The question instigated an inner dialogue with my younger self and I wondered if there was a pattern that I could trace; something that could give me a lead to the million dollar question in my teenage life, a question I remember having been repeatedly asked from the ages of nine to nineteen; why are most of your friends girls?

Though I am uncertain of how many of you will resonate with my words in this post, I am convicted to open up my heart, representing those sailing/ who have sailed similar waters to me, and to start a discussion with those interested.

Please note that the sole purpose of this post is to firstly, aid all of us, as the Body of Christ, to understand one another better by sharing a singular perspective on friendship that you may not have experienced “so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” 1 Corinthians 12:25, and secondly to encourage us to dig deep, confronting our long-forsaken past insecurities that may be hindering us from moving forward in our present, “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed…” Jeremiah 17:14.

Let me start by asking you;

Are most of your friends the same sex as you or the opposite sex?

Mine, for the majority of my life, have predominantly been of the opposite sex. I think it’ll be helpful to give you a background into why I think that has been the case; hopefully some of you will share similar experiences and relate to my story.

Throughout primary school I was mostly friends with other boys out of circumstance, not choice; I have no sisters and wasn’t surrounded by any young female relatives. I attended an all boys primary school and living in Cairo at the time, had very little exposure to girls at church. I do have distinct memories however, of eight year old me purposely avoiding to cross paths with specific boys due to a lack of relatibility. I vividly remember a sleepover with a church friend that left me feeling very ‘different’ to say the least; it was our tradition to play the Lion King PC game, but that evening my friend deemed it a “girls’ game” and we played, what was to me, a boring generic car-racing game instead. Little did I know that this was a glimpse into what I was going to encounter for the next ten or so years of my life.

Migrating to the UK aged 9 highlighted my disinterest in the majority of toys/ activities targeting my age/ sex demographic from the get-go; I could not care less about sports or cars and I certainly preferred drawing in my sketchbook or playing Pokemon Sapphire on my GameBoy Advance SP, than GTA with my brother on ‘our’ PS2. Befriending other males throughout secondary school became an intricate process of elimination; I deeply cherished the few that made me feel understood.

Though my social skills flourished in my teens, I began to embrace my introversion more and more – needing an intimate environment to feel safe. Naturally preferring and seeking long lasting one-on-one friendships, the false ‘revelation’ that I would not receive the intimacy I desired out of a friendship with another guy, was one I quickly believed. Without overly generalizing, I believe that young men struggle with emotional expression due to the hyper-masculine social construct they are born into from the get-go. Large male-dominated friendship groups are preferred over singular brotherhoods at that age as they provide a safety net from raw emotional expression, by masking a boy’s brokenness with quality banter and social hierarchy. In my case, the few male friendships I did harbor, disintegrated as quickly as they were formed.

Insecurity in Masculinity:

Having little in common with the males around me while growing up began to plant a seed of thought that I am not “man enough” for, what I perceived were, masculine tasks/ interests. The words “you’re just different from the other boys” that I had heard oh so often, began to seep into my skin and I had begun to base my entire identity on who I was not, rather than who I was.

Befriending females thus became very simple; since I was not like the other guys, and neither were they (being females themselves), we met on common grounds. I grew tired of the constant feeling of being “less manly” than the company surrounding me. I grew tired of proving my masculinity by faking my interest in subjects and banter that did not stimulate me. I grew tired of it all.

“The more one experiences pressures to “show oneself” and demonstrate masculine competency, the greater the hypervulnerability. The reason is that “showing off” one’s manhood is an emotionally immature process. This manhood is insecure and is based on what one does rather than who one is. Insecure masculinity comprises a set of behaviours driven by fear to prove to the world that one’s manhood isn’t weak, yet these same behaviours can inadvertently increase the feelings of fear they are intended to eradicate.”

– Niobe Way, Adolescent Boys – Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood 

In an oestragen concentrated environment, testosterone is very easy to spot.

And that felt good.

It fed my ego when I was asked questions to understand the perspective of a guy by my female friends. I no longer sought masculine validation from other guys as it was affirmed by the multitude of girls around me. This insecurity in my masculinity grew deeper, cocooning me in a dangerous comfort zone around females, that neither challenged me as a man nor helped me to feel represented.

Though healing low self-esteem/ self-confidence, particularly targeting fragile masculinity as in my case, is a life-long journey, The Lord eases it by His grace.

“…the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” Luke 1:78(b)-79

Though His luminosity exposes our innermost insecurities, instead of condemning us as the world does, The Lord uses His light to illuminate the road of healing for us to walk through, in order to achieve perfect peace with who we are. By exposing our insecurities to our Creator, we learn to humble ourselves in His presence and confess that though we do not posses the power to rid ourselves of our demons, He, the Alpha and Omega, surely does.

“The sick one who is acquainted with his sickness is easily to be cured; and he who confesses that he is in pain is near to health. Many are the pains of the hard heart; and when the sick one resists the physician, his torments will be augmented.”

– St. Isaac the Syrian

Truth rooted in The Word affirms who I am in Christ, rather than who I am not in the world. I begin to comprehend the intensity of The Father’s love for me; how He created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother’s womb (Ps 139:13). Trivial validations for masculinity or femininity from others in our worlds pale in comparison to a God-rooted self-confidence in our identities in Christ.

Embracing my identity in Christ and consequently my masculinity, however it manifests itself in my world, liberates me from trying to box what manhood means according to other people, in their worlds.

Embracing The Spectrum:

The healing process is radical. It not only frees you of your chains, but opens your eyes to your fellow man’s needs so that you are moved to minister to those you once deemed unworthy.

I spent my adolescent years wrongfully believing that the boys who had made me feel isolated growing up, were unworthy; of my friendship, my time, or even my concern. “They had had it easy”. They fit “the norm”, so any struggle they encountered I deemed insignificant compared to mine.

