The discomfort. The panic rising inside my chest. The contraction. The feeling of my throat closing over as fear tries to take hold.

It has to remain.

I feel the urge to make it stop, to escape it, to fix it, but instead I find myself allowing it.

The life I knew as my childhood suddenly felt like it wasn't real at all.

Like it had been made up, or perhaps distorted by time, grief, stories, and the way memories are passed down.

For many years I was seen as someone who was confrontational. But was I really?

When I look back, the times I spoke out were rarely about myself.

They were about children. They were about safety. They were about harm.

A quiet asking within: why is this memory here? And I listened. There it was the sensation. The felt sense. The meaning beneath the image.Then something unexpected happened, a thought arose:

I wonder how he must have felt in that moment to be in a moment of love.

As Christians, particularly in traditions that strongly emphasise sin, dependence, and brokenness, we can sometimes unconsciously stay rooted in deficiency.

Yes we need Christ. But perhaps the deeper question is:

Have we become more focused on what we lack than on what Christ restores?

A song comes on unexpectedly, and the body responds before the mind can catch up. There’s an awakening, an aliveness that feels almost disorienting after shutdown. Not necessarily “happy,” but present. Alert, unarmoured for a moment.

It feels like being called back into the room of yourself.

And suddenly, I could no longer read her the same, because maybe she was never meant to shame us. Maybe she was never meant to represent polished perfection. She was meant to reflect resilience.

Because Moses was not just a leader, he was a human navigating identity, fear, survival, grief and calling and suddenly the story becomes incredibly relatable.

What happens when the place you thought was safe… suddenly isn’t?, and instead of being held, you’re left alone in the most vulnerable moment?

What happens when the truth you needed years ago finally finds you… and instead of breaking you, it softens something you didn’t know was still holding on?

I’ve had other friendships, the kind that feel like family but with time and awareness comes clarity.

I can now see how some of those connections were built on coping, on unspoken exchanges where listening and giving went beyond what was healthy.

There are moments when something small a reel, a sentence, a feeling lands in a place you didn’t realise was still holding so much.

And suddenly, you’re not just watching anymore…
You’re being asked to feel something you’ve been holding onto for far too long.

We communicate differently, we hold ourselves differently and we stop giving all of ourselves away. Not from shutting down, but from no longer living on autopilot. Because when something is named, the body no longer has to keep sounding the alarm in the same way. The nervous system softens even just a little.

As Christians, we do the same. Christ’s work on the cross is complete“it is finished.” Yet we often continue living in patterns of shame, guilt, or trying to fix ourselves, believing we still need to earn our new identity. But the radical message of the Gospel is that we do not need to add to what Christ has already done.

For too long, beliefs have been placed upon us quietly, persistently whispering of impending dread, all in the name of womanhood. Not always spoken aloud.
But felt. In the body. In the nervous system.

In the way we brace for what’s “coming next.”

If he were alive today, with access to what we now know about the nervous system, trauma, frequency, and the measurable impact of emotions on the body would his work look the same? Or would it have evolved?

Healing can feel like a game of snakes and ladders, where just as you feel like you’ve climbed, you slide back down and begin to question everything… even yourself.