Category Archives: fighting fear

learning languages: a journal of grief, growth, & becoming, part 2

Posted on by July 13, 2026

Every week at Grandma’s is different now. She was chattier in December and January; she ate lunch with us sometimes. She knew me, and mostly knew who the kids were.

learning languages: a journal of grief, growth, and becoming, part 2

One week we talked about homeschooling, which she did with her youngest two boys. She watched as the kids kept coming over for me to check their work or answer questions.

“How do you keep it all straight?” she asked.

“I don’t know…how did you?”

“I don’t know.” She almost grinned. “I’m glad I had all I could handle. It was a good thing. It was good for all of us, good learning for all of us.”

It is good to have all we can handle, to be stretched beyond what we think we can do…as long as we don’t give up. As long as we lean on Him. Because in spite of what people say, He will give us more than we can handle, because that’s how we grow. That’s also how, when we do the thing that was too much for us to do on our own, we recognize His grace.

We never accomplish alone, in our own strength, by our own brainpower.

And this is good news because I’ve been feeling very stupid lately while learning Greek. It is a beautiful, aggravating language that fools you with easy words like “párti” for party, and “souper market” for super market, but as soon as your guard is down it smacks you upside the head with i̱lektronikós ypologistí̱s, which is ten syllables just to say “computer.”

I know I’ve made fun of English for being stupid, but at least we have sensible blends, like sl in slow, or br in brown. For the most part, our letters flow in a civilized manner.

But in Greek, you have hard consonants like k and t at the beginning of words like ktizo (“to build”). You have phrases like esy ftiaxneis (“you make”), and you wonder WHAT in the WORLD are you supposed to do with that second word because f and t are together at the beginning of it, and you’ve also got to figure out how to deal with that weird xn in the middle.

Hint: You almost (but not quite) get rid of the “s” sound in the x, so what you’re left with, phonetically spelled, is…

[types, then quickly deletes]

…something you shouldn’t try pronouncing around your kids. Or your grandma, even if she’s Irish.

It’s sort of like learning to play violin: No one should do it until they’re an expert.

But here we are, asked to do so many things before we are experts, before we even have the slightest clue what we are really doing. Instead, we are living in ironic juxtaposition that seems to make no sense.

I do not know how we are keeping it all straight; I actually don’t think we are, at all. I think we have situations like those hard consonants that don’t normally blend, and suddenly they’re holding hands and swing dancing drunkenly together anyway, teaching us whole new sounds we never imagined. Párti.

A friend shared this a while back, and it stuck with me:

source

Can you handle feeling incompetent long enough to attain fluency? This is not just about languages, of course.

It is slow work, this absorbing and distilling and creating. Remember, we are not performing, we are becoming.

For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
line upon line, line upon line,
here a little, there a little.

– Isaiah 28:10

And more good news: God knows what we’re doing and where we’re going, long before we do. He is training us for the journey, making us like Him when we let Him.

He is putting us where He wants us, and preparing us for what’s ahead.

In the Old Testament I’ve made it to Judges, which is sort of the Best and Worst of Bible Stories. I’m currently still toward the beginning where it’s pretty normal, before you get to the what-the-what parts that remind us once again that just because we read about someone in Scripture, it doesn’t mean God wants us to imitate them.

I would, however, love to add t-shirts to our merch page that advertise “Jael’s camping gear”…tents, hammers, gorgeous rugs, mugs of warm milk…I digress.

We do need to talk about Jael though, because she’s a prime example of someone being where you don’t expect them to be, doing what you don’t expect them to do.

We’re in Judges 4, when Deborah, a prophetess, is judging Israel. She was an answer to prayer after twenty years of the Israelites’ sin and oppression, and with her leadership, they were finally ready to stand up to their oppressor: King Jabin of Hazor.

So Deborah summoned Barak and gave him the word from the Lord, telling him how to defeat Sisera, the general of the King Jabin’s army. Barak said he’d only go if Deborah went with him, and she said, Sure, but since you were a pansy, you won’t be able to take out Sisera; the Lord is going to let a woman do it. My paraphrase.

Instructions and strategy follow, and then we get to this odd sentence right in the middle of the action. No segue, no transition, no apparent reason why it’s there at all:

Now Heber the Kenite had separated from the other Kenites, that is, the descendants of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, and had encamped as far away as Elon-bezaanannim, which is near Kedesh.

– Judges 4:11

And we’re like, Who is this guy, and why do we care? What is he even doing here? But if you know the story, you know where this is going and why that sentence is there.