Once healing began, The Holy Spirit gave me a crash course on statistics to open my eyes as to how the Body of Christ functions. If you’re not familiar with the term ‘normal distribution’, it is a function that represents the distribution of many random variables. It’s normally represented in a ‘bell curve’, as shown in the diagram below;

I won’t bore you with the stats talk, trust me – I hated maths at school, but this perfectly illustrates the point that I want to make. (If you’re a maths genius, please bare with me as I butcher this concept). In this diagram, you can see that most variables fall in the centre at 34.1%, and as you move to either sides of the curve, the percentage decreases. The data is representing the distribution of the same variables; the majority is at the centre, but there are still plenty that don’t fall in the dark blue region.

Once I realised that though I may not fall in the “34.1%”, with the majority of men, in Christ I am still represented in the bell curve of masculinity, such a heavy weight was lifted. I belonged. I’m here. I’m here. I remember that season of discovery vividly – how the Holy Spirit used it to re-instill so much lost confidence in my soul,  even convicting and burdening me for my fellow brothers, whether in the 34.1% or in the 0.1% bracket, now that I had realised that we are one Body. “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts…” Romans 12:4-6(a).We the Church, embrace the undeniable spectrum of personalities existing within humanity as it is created in God’s image and likeness, for “Christ is all, and is in all.” Colossians 3:11(b). In the Lord, the gentle man and the resilient woman, the expressive male and the reserved female, the stay-at-home father and the working mother alike, hold a significant role in the Body of Christ. A role that only the 0.1% on the bell curve can fulfill; a calling though not understood by the world, is fully known and anointed by The Father.

Every member of the Body becomes a spirit reflecting a trait of his/ her Creator in your eyes, when you choose to embrace the normal distribution that exists within your own sex and the opposite sex. This liberating truth opened the door to the brotherhood I had longed for all along; pure, unfiltered, edifying, long-lasting friendships with other men. Brotherhood that challenges me when I am falling short, comforts me when I am miserable, corrects me when I am backsliding, and prays for me when I am broken. By the grace of God, I now have brothers whose souls are knit to mine, and though we may fall at different points on the spectrum, “a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity” Proverbs 17:17. 

“I want you to know that the love that is between me and you is no bodily love, but a spiritual love. For bodily friendship has no firmness or stability, being moved by strange winds.”

– St. Anthony

‘David & Jonathan’ by Joanne Rozeik

If you have walked a similar road to me, I pray for your healing. I pray that your rooted identity in the Lord would nourish your self-confidence; that the chains of self-doubt and low self esteem would break free today. I pray that you would accept the radical truth that you are called to serve and minister to those very same people that make you feel unqualified. “The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.” Luke 8:38-39.

If you fall in the 34.1%, I pray for your healing also. For we are one Body, and if one brother or sister is hurting, then you are hurting also. I pray that the Lord would use you to embrace His children at all ends of the beautiful spectrum that humanity has been created into. I pray that you are a voice for those that have yet to discover theirs.

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21

Our loneliness has caused us to be so needy and as a result we have become overly sensitive to any hints of someone trying to attack us. We are quick to lash out to anyone who seems to be rejecting us.

A product of our defenses and protective walls are the external structures to keep out strangers. We protect our properties with dogs, double lock the doors to our homes and have security guards in airports and train stations. Our society has titled those that who do not speak the same language, those who are unfamiliar, those who dress differently, as strangers. This is what has created fear and hostility within us. We will often find ourselves even calling our own family and friends as strangers. The communities we live in have become battlefields rather than places of peace and places to bring us closer.

Rather than living as persons who share in each other’s pains, laughers, and sorrows we have become individuals who move away from one another, ready to strike at any moment we feel threatened.

Henri Nouwen offers a solution to this hostility; hospitality.

To most people hospitality often means an open door for guests to come into their homes and make themselves comfortable.

Abraham’s hospitality is the most beautiful example of true hospitality. He welcomes graciously his three guests as he camps by the oak of Mamre. As a result of Abraham’s hospitality, something or Someone priceless was offered to him and his wife.

Both the Old and New Testament demonstrate this, when hospitality is offered a gift is offered to the host. To Abraham his gift was the revelation of the Lord Himself. When the widow of Zaraphath offered a place of refuge to Elijah, Elijah revealed himself as a man of God. On the road to Emmaus as the two friends offered the Stranger a space to walk with them, the Stranger revealed Himself as Christ the Risen Lord.

The key to each of these events is the ‘space’ that was offered by each host to their guest, a space that was created to allow the stranger to be transformed to a friend. The guests were welcomed as they were, not on the host’s terms but their own. Each stranger and guest has a great gift to offer us, to heal us and enrich our lives.

The German word for hospitality is Gastfreundschaft, which means friendship for the guest. The Dutch word for hospitality is Gastrijheid, meaning freedom of the guest. The beauty of illustrating both these definitions paints us a full picture. Hospitality is the place for friendship with no conditions and freedom without abandonment.

Every person we sit with, every person we encounter on a daily basis is our guest, a guest in our ‘personal space’, a guest to our thoughts, feelings and way of life.

We must create a space of emptiness for them to explore freely in our presence. We always feel the need to bombard our guests with our own ideas, opinions and feelings. Yet hospitality shows us something different. It shows us that the guest has the freedom to sing their own song, speak their own language of pain, joy and laughter, to dance their own dance and even leave freely having discovered this own calling.

You see, hospitality, is allowing our guest to find himself rather than be conformed to our ways, our thoughts and our lifestyle. We offer our guest that gift, ‘to find their own personal way of being human.’

We as the host must lay down our weapons and invite our guests to do the same.

