I've always loved the month of October. Today, the weather is cooler, the hurricanes blown out to sea.~Journal Entry, October 1, 2025
Sometimes we take risks to say what nobody really wants to talk about. I watched this 21-minute video on YouTube where the late Eugene Peterson (Author of The Message Bible) speaks with Bono (of U2) about their connection with the Psalms, the joy and pain of life, and how the Bible speaks to both dynamics. Each of them challenge Christian artists to speak of both the truth of light and dark in their work. If you have the bandwidth to watch this clip, you will be touched and inspired, even if only to see the vibrant joy in Eugene Peterson's smile. The video moved me to write about the beauty and merciful truth that Jesus holds both our pain and our joy. Interview With Eugene Peterson and Bono
I think of these last weeks. A train of anxiety, a high-pitched whistling clattering through my life. My body reacting in ways I hadn't expected, having held trauma for too long. The syncopation of my heartbeat too rapid, not to be ignored. My mind frozen in tracks of panic. I needed help, my hands over my ears to stifle the trumpeting train, too close, too loud.
God's mercy ever tangible, He led me to a counselor who is conducting a new therapy with me called ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy). With the direction of the Holy Spirit, in conjunction with the skills of the therapist, I am moving forward, the anxiety now more like the sound of a distant train.
God is good to hear our cries, even in the silence of breathlessness and panic. He is faithful to recreate neural pathways, blowing the hurricane of anxiety out to sea.
Like Peterson and Bono, my mind is transforming into a fusion of Psalms, this particular book a refuge for confronting the joy and pain of life. Yet the distant train is not a horrible sound, but rather a comfort and a symbol that the anxous thoughts are subsiding, fading like the beating of a bird's wings that quieten to a soft flutter as the creature disappears into a morning sky. A speck.
For you God have put my life back together.~Psalm 4:8 (The Message)
You probe for our soft spots, you knock off our rough edges. And I'm feeling so fit, so safe, made right, kept right.~Psalm 7:10 (The Message)
A Blessing (From Lectio 365, September 9. 2025
May the Son whose story is a mirror of your own,
Who has journeyed into darkness to find a key to your prison.
Who has dived the deepest oceans to find pearls for your wisdom.
Who has looked into your heart and found a beauty worth the battle,
Who has written your name on a white stone carved in secret.
Hold you.