In our lives though, we usually don’t know the full story. Our strange little sidebars and interruptions seem completely out of place. We often think we are out of place.

So was Heber. Heber the Kenite had moved far away…sounds like the beginning of a limerick by Dr. Suess.

Anyway, after that odd sentence we jump right back into the action again: Sisera knows the Israelites are on the move, so he calls his 900 chariots and they start to move, too, but the Lord is there and He throws Sisera’s army into a panic. Sisera flees on foot while Barak pursues his chariots and army to Sisera’s hometown, Harosheth-ha-goiim, a place that would only be harder to pronounce if it were Greek.

But Sisera flees on foot in a different direction…and we find out why Heber was mentioned earlier.

Now Sisera had fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite –

(Ohhhh…but wait, there’s more!)

…for there was peace between King Jabin of Hazor and the clan of Heber the Kenite.

– Judges 4:17

Heber the Kenite had moved far away…because his family was on friendly terms with the king who was oppressing the Israelites. The King that the Lord had sold them into for their disobedience.

The king who was Sisera’s boss.

The Lord put Heber where He wanted him, because…you know this story, right?

Jael, his wife was at home for the day…

Because Heber’s wife had a destiny to introduce the temple of Sisera’s head to the business end of her tent peg.

And now our limerick is complete:

Heber the Kenite had moved far away
Jael, his wife, was at home for the day
Where Sisera had fled
Wanting drink, and a bed
But her hammer made certain he’d stay.

(Thank you, thank you.)

Let’s pause here for a few important questions:

  • Can we handle feeling displaced long enough to defeat the enemy?
  • Are we mature enough to emotionally regulate ourselves, in spite of the enemy’s threat, and in spite of not knowing exactly what we’re doing?
  • Are we going to agree with smallness and shrink back, or are we willing to go and do what He sends us to, when we don’t have the full plan?

We might be where we’re at because we need this practice.

That conversation with Grandma I mentioned earlier was one of our last coherent talks. She has been so far away since then; she can barely hear me, usually doesn’t understand me, and sometimes doesn’t recognize me. She is displaced and none of us like learning this new language.

But I know growth is happening under the surface, in relationships and minds and hearts. God is giving us more than we can handle, and we’re feeling stretched and stupid and humbled as we attain a new kind of fluency.

We are learning why certain things trigger us, why we are withdrawing, and we’re finding new words for feelings we’ve never identified or bothered to articulate before.

Still, it feels like no one should have to do this until they’re an expert. And none of us want to be experts at this.

No one wants to be an expert in grief, displacement, brokenness, or feeling stupid in the things we wish we already understood.

Instead of neglecting your garden in the hope that God will rescue you from this situation and send you somewhere else, go rake your garden. Take care of your garden as if this season was the last season and you want to leave it beautiful for the next family who uses it.

– Katie James, Tetragon Lift

Is this the last season? In so many ways, yes. We do not know how much time we have left in anything, with anyone.

Last week, Grandma gave me a long hug when we were leaving. With her face in my hair, she said, “You be safe going home, now.”

I want that for her, too. We want to steward these days well, however many are left.

What feels too hard will become more familiar. The sounds we don’t know how to make will start rolling off our tongues with a little more practice. We won’t feel stupid in this area forever. (We’ll gain fluency and feel stupid in other areas, instead.)

We cannot keep it all straight, and it is more than we can handle, but we are not handling it on our own. This is where we recognize His grace, and it is good learning for all of us.

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the long way: a journal of grief, growth, & becoming, part 1

Posted on by July 13, 2026

The snow fell that day without punctuation: no commas, no periods, just a steady run-on sentence of accumulation. I love the snow when we’re home, and for the last several years, we’ve been home a lot. But not in this season.

the long way: a journal of grief, growth, and becoming, part 1

In this season, we drive to Palmer at least three times a week. And it’s not just all the commuting, but it’s also home repair and two of our kids learning to drive and health issues that need to resolve plus my grandma’s care and about four seven situations I can’t write publicly about and also it seems like the WORST time in the world to go back to school because I turn fifty this year for crying out loud and it’s not like either time or money have been just overflowing around here but this is what He’s called us to so there we are.

So my thoughts have been unpunctuated, too.

You probably have your own sentences like that.

When we have unpunctuated sentences without enough breathing room for even a comma, we have to wonder what the Lord is up to.

A website login asks, “What is four plus 13?” and you stall for half a second, thrown by the words mixed with numbers, wondering if this is still English or if you just need more coffee or if you finally lost it. It’s not stupidity or exhaustion or insanity; it’s the congestion of everything running through your thoughts, overwhelming the system.