Johannes Metz describes this in the most profound and enlightening way when we says:

We must forget ourselves in order to let the other person approach us. We must be able to open up to him to let his distinctive personality unfold— even though it often frightens and repels us. We often keep the other person down, and only see what we want to see; then we never really encounter the mysterious secret of his being, only ourselves. Failing to risk the poverty of encounter, we indulge in a new form of self-assertion and pay the price for it: loneliness. Because we did not risk the poverty of openness (Matthew 10: 39), our lives are not graced with the warm fullness of human existence. We are left with only a shadow of our real self.

We subconsciously say and do things every time we are with others trying to make them like ourselves, but we end up pushing them away. The fall of man led to this ‘sameness’, where we want everyone to be like ‘us’, the intolerance of distinction and particularity in every human being.

In the famous icon of the Trinity by the Russian iconographer, Andrei Rublev, the image of hospitality is portrayed. It was said of the hospitality of Abraham that it was three angels that came to him and Sarah. According to Tradition it was the Lord Himself. The three Persons illustrated in the icon have wings yet each carries a staff in their hand. The Divine joins our weary journey, revealing how we to must walk with our guests.

The center of the icon is the table, or the altar where the slain Lamb is. The story of the hospitality of Abraham is transformed to the hospitality of God to us. The Trinity is inviting us to sit and dine with them, at the Father’s house, to come disarmed and free to be yourself. I enter in with my unique personality and unique way of expressing myself to the sacred place of the Beloved. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit all with their arms open, invite me to come and be the completion of the circle around the table, to join in with their Divine and eternal Dance.

The table is prepared and the door is open. My host, my Father calls out to you and me, ‘Come.’

I challenge you this week to get together with one person in your community whom you have labelled as a stranger and see what gift they have to give to you.

Let me tell you a simple tale of a man who endured unparalleled pain, and prevailed. Listen, as I share with you the story of he who lost it all, to gain everything.

I recently met up with an old friend and we reminisced over painful events in the past, sharing the ways in which God had helped us to cope with them. As he vulnerably opened up to me, I couldn’t help but notice the intricate works of the Lord throughout his life that had led him to the solid ground he stood on today.

This friend of mine had lost his mother at a very young age and was brought up in a broken home; with very dysfunctional relationships with his siblings. As he shared with me his hopes and dreams as a child, I could see the pain those memories held in his eyes. I sat in the corner of Starbucks repeatedly listening to stories of parental favouritism, negligence from his siblings and emotional abuse, and though my heart ached, I ate up every word he said, eagerly awaiting the revelation of a key to life that I was certain he must have discovered to have become the mighty man he is today.
As he reached the climax of every story he shared with me, a smirk would appear on his face, and after five or six times, I knew exactly what that smirk meant. A big plot twist would ravage the story, and the season of joy or success he would be experiencing, somehow – almost frustratingly – would spiral downwards in an uncontrollably fast way. I’m not going to lie, being the impulsive person I am, his calm demeanor as he spoke began to stress me out, even though none of his past struggles had anything to do with me! I guess I wanted to see the anger and bitterness that had been brewing within him, but to my utter surprise none of that was to be revealed – not because of any wall he may have been putting up, but because there was none.

Friends, believe me when I tell you that evening I heard stories of child abuse, wrongful accusations and consequently wrongful punishments. Stories of deception that would send chills down the coldest spines. Yet this man, with the darkest past, exuded nothing but peace. With the warmest smile, he looked at me in the eyes and said “whatever bad things have happened to me in the past, God has used for good in my life today¹”. Just like that. No complaining, no anger, no self-pity… just the deep revelation that God had used his past seasons of pain for his present joy.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:18-19

As he spoke these simple of words of truth, He who dwells within me began to whisper the words He had inspired St. Paul to write to the Philippians; “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:12-13. My friend had truly known what it meant to be in need – in need of money, respect, justice, and love, and he breathed this revelation; that true contentment in every situation can only be achieved through Him who gives you strength. Strength to endure the unendurable. He recognised that apart from His Saviour he could accomplish nothing², “and that, Michael, is why I feel free” he told me simply, with a joyful smile, as if the Holy Spirit had bathed him in peace and liberty.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:5

This wise man that sat before me at our small two-seater table in Starbucks in Westfield Shopping Centre had figured it out. He’d given me the key to life that I desperately wanted to learn from him. He had come to the revelation that seasons change but the Lord God Almighty forever remains the same³. A revelation that gifted him with tremendous confidence in His Maker, confidence during painful seasons that though he stood helpless before great mountains, His Saviour is and will forever be able to turn them into level ground⁴ for him to walk through to greener pastures.
As our conversation came to an end, my friend looked at me one more time, and humbly said “…and you know the best part about all this? It’s blessed my present and made me forget all about my past.^5″.

Those were the simple words spoken by a simple man who lived a great life, and his words rung ever so loudly in my ears. A man who had tasted what it meant to be in need and to have plenty. A man who recognised that apart from His Creator he could do nothing, but through Him could do all things. A man who, with ease, embraced seasons past, recognising that they led him to where he stood today.

If you want to meet my friend, find him in Genesis 37-50.
His name, is Joseph.

And the cutting winds that blew violently, hushed. The roaring waves that crashed ferociously, silenced. The devastated earth that was shaken, became still. A New Season had begun…

[1] Genesis 50:20
[2] Genesis 41:16
[3] Malachi 3:6
[4] Zechariah 4:6-7
[5] Genesis 41:51-52

in·tol·er·ant \-rənt\ ; not willing to allow or accept something

There is much talk of guns and hate, terror and injustice. Religious belief systems are in question, and humanities morality appears to be in severe decline.

