refused to quit.
I learned that others need the hope I carry. In my short life, I have seen that my faith is exponentially bigger than my fears. That I have hope in my future because of the God who was with me in my past. And people who are experiencing the same challenges I once did but have not yet overcome need to hear my voice. They need to know that breakthrough is not just possible—it’s probable.
I made it through because I always make it through! I am resiliency personified. As I look back at a journal entry from June 2024, I am stunned by the growth. Tears well and fill my eyes because, holy moly, I can’t believe this is my life! This is the life God and I co-created this year.
And for too many of us, they turned into self-hatred so deep, so consuming, that it felt like an unbearable truth. But what if I told you that everything you’ve believed about yourself—the shame, the doubt, the fear—was never true? What if I told you that you were made in love, by love, for love, to love? That the world doesn’t get the final say—God does?