We’re dealing with paradox and irony, things that do go to together even though they seem incongruent on the surface. The math adds up, but we need to pause and think about it differently because the questions aren’t what we expected.

We take a step back, and look at the big picture.

In these seasons, we have responsibilities on the front burner, concerns on the back burner, and other needs waiting on the counter for their turn. A faint sound of dripping that should probably be identified and dealt with. And sometimes, sirens in the distance.

Multiple things are happening simultaneously, but we’ve attempted to recognize priorities. We are also painfully aware of our own limitations, and our need for grace – for God to do (or help us do) the things we can’t naturally accomplish on our own.

Does this sound familiar?

Personally, I’m seeing a little progress because a few weeks ago I wrote, “I have written thousands and thousands of words, but they’ve just sat in my documents. I could not trust myself to publish without drawing blood,” but this week I finally had three days in a row of desk time and I was able to start making sense of things. It’s not that I haven’t been writing; it’s that I’ve been writing too much without enough time to make anything coherent among the overwhelm of scrappy thoughts in all the different situations. It’s such a mess to untangle.

I got sassy with the Lord yesterday and said, “If You’re still talking to me, couldn’t You just make it simple and give me a whole post all at once, instead of these bits and pieces of fourteen different articles and topics?”

Instead of striking me with lightning – or sending me to my room, which honestly I would’ve loved – He said, Because you’re not living out one article or topic. You’re in the middle of many situations, and I’m speaking to you through all of them.

Sit with Me, and we’ll sort them out together.

And then He sent me to my room, and we started sorting.

He showed me the juxtaposition of taking classes when it seems like there’s less time than ever, and of living on the far side of Wasilla when so much of our life is centered across the Valley. Both situations seem so inefficient, such bad timing.

But the classes have been my therapeutic distraction; I can pour myself into them because it’s surprisingly easier to grasp Old Testament theology and the Intertestamental Period than all the feelings swarming me. And our physical distance away from everything has enforced a boundary that keeps us (me) from overdoing anything else right now.

Sometimes our “inefficient” limitations protect us, because they make us focus, and create boundaries we wouldn’t have enforced on our own.

A while back we were in relationship with someone who was in crisis, and I was so frustrated that we weren’t able to do more for them. We did what we could, though. And after several months, it turned out that person still hadn’t done what they could to improve their own situation. Had we done more – had we done what we wished we could’ve in the beginning – we would’ve been stuck in a complicated enabling relationship, rather than setting the simple boundaries we were already limited by.

That was a good (but hard) lesson, and perspective I needed.

My internet search history lately has been saturated with stages of dementia, long term care, in-home care, insurance claims, real estate, housing markets, assisted living facilities, guardianship, cost of vehicles. The details are new but the pattern is familiar and I know life is being upended again.

Since I think I know some of what’s coming, part of me wants to hold tightly to the small, sacred routines for dear life. Another part of me has had no choice but to let go and accept things – especially the long grief of dementia, where there is no long term solution, no long term plan, no long term anything. Time is flying, and in so many ways, in so many moments, we have already lost her.

We already miss her, who she really is.

Until this year her mind has been like a summer sky with small white clouds occasionally moving across and blotting out the light of the sun. Each year the sky has become cloudier; there have been fewer periods of sunlight. This summer the sunlight in the sky of my mother’s mind, when it shines at all, glimmers through cloud.

– Madeleine L’Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

Here, it is steady snowfall, a run-on sentence of the accumulated questions whose answers are no longer remembered.

When I realized I was crying every day, I tried to make sense of the grief. We are used to change, and we have been losing her for so long, so it’s not exactly the speed or overwhelm of the world spinning too fast. Those are hard, but they are at least a familiar kind of hard.

It’s more like the world suddenly stops – she forgets Kav’s name, or she looks at me vacantly and I wonder if she’s already gone – and the momentum stops, everything stops.

We don’t notice oxygen until we can’t breathe. We don’t notice the speed of the earth turning until the axis wobbles, and I feel nausea as the fluid within me reels.

Later at the computer, I am trying to type through tears and think, I do not have time for this, there is so much to do.

If I do not sit here and grieve, though, nothing else will happen. This is the slow work, the deep work, that has to be done. If I don’t do it here, now, I won’t be able to do what needs done later, at her house, with the family, cleaning her stovetop, kneeling at her chair, holding her hand, drinking tea out of my dad’s mug.