We hate the guns, those behind the guns, and those who refuse to stop the guns. We hate the terror, the terrorists and the beliefs that drive them to acts of violence. We hate the violence and the violent, the injustice and the obstructers of peace. We hate the intolerance that leads to hate.

And amidst it all she tears into me as I hear her say, “it is this hate that makes some of us still hide.”

I remember every persecuted minority.

Humans were not made for this kind of hate; we were not made to hide.

I can’t help but think of all those who are more fearful, more hateful of themselves because of this. And I can’t help but wonder what possesses a human to unflinchingly rob someone of life for holding different beliefs. Maybe we don’t have guns pointed, but what difference does it make when in our own hearts we possess the same intolerance towards various people who are different to us?

There is no measure to intolerance – there is only willingness or unwillingness to allow or accept another person for their beliefs.

There are those who call it a higher power, God, Yahweh, Allah, Krishna, Selassie, mother nature, or science. There are the singers, the dancers, the poets and the drummers, who envision a different meaning to the word worship. There are the Sunni’s, the Shi’ite’s, the Sufi’s and the Baha’is. The evangelicals, Pentecostals, Baptists, Catholics, the Orthodox and all those who refuse to go by a name. There are the liberal and the fundamentalists. There is creation, and there is evolution. There are homosexuals, heterosexuals, transgender, bisexuals. There are those whose birth determined their hair, skin color and the shape of their eyes. And there are those who like guns, love guns, believe in the right to a gun, and there are those who have known the searing loss caused by a gun.

We live in a world of diversity, and diversity should neither threaten nor scare us. Diversity was never made to cause this kind of chaos.

But maybe amidst the chaos and the ache we can all fight for something. Maybe we can fight the intolerance in our own hearts and refuse to let the same darkness take hold of us. Maybe we can fight the pride of being offended when others don’t agree with us, and forsake the supremacy of our own thoughts. Because intolerance is pride. Intolerance is believing that our own beliefs make us greater than others. Intolerance is the unspoken disgust, disdain and disregard of another person because of what they believe or how they choose to live their life.

Maybe instead of pointing the gun we can reach out our hands to understand one another better.

Maybe instead of slashing others with the sword at the tip of our tongues we let kind words make a warm home between us.

It is time to consider what makes us pull the trigger.

It is time to disarm.

It is time to stop hating.

It is time to walk in love.

We all belong to each other. That is plenty, that is enough.

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
– Mother Theresa

Photo courtesy of Maria Dryfhout

Beyond race, culture and religion, we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We all possess frail hearts, we all desire to love and be loved. We all long to find safety and belonging in the world. We all hurt and we fear, we stumble into awkward moments, into our own chaos and anger. We are the same beneath these beautiful layers of skin and confusion. We are all the same kind of broken. And in our broken, common humanity, redemption desires to tell the tale of us all, because there is no one beyond grace.

Yet how many people have we deemed unworthy of grace? How many souls have we too easily condemned?

“Enemy” is a strong word. Strong enough to make us distance ourselves from it and deny that it plays a part in our lives. But when Christ spoke of enemies, he spoke simply; an enemy is someone who stands in the way of our freedom, dignity, our capacity to grow and love, someone who attacks us or our country. An enemy most commonly exists within the person whom we are avoiding.

When the lawyer spoke to Jesus asking how he was to enter the kingdom of heaven, He answered him simply; “love your neighbour as yourself.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:29). Though the words of the Bible are clear and simple, just like the lawyer, we seek justification. Love my enemy? Who is my enemy? Surely Jesus didn’t mean ISIS, surely He didn’t mean the human responsible for my deepest hurts?

But what if the ones we name offenders can be freed to love?

‘They are people who, if loved, helped, and trusted, can in some small way recognize their faults and their brokenness and can grow in humanity and in inner freedom.” -Jean Vanier

What if humanity rose up to forgive? Like the sacred hearts of Katja Rosenberg, Antoine Leiris and Arturo Martinez. What if we extended forgiveness regardless of our hurts and our rights, and followed the sacred Word that brings all healing. For us to forgive, we must yearn for unity and peace, yearn for the oneness to be united in mind, in heart and in spirit. If we love and desire for all to be free to bear fruit, we will be a people heavy for forgiveness. We will live full and whole that we are no longer driven by our desire to be filled and prove ourselves worthy but we will yearn for the growth of all people in peace and in unity. To be a peacemaker, we must make peace with ourselves and we must make peace with those around us. We must believe that we are all a part of the suffering. We have all hurt and been hurt. When we point out darkness, we must remember to point back at our own souls. It is not easy to see beyond our own suffering, sometimes it is blinding. It is not easy to accept forgiveness or to forgive; it is a struggle.

‘ When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too.’ -Henri Nouwen

The truth is our enemies can often tell us a lot more about us than our friends can. The way we respond to our enemies will tell us the true state of our hearts; if we are hearts walking in forgiveness or if we walk in resentment.

Prayer for my Enemies

“Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.

Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a fly.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

So that my fleeing will have no return; So that all my hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;

So that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; So that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;

So that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; Ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.”

–Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic

“Every Christian must be part artist. We craft lives of meaning through faith. And this means reaching out to engage those who differ while never losing appreciation for what sets us apart.”
-Father Andrew of Athos

I grew up thinking, you were either creative or you weren’t. I categorized myself as the latter since I couldn’t draw, write or produce drama. I spent most of my life detaching myself from anything that required creativity or imagination because to me that part of my brain just didn’t work.

We are the result of creation, and that means that He who fashioned us gave us the ability and the capacity to also create. We are all artists and poets, and I’ve come to learn that creativity is so much more than painting a portrait, writing a profoundly deep story or producing a moving film.

So what is creativity exactly?

Simply put, you.

It’s you.

