Love your thoughts friend! Need to get better at the waiting. So does my character. grr!

Your personality is so this!!! you shine so well!! so excited for your year!!

Love this!! i'm excited to see what you do!! I have been thinking so much about impactful it is when other people feel seen. i just love that. so much to that word!

I struggle with forgiveness a lot. I have been self-sufficient for so long; raising myself, that i think punishment has also fallen under that category as well. I have been think a lot about God's forgiveness. Usually when we forgive someone, or someone forgives us, there is still the sting and pain of what happened. that takes some times. I forget that with God, he does not experience that side of it. he remembers our sin no more. The tension is how do we forgive and heal from the pain that comes with it at the same time, or pain we inflict. I HATE hurting people. I hate it. it's the worst feeling in the world for me. I think it is this forgive and feel/heal tension i get stuck in.

I did a little looking back today! it was funny to see what was a big deal to me then and not so much now. It is good perspective for sure!

I do think churches should teach their communities about identity and being different in their culture. Christ was all about exemplifying difference. Following after Christ means that everything about our lives will be expressed differently.

body image and sexuality are symptoms of bigger issues like identity and living that out in Christ. body image issues are seen when someone starts to compare themselves with the cultures magazines and lies on repeat about who society says they should be. The funny thing about cultural bars is that they are never meetable. They are always, and forever, changing so rapidly that exhaustion is a way of life.

all that to say -- churches should be teaching their community about the bigger issues of identity. I think body image and sexuality a great examples of signs of bigger issues going on. When identity is right those things will hopefully take care of themselves.

awesome post! love your heart that is so risk filled and candid! so appreciate that. i know you have impacted more hearts then you know. love that!

great "would you! " I think i would go back and tell me something. i probably would've made way different decisions. I would to actually see what the other track would've looked like.

You?

I was also so drawn to the way you loved kids into a whole person. sex education was part of that process, but caring for them as a whole person is what mattered and changed everything. Love your heart!

I definitely think it's possible if we make abstinence an option. There is nothing in our society that says that waiting for sex is an option. Our society plays offense on making sex everything - that it encompasses the essence of life. So why would kids wait. Parents in turn play defense and just get their kids on birth control or hand out condoms instead of engaging in conversation of value.

I hate how uneducated we all are about the affects of sex. it bugs that parents don't teach their kids more about who they are. That is the first thing i tell parents in counseling sessions when discussing their teenage kids. Kids who are entering, or smack in them middle of adolescence really don't get, 1) seeing past that moment or that day/night, and 2) are individuating from their parents to find identity. Most parents leave it up to their kids to figure that out. I encourage parents to be really honest and real about how emotional sex is, and what that looks like in a time where kids emotions are out of control during puberty.

There is no real anything being taught, or talked about, concerning the value of intimacy. I wish that was being taught more. I wish that kids were learning value about themselves way more.

sex is powerful and it's supposed to be. Think about it, the essence of God is coming together. Both male and female are made in his likeness, so when that kind of connection is made, it's powerful - That is a whole lot of God connecting together. it's supposed to be powerful and valuable.