This is the place and time to process, and there is no checking it off the list because it just keeps coming, and I hate that.

A couple years ago I wrote about a different grief, when kids grow up and move out. Reading it hits differently right now:

We miss their presence when they leave. But also, as they’ve been longing to leave – which we remember and relate to and rejoice in with them – we realize that we’ve already been missing them because part of them has been gone for a long time. They’ve changed and emotionally moved on already in many ways. The grief has been sneaking up on us, slipping in and surprising us at random intervals for over a year now.

During those recent weeks when I couldn’t make heads or tails of things, I went to the memorial service of a pastor from our previous church. He had led our team of intercessors, and every Tuesday morning we prayed around the table together. His wisdom bled into several of my writings.

He was in his eighties when he died, twelve years younger than my grandma. I could not help sitting through his service with her on my mind.

Even though the denominations are different, in many ways that church took me back to my roots because the atmosphere was so similar to Grandma’s church that I grew up in. We sang hymns in both places, including the one that opened Dr. Don’s memorial:

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

– Joseph Scriven, 1855

Person after person came up to honor this man, and they were still going when I had to leave early for another event at our church that evening. A couple people mentioned this quote of his:

The definition of true humility is to be known for who you really are.

– Dr. Don Brendtro

Doesn’t that change how we see authenticity, relationships, boundaries, and humility?

We feel helpless and without words sometimes, stuck in our own limitations and bound by the time it takes all the tears to flow out of us. But God is working in all of our weakness, making us who we really are, and teaching us to be honest about it with those around us.

We’ve had enough of society telling us to fake it until we make it. We are building a Kingdom of people who live humbly and honestly, even when life is a mess of griefs and burdens.

We are not performing; we are becoming.

There are reasons for the irony of our seasons. Protection is in place, timing is at play. And even though I’m scouring real estate listings more often than some people check their social media feeds (cough), I understand why the answer is still “Wait, not yet.” God has a curriculum for our lives, and we do not plan it.

Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments.

He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

– Deuteronomy 8:2-3

I have seen Him move us in perfect timing, when that perfect timing took years longer than I wanted. He moved us to the perfect place, when that perfect place was rejected by us at first because it didn’t fit what we thought we wanted and needed.

He gave it to us anyway, and we are aching a little at the prospect of leaving it, whenever that time comes.

Sometimes He is preparing us in ways that look like the opposite of preparation. Sometimes He is protecting us (and others) through our inability, our lack of proximity, or other boundaries we never would’ve enforced on our own.

That doesn’t mean we’re not called to those abilities or proximities, or that we won’t get there eventually.

It means He’s taking us the long way, and it’s for our good.

hard or easy: choosing humility & love over feelings & factions

Posted on by March 17, 2026

From his booster seat in the back, Kav asked, “Why are hard things actually good things?”

A light flashed in my mind, and I reminded myself that this kid just turned seven.

“What do you mean?”

“Because when you want to do a bad thing it’s easy…but good stuff is harder.”

“Huh. Like what?” I asked.

“I’ve got one,” Finn said. “It’s easy to punch someone when you really want to, but hard to resist.”

“Ohhh, self control. Yeah.”

“It’s easy to tell a lie, but harder to tell the truth–” Kav began.

“Because you want the easy way out,” Finn added.

“–and also, it’s easier to hit someone’s foot when you’re not very good at pogo sticking because you can’t really control the pogo stick very well yet,” Kav finished.

Right, all true. Good chat.

hard or easy: choosing humility and love over feelings and factions | Shannon Guerra @ Copperlight Wood

A major part of parenting is our constant effort to train our kids to choose right over wrong. The hard over the easy. The truth over the lie. Self control over lashing out. To choose to give someone space and get good at the pogo stick without smashing your brother’s foot.

This training doesn’t really end; it’s just that eventually we have to discipline ourselves to choose the hard over the easy. This is how maturity happens. Or, you know, it doesn’t.

Refusing the hard keeps us stuck. Staying still is easy, but moving forward – learning, growing, repenting, maturing, reconciling, forgiving, surrendering – those are hard.

And then there’s standing, which can mean a couple different things.

Are we standing down? Shrinking back? Or are we standing up, standing firm, standing for truth?

Standing is only a move forward if we’re doing it where the Lord has told us, in the way He’s told us, in what He’s actually said. Standing firm in our feelings, in bad teachings, in misplaced loyalties or in idolized traditions, will get us nowhere. That kind of standing is only staying stuck in stubborn pride.