It’s you in your daily interactions, in the way you interact with the stranger you meet, in the way you plan a trip to a new destination, the way you take on disappointments in life, the way you come up with an idea to improve your business’ efficiency or sales. It’s you in the way you carefully think out a recipe to make that perfect meal for the ones you love.

Beauty is in creativity.

Our sensitivity to beauty is but a glimpse of how man saw the world before corruption seeped into our very nature.

Understanding beauty is an important aspect when we create. Beauty is not static; it is not confined to any one person’s perception, but it is dynamic in the sense that it continues to develop. And when true beauty is fully cultivated it has the space to flourish in whatever direction it pleases.

Beauty is in the touch of love, in the healing words we can whisper to our neighbor and in how we have the ability to be woven into each other’s lives.

However, the most beautiful work of art is in the work of being made by Grace. It is in becoming the final tapestry of work yourself. In writing songs, you become the song itself, in painting a canvas you become a painting, all for the glory of the One who made you.

Creativity is our vocation.

“Being fashioned in His image means that we are also artists and poets, regardless of our vocation in life. We are artists in the way we love. We are poets in the way we pray. Everyone is an artist.”
-Jonathan Jackson

Creativity encompasses all that we as humans are able to achieve, craft and produce.

Every time we engage in anything then we are engaging in art. We are participating with the Creator Himself and we become fellow co-workers. Our responsibility as artists then is to lead others into a more profound meaning of their existence and ultimately to our collective purpose in life.

But what stops us from creating?

A threat to our creativity is our brokenness. We cannot be creative when we are wounded because we behave, act, think and feel based out of our own hurt. However, when we are in the process of healing, creativity flows freely.

Healing needs to be our companion and teacher, otherwise we roam the earth allowing our wounds to have the driver’s seat, blinding us from seeing our potential to create.

In denying that we are wounded, we deny ourselves of being human. Rather than believing that we have the capacity to become great we spend the rest of our lives thinking so low of ourselves, capping our growth.

“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”
-Edward de Bono

Creativity can also be threatened by cultural norms. We become entangled with cultural chains that do us harm. They tell us that we have to think in a certain way, follow certain career paths, have the same life goals, act in a certain way, and sadly enough, feel a certain way. We have becomes slaves to society.

It was people like Martin Luther King, J.R.R Tolkien, Steve Jobs who broke through cultural norms. In doing so they created beauty: they created a society welcoming all walks of life, a new world of fantasy that spoke so deeply to the human soul, and technology that echoes throughout the generations.

Friendships inspire creativity.

Friendships are a main ingredient to our creativeness. They allow us to bounce ideas off another and together produce wonder, beauty and awe. We shouldn’t live in isolation from those who encourage our creativity and imagination.

If we do, we end up living in our own cave, having no one to enrich our lives, we suffocate ourselves in our own unspoken words. We are paralyzed in our growth as we become ‘okay’ with the mundane life, with no new sense of adventure, no new flavors to taste in our mouths. We, therefore, cease to live, and in doing so we cease to create. We merely exist but are not alive.

Tolkien could not have completed his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, if it weren’t for the great encouragement he received from C. S. Lewis, and visa versa.

Like Tolkien needed Lewis, I am in need of you.

Freedom is the essence of creativity.

When we are perplexed by hints of splendor, we enter into a union with the ultimate Creator. This breaks our soul’s chains and awakens us to the immortal longing that resides in our heart and the soft whisper that cries out ‘be free and create’.

Be free my friend.

Be free and create.

Others around you are in need of your beauty and creativity.

“Whoever wants to become a Christian, must first become a poet.”
-Elder Porphyrios

(Photo by Manish Ray)

Fragments of the tangible material, gently held in the beauty of the communal, stitched into the mystery of the Ethereal.

This is the anatomy of living; the inner workings of who we are.

We are more than dust and bones.

We are the imago dei, the image of the Divine.

But often life makes dry bones of us; we live as divided humans, one foot in the secular, another in the sacred. We fight to resist the intersect, and our lives become an internal struggle. We exist but are not alive.

Yet, to these dry bones He cries,

Live

Live

Live

For mere dry bones cannot bear the glory of God.

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
– St Iraneus

Collectively Pursuing Wholeness

To be fully alive is to live in awe of the exquisite oneness that all of life is sacred. It is to thrive in the wonder of existence and tread knowing we walk on sacred grounds. It is to reject the notion that anything pertaining to “God” is more “spiritual” than romance, money, art, or any aspect of human life. We are made of material: “the matter from which a thing is or can be made, being of a physical or worldly nature.” Yet we are often stricken by guilt over our desire for the material, as if that desire defiles our godliness. With heads bowed in shame, we wrongly call for a division between all that is material and all that is godly. And in all this we disregard the truth that sacredness lies within the material. It is disguised within the everyday pedestrian life; it is in our houses, at our dinner tables, in our daily work, and in life’s adventures and travel pursuits.

Unashamedly Enjoying Beauty

To be fully alive is to live radically for the beauty in each other and in our own heart. It is embracing the sacredness of pulling off our masks to let our own stories swirl and unravel, allowing them to mingle with the stories of others – stories worth telling, stories worth pursuing. We are made for a communal life: “participated in, shared, or used in common by members of a group or community.” We are persons made for communion, made to struggle daily to show up and cultivate connection with each other. In our communion we are united by the brokenness that makes us one, so that in communion we say ‘yes’ to authenticity and vulnerability. There is sacredness in mindfully practicing hospitality of the heart, of inviting others into a safe, warm space where they can discover their true value and worth. Within the communal we celebrate one another, as lanterns that, only together, will brilliantly outshine the darkness.

Purposely Becoming Like Him

In the torn fragments of the communal and material, the thread that binds these pieces of clay together is the ethereal: “extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world; heavenly, spiritual.” We are a weak and fragile jar of clay, but still He chooses to set His treasure in this moldable vessel. We desire to respond to this call to live as His earthen vessel by seeking the treasure God has hidden for us in the day, to have eyes that see and ears that hear. We desire the eyes of faith that perceive the face of God in a stranger’s kindness, in the abused and the abuser. We desire the ears of faith that hear the voice of God in the sound of falling snow and the flutter of a bird’s wings.

Wrapped in our tale, we journey on into the inner universe of our heart. It is only there do we journey out of time and out of place, into eternity. Into the tale of its unfathomable depths, its caverns of dragons and lions, its secret locked doors, and its uneven rough paths to the entrance of our inner temple, the entrance to Love. Here is where Christ the King comes to take His rest, walking within, dwelling in and placing His Kingdom there. The inner kingdom present within is at the same time the Kingdom of the age to come. The place where we experience the love of God, which heals our every affliction, heals blind eyes to truly see the gates of heaven everywhere. To know His love is to know His face. To be fully alive is to live coram deo, before the face of God. In the communal and in the material, all faces are His.

We behold His face to become like Him.

This is the anatomy of living.

The “Lord is between you and me forever.”
Samuel 20:23

The day you came beside me to sleep on the floor was Tuesday, July 21st. That was the day my summer burst at the seams. You let me in on the secret of friendship;

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

That night you didn’t see me with your eyes but you saw me with your heart.

To be friends with someone is to see courage where everyone else may see weakness. To be a friend is to see someone who is trying where everyone may see someone who should be better.

It is kind, soft words in a world where they run on short supply and where all you hear are the voices in your head that insist you should not be this way, that you are not good enough, and that the only solution is to keep trying harder, to never allow your weakness to show. But that night on the floor as I cried, you saw me as beautiful still, like the tears were water for a row of lilies to bloom. And you held on to hope for me as I felt my fingers loosen their grip and slip.

We need each other, vulnerable and exposed.

We need floor moments like these in friendship. To hold a mirror with one hand that reveals all the frailties and shortcomings, but to also hold out the other hand ready to go on this journey of healing with you all the way to the Father’s house; no matter how crooked or narrow the Calvary road becomes, all the way to the foot of the Cross – our God at His most vulnerable.

Friendship allows us to see our darkness and the darkness of others as a pathway to know the Father – not a barrier to his love. Perhaps He is not threatened by our darkness, so we no longer need to with each other. Perhaps our bleeding out with those who have earned the right to hear it is the best thing for our hearts – because then we can be filled with new Eucharistic blood.

That night you were a mirror to the parts of myself I spent so long trying to run from and pretend like they weren’t there because I thought they were too much to look at.

There is something to be said when someone is willing to make sense of all you are, your internal wars, your run-down castles, your expanding galaxies and your untamed, untrodden paths. What more do we want than to be seen, to be understood in a continuum where we did not want to understand or see ourselves for fear of what we would uncover? Yet, I tried to push you away, to shut you out with walls of silence and tears, with sitting away from you on the floor. And yet, that night you did not leave, but you chose to stay when there was nothing I could offer you. You chose to fight for a ravaged heart, so you lay on the floor beside me and told me words like streams to my desert soul:

That you love this broken girl.

There is something to be said of the marks people can make on another soul, the fingerprints they leave from where hands ran along the jagged edges.

To be a friend is a lifetime of savouring every sharp point, every rough texture as lost treasure. A lifetime of leaving marks that tell stories of staying together. Staying in summers and in winters too, even when they’ve been too cold. Staying when the birds have sung and the plants have been in bloom and when the garden has run wild with weeds and tall yellow grass. The garden of a soul is not yours alone, it belongs to a man’s friends. For it takes more than a pair of hands to pull out overgrown weeds and plant a row of sunflowers in the space where deep roots of lies spread. And when there is a storm, there is no fear to let the waters rise as you stand in the rain; in time the seeds friendship’s sown will grow.

The secret of friendship sounds a lot like a fight song at times…

We sing…

As we lie on the cold hardened floor of our lives, wrapped in the thick of darkness’ untidy death grip, I will not let you go. I will choose to see you with my heart and not just my eyes. I will choose to hear your words and your tears, and I will not be afraid to walk down into the garden you call wreckage. I will choose to write lovely all across your back until the lies no longer compare. I will ensure that you remember that “you are dark” always comes with the clause that “you are lovely”. I will bring to your remembrance that even the darkness will not be dark to you (psalm 139:12). I will choose to enter into your sorrow and suffering rather than demand that you deny yourself and enter into my joy. I will choose to fight to understand your every complexity, that I may grow to know and serve you well. And for every moment your heart screams ugly, I will choose to echo the truth right back in, beauty.

Because precious sister, love is a choice, and I will choose to love you, the way Jonathan loved David, the way he loved him as his own soul. I will choose to feast on the precious gift of friendship, where our souls may collide that together we may enter into His rest.

To be seen by you is frightful indeed. To strip off my layers, let you see me raw, let you see me whole frightens me to the core. Yet with your gentleness, all my fears halt to a lie, and I realise that you know me. To be known is to be loved, and you love me so well.

We are pursuers of each other, pursuing to know the depth and height of each other’s heart. I promise to know you. I promise not to laugh at you when you are naked and like Genesis 2:25, we will stand together, naked souls, unashamed. And I will not let my words become a hollow noise, but I will entangle this promise in the actions of my daily life.

Just when I think I have tasted the best of this feast, I realise, joyfully, there is so much more to learn. More knitting, more weaving of souls.

“The resurrection is coming.”

And with those words you fearlessly revelled and embraced my brokenness as the means to victory and wiped away any shame with hands that held me close. The same shame that I used to push you away from coming any closer because I did not believe you deserved to see this mess, you deserved better from a friend and you did not deserve to carry this sadness. Yet you called it an honour. You spoke life, love, truth and beauty into the deafening echo of brokenness.