Sometimes we tell ourselves we’re making a hard stand when we’re actually living in compromise. Because if someone’s hard stand in an area means they get to be a jerk, they’re not standing for anything; they’re making excuses for poor character.

We have to be savvy to the elements used to blind, delude, and divide us. In times of emotional uproar (and 2026 is looking pretty parallel to 2020 in this respect), if we find ourselves running quick to arguing, fault-finding, nitpicking, engaging in gossipy backroom chats, or holding offense against those we disagree with, it’s time to take a step back.

If you find yourself making knee-jerk reactions (and it takes humility to recognize it), detach for a minute. Ask Holy Spirit how He sees this, and what He wants you to see. There are a lot of things happening and we cannot afford to let the enemy direct our attention.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

– Galatians 5:19-21

If we’re are all up in arms and up in our feelings over issues that suddenly matter more than the people we’re talking to, it’s time for the hard reset of repentance.

All winter I’ve been shivering in my upstairs office. It’s been about 58 degrees when I get to the desk, but with a hoodie and hot tea and the space heater running, it’s been doable.

Still, it was freezing up here for months and we finally realized it wasn’t just the constant storms or the drafty windows. We’ve had repairs off and on, and last summer when the last one was made, the company recommended we switch out the entire system.

Their estimate? Almost $19,000. And no, that wouldn’t cover drywall repair, cleaning, psychotherapy, or heart attacks.

But they were the last guys who were here, so we called them again to see if they could just come check this upstairs zone to fix it. They said no, they won’t come out to check the thermostats, or pumps, or anything. They would only come if we wanted to replace the entire system. In January, in Alaska.

Were they standing their ground? Yes.

Was it stupid? Also yes.

It was sort of like, No, we won’t look at nutrition or therapy or adjusting medications or exercise or any of those other paltry fixes; let’s just jump to surgery because you’re desperate and too sick to think clearly about other options, anyway. That’ll be $20K plus anesthesia, thanks. Ka-ching.

Umm…no thanks.

Is generalizing really easier? Or is it only easy for the person who profits from it?

Wisdom observes nuance and the big picture, rather than taking a postage stamp-sized surface knowledge and applying it with a broad brush of ignorant assumptions and appraisals.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

– Galatians 5:22-26

One of our tendencies as humans is to generalize. We put people in categories: These ones I agree with, these ones I don’t. Boxes are easy. And oh boy, the complications that ensue when a person doesn’t fit cleanly into them, or surprises us.

In truth, most of us don’t fit perfectly into the categories of each other’s making. “Are you pro-This, or anti-That? Are you on my side, or theirs? Where do you stand so I know where to put you?”

These are the wrong questions to ask.

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us or one of our adversaries?”

He replied, “Neither, but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”

– Joshua 5:13-14a

Fortunately, there are a lot of right questions we can ask, and should be asking. What do you think about this? How are you doing? How is your heart these days? How is the pogo sticking going?

Without questions like these – which reveal a heart that cares, and honors the image of God in the other person – we skip over the hard work of seeing people and situations rightly, and jump right to the easy work of stuffing them into our mental boxes.

Part of the problem comes when someone makes a specific statement we disagree with, and then we misapply that specific statement to a much broader swath of things that we also disagree with.

We’ve seen this on social media since the very beginning: Someone shares their aversion to broccoli, and someone else jumps to, “Ohh, so you hate all vegetables?!” Or you mention your love for apples, and they respond, “Why all the hate for oranges?” But these responses aren’t just a vegan, blue-haired, liberal issue. (See? More categories!)

They’re a fleshy human nature issue, because we like to do the easy thing, not the hard thing. And it’s easy to be run by our emotions, jump to conclusions, and accuse others of extremes. But constructive discussion doesn’t happen in that environment. Foolishness and damage does.

If we take that easy route, we tend to progress into labeling and blaming, making accusations and judgments and blanket statements (more generalizing) that aren’t based on fact but on our feelings, because we feel threatened or angry or superior toward the other person thinking differently from us.

Then, instead of bringing people closer together, closer to truth or to God, the enemy uses us to create divisions and strife, all while feeling right and self righteous.

We back further into our own side, and our generalizations push the other person in the opposite direction, because disrespect doesn’t convince anyone that we’re right. It just tells them we’re no fun to be around, because no one wants their foot crushed by someone who, however well-meaning, can’t control their pogo stick.

How about we look at people with love and humility, allowing them to live in the same nuance and complexity that we ourselves do?

How about we look at issues diagnostically, instead of demanding a broad brush solution?