Because of you, my true friend, I am not a victim of brokenness but rather experiencing redemption through brokenness. On the floor the fear made me want hide away from it. And on that same floor you made the broken beautiful with these words:

Do not be afraid or weakened by your darkness.

To be a friend is to let someone love you the way you would want to love them. To accept you will hurt them and they will be hurt by you whilst never forgetting the commitment you made to sacrifice anything to heal each other.

I will never forget that night on the floor when you came down beside me and met me at my lowest. When you were a picture of how hope does not disappoint because of the love that God has poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. You poured out your love in the broken girl. The girl whose every dry bone screamed “you’re not good enough as you are. You need to be perfect. Don’t give up…otherwise you won’t be perfect.” In your embrace, the dry bones cried “Live!” and the broken girl had a place to let go and belong.

As St. Ambrose says, a place to “know, O beautiful soul, that you are the image of God. Know that you are the glory of God. Know, then, O mortal, your greatness, and be vigilant”. In your arms I found a place of safety. A place other than perfection’s hostage image of all the ways I will never be enough – other than shame’s iron hold and ten-tonne shield. A place other than isolation’s secrecy and muffled silence, until I could see something other than every flaw and imperfection.

We all need help and perspective in learning how to love the broken girl within each one of us. We all need friends to see and celebrate our truest self – the broken girl who is actually more whole than she ever thought because she chose to endure, to be resilient and grow.

When I could not come out of hiding you came to find me. This is the feast of friendship. A halfway home ’till kingdom come. Till we shall feast anew and fully in the blessed kingdom of God.

“What I know about living
is the pain is never just ours.
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo,
so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window,
when I can see what I couldn’t see before
through the glass of my most battered dream
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin
don’t try to put me back in.
Just say, “Here we are” together at the window
aching for it to all get better
but knowing there is a chance
our hearts may have only just skinned their knees,
knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming

let me say right now for the record,
I’m still gonna be here
asking this world to dance,
even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.

You, you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.

Raising your bite against the bitter dark,
your bright longing,
your brilliant fists of loss.
Friend, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that is plenty
my god that is enough
my god that is so so much for the light to give
each of us at each other’s backs
whispering over and over and over,
“Live. Live. Live.”

Andrea Gibson

Co-written with Makrina.

I liked it so much, I kissed many. I never believed in considering future consequences, only the here and now, only in the moment where my body lusted and craved another.

I believed in hedonism.

I was a lover of a sugar-coated world, biting deep enough to reach the salt beneath; left parched and bereft. But when invited to dine with the Divine, I counted up the cost and I conceded that He was worth it all. Because when you see the light, darkness doesn’t stand a chance. When you see the light, you cannot deny its existence.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.”
Isaiah 9:2

We tend towards hiding our not-so-pure stories, locking them deep into caskets that no one may see or hear. We profess forgiveness like we do breathing, yet shame whispers “tell no one” and we trust its every word. In a community amongst those who testify to the living Word, Who is pure and holy, Who calls us to be as He is, we feel there is no room for our stories of grace. We see the awe in people’s eyes as they intently listen to testimony after testimony, whilst observing how the same story-tellers are not trusted, always on trial. So we sit in silence, hear stories like ours being called a disgrace, bite our tongues as people express the need to marry only a “pure” spouse.

Yet, forgiveness does not beckon silence. And grace does not hide away our past sins. Rather it holds each thorn up to the light and transforms them into pure white lilies, with each petal holding a unique story, not to be forgotten, lest the power of grace be forgotten.

There’s a woman whose story I know well. Or perhaps, it is she that knows mine. A nameless woman, yet not a faceless one, for I have seen her face countless times when I’ve looked in the mirror. The courageous woman on the sixth hour of Wednesday eve.

She can see the Man she came for. She had heard that Christ had come to the house of the Pharisee. It was not too late to turn around, forget it all, save looking foolish, call it a moment of insanity. Yet, despite any doubt, she feels her feet carry her forward. Ardent, panting and perspiring, she makes her way to the large inner chamber of the banquet weaving through all the people. She does not dare look up. She can feel the heat of their burning disproval on the back of her neck. She hears the steady hum of conversation dwindle to hushed tones of disgust and scandal as they recognise her. People are moving a safe distance away from her. She pays them no mind, her eyes locked on this one Man. She had boldly chased after many men, but none like this. The room is silent now as they realise Who she came for. Does she really have the audacity to come before this righteous Man who claims to be God?

She walks forward, with one thing in mind. Sharp inhale. She stops right in front of him. Without lifting her eyes from the ground, she quietly and slowly kneels and lets down her hair. Memories flash before her of all those nights she used her hair as a snare to seduce, remembering all those fingers that ran wild and passionately through them. Her vision blurs as her eyes pour. Thick, heavy droplets of regret fall to His feet. She remembers the words spoken to her, how it was always her eyes that drew them in and held them captive, possessing their own alluring power. The eyes that stained her life with sin, now moistened His feet.

She stammers. With no words to say she does the only thing she could; she washes His feet. She takes her trembling hands, the same vessels that fed the pleasures of men, cups His feet and holds the thick strands of her locks to wipe them. She wonders if she has crossed a line, but He does not stop her or move away. She was accustomed to desiring men, but never desiring their forgiveness.

She takes her lips, lips that eagerly sought and caressed bare flesh, and kisses His feet. The room breaks out in shock; horror and objections ring loud in the room. An exchange of mutterings, naming her immoral, worthless and irreverent. She feels Him staring at her but she feels no fear and no shame. The others see Him staring at her, in a way they haven’t seen Him stare before. His eyes glisten, there is warmth. She knows how it feels to be stared at by a man, a ravaging stare full of fervent desire, but this was not the same. She feels Him look right through her. She is known, for the first time.