The week after that heating company gave us their ultimatum, a guy from a different company came, looked at the situation, and replaced a pump. We saved $18,573 by switching to Geico because someone was willing to look at the specific issue, rather than demanding to throw the entire thing out and replace it.

What kind of atmosphere are our words and attitudes creating? Do they cool the room? Divide? Dehumanize? Make you feel superior? Keep you thinking critically of others, instead of using critical thinking? (Important reminder: Critical thinking and walking in a spirit of criticism are quite different, and they are diametrically opposed to each other.)

Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?

Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience?

Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

– Romans 2:3-5

The kids and I have been reading the book of Mark together, and we take it in small bits at a time. Today was the story of Jesus calling Levi, a tax collector, to follow Him.

Shocking! I mean, didn’t Jesus know that Levi was a jerk?

Whatever, they had dinner at his house that night, anyway…with a bunch of other jerks. And then this happens:

When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” [Emphasis mine, but it lends to the drama if you read that in a gossipy, Valley-girl accent.]

When Jesus heard this, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

– Mark 2:16-17

They launch right into a discussion about fasting, which might be separated by a section heading in your translation, but try to ignore it because we’re still in the same scene. Then Jesus gives us a brief sewing lesson (ha, here) before ending the scene with this:

Similarly, no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins, but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.

– Mark 2:22

What is happening here? Without going into a whole science lesson, new wine grows (ferments) and it needs to be received by a vessel that will also grow with it.

Remember how Jesus just said it is not the righteous He came to call, but the sinners? The righteous were done growing, self-satisfied with their standing and their preconceived notions.

But Jesus wanted to pour into those who were willing to grow and change. And that was His mic drop.

Being willing to grow is hard, though, yes? It’s so much easier to resort to legalism or fear of man, to make categorical judgments and knee-jerk reactions, rather than recognizing details and understanding nuance.

We have a hard time changing our minds. And when we claim a loyalty to a person, cause, or ideology, we tend to dig in our heels the more proof we are given. At that point, it’s less about being right and more about being unwilling to admit we’ve been wrong.

We saw this constantly in 2020 with masks, election fraud, and PCR tests. We saw it with dozens of things then and we still see it today, on both sides, when people selectively ignore the truth of the Bible, or the Constitution, or other inconvenient realities that refute what they’ve always believed.

Going with the flow of the current thing is easy. Standing up to it is hard. Ignoring is easy. Learning is hard.

But is God God, or are our preconceived notions god? It can’t be both. Jesus is in the business of making us like Him, not the other way around.

We’re talking about repentance, of course.

If you have to forgive people for having different opinions and beliefs from you, that might be a sign of pride, not actually forgiveness. Can we be honest about that?

We don’t forgive beliefs, but how people act out those beliefs. In which case, the believer who should know better but acts out badly is more in the wrong than the unbeliever acting out rightly. Yes, we’re justified by faith, not works, but if our behavior doesn’t line up with our faith, we’re just making noise.

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

– 1 Corinthians 13:1

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

– Romans 13:10

Repentance is the only thing that washes clean, recalibrates, and puts things (and ourselves, and our hearts) back in order.

God always has the right of way. We must be reconciled to it.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us;
we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God.

– 2 Corinthians 5:18-20

Can we lay our pride, stubbornness, and fear of man on the altar? If we can’t do that, we have no business asking the lost to repent and surrender, either.

The change in our minds forces pruning in our character, and exposes other things we’ve been comfortable with…and it forces growth (which is good) but it often feels like regression because we’re seeing things more realistically and things were easier in our old ways and our old ignorance.

Good news, though: We don’t lose authority when we accept the Lord’s correction. We don’t lose ground, we gain it. If we can’t accept His correction, we weren’t carrying authority anyway; we were bluffing.

The enemy wants to divide in anyway he can. So don’t let him do it between you and other believers who see things differently, have different backgrounds, and get information from different places. He wants us to see people in labels and categories, not as real people who are complex beings made in the image of God.

Can we make it part of our mission this year to not allow 2026 to regress into 2020? To not lose years of growth by regressing into easy knee-jerk assumptions and categorizations? Can we be more mature this year than we were last year, regardless of the headlines and media manipulation? Because we’ve got real things happening in our own homes, in our own families, and I’m telling you, you don’t have time for this nonsense.

We need to be watching each other’s back, not stabbing each other in the back.

Jesus, help us to be in your word so we know, and put Your Word in us so we act it out.

May this be a season where Christians rise up and refine, rather than degrade and disintegrate.

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