She pulls out her alabaster flask, her costly jar of sensual pleasure used to arose her lovers. The memories race, the images flash. She forcefully pushes them away as she breaks the alabaster flask. Her tears mingle with perfume and she continues to wipe with her hair. She kisses and pours; impure lips become holy. The beautiful fragrance rises. He does not speak but she feels His radiating, pure love. She feels something unexplainable she has never known before. Is this acceptance? Is this what it means to belong? She lifts up her head, looks Him in the eye, and she knows; nothing will ever be the same.

Luke 7 has its ending, but I’ve always wondered what happens next. I think of her departure to her normal life after being told that she was forgiven and loved. I think of how she must have replayed that moment over and over again in her head, how she must have wanted to tell everyone, scream and dance because of how light she felt and how her heart must have burst with joy. That cherished moment she shared with Her Saviour will forever be theirs. I also think of the men who must have knocked on her door that night. All those men that kept knocking because they never believed that she could change. I think of years of learnt behaviour that was like second nature and all she saw from her former life when she closed her eyes to pray. I think of her walking back into her bedroom, those four walls that contained all her unchaste amorous nights, and trying to pray. To rise in the place that she fell.

For, redemption is no passive, tidy ideology. Redemption is real and redemption is messy, it is as messy as sweat and a bloody cross. And it is on that same cross that the proclamation was made, “Tetelestai,” confirming the end, it is finished, it is done. No need to walk with head hanging low, shame raised high, but walk joyously in the light. The light that beckons every soul; those who have given in to every single fleshly desire and all those who haven’t. Because the Light does not differentiate, it infiltrates every darkness; and darkness has no measure. It is that same Light that looks upon us with the eyes of compassion and gives us the assurance that,

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”
Romans 8:1

Our belief in this truth is dependent solely on ourselves and not in other peoples responses to our former life, our own thoughts or the enemies lies. Our remembrance of our sexual sin can be crippling. We may be crippled by the way we once behaved; disregarding the holy in ourselves and in others. We may be crippled by the fear of falling back into old ways, and the fear of being too marred in the eyes of another. The taste of sexual pleasure is not an easy one to forget, and we may fear our longing for that same gratification. We may be haunted by the words spoken once on dark nights, or the daily glances that remind us of the power we possess. It is a life-long battle to fight, whilst holding tight to the truth that there is now no condemnation, and expectantly praying, “According to your good will, O God fill our hearts with your peace. Cleanse us from all blemish, all guile, all hypocrisy, all malice and the remembrance of evil entailing death” (The Liturgy According to St Basil the Great).

And as we pray this, may we approach the Eucharist, His own flesh and blood, just as the woman approached Him, offering every piece of herself at His feet, broken like the alabaster jar. She recognised Him not as an ordinary man but as her Saviour, yet we often approach Him as mere bread and wine, blind to the Majesty that pours Himself out before us. Let us walk repentantly, with fear and trembling, towards the Holy One and partake of the exchange of life that He offers, no matter what sin we laid with the night before, knowing that His love grants us the audacity to approach Him with confidence and being rooted in His Life, the mystical power to flee all other lovers.

So I will not be afraid to speak of my past sin, the desire of sin on skin, the Edenic memory of Adam and Eve’s freedom in expression and pleasure corrupted and abused. Because, this I know, forgiveness and freedom is mine, and though I am a woman of unclean lips, as my lips touch His feet, there is redemption’s tale to tell.

Let the fragrance rise.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”
Isaiah 6:6-7

This body
My body
A swift sword
A time bomb
Ticking
Cutting

This soft skin that curves around me
That frames and encompasses me
I have seen its unsurpassed powers
I have tasted its intoxication
Eyes wide open
To its irresistible magic

Hard to forget
Its delicious sweet nectar
Dripping subtle, potent poison
This body
Is not a body
But a weapon

Of charm and deceit
Of self seeking ambition
I waste in admiration and affirmation
I glory in attention and adoration
I am a queen
Fluent in Sensuality’s language

The power euphoric
The formula, tried and tested
A gaze and a flutter of the eyes
The control to summon and cast away
The siren song that calls your name
To shipwreck on the stones

And I howl
“Come, I will take away your pain”
To those that pant for it gladly
Like a dark mist
Leaving corpses rotten and defiled
Asphyxiating all breath, all life

So I numbed all feeling
Revelled in my conquer and rule
Sank my feet in my reckless storm
This body
Is just a body
Empty, hollow and cold

The more it consumes
The more it seeks to devour
This body is flames
A trail of dust in its wake
Nothing it touches will escape
Nothing is left standing

Least of all myself
This body is foreign
I do not want it
So I hide and cover it
Who can free me
From this body of death?

A stranger in this body of death
Dismembered from my lifeless soul
I feel my body’s betrayal
Under a man’s unrelenting gaze
I feel the poison flood my veins again
When their heads turn

I am reminded of the queen I could be
The thrill of control
I feel the rumbling and the stirring
Threatening to take over
Seduction is awakening
She is hungry from her slumber

But I will deprive her
Lay her down in silent, painful death
Bind her in burial cloths and dig a grave
Roll a boulder in front of the entrance
Scream TETELESTAI
For indeed, it is finished

Because I am not poison, I am not sword
And I wait on a promise like a thread
Keeping me from fraying at the edges
Of the God who calls out to dry bones
Giving life to sinew after sinew
The God who never fails those who wait

The God who wore humanity’s chains
To shatter our every chain
The God who rolls heavy stones away from tombs
And raises from the dead
The God who puts heavy stones down out of your hand
And says, “Live loved”

In truth, I believe that in Him
All the old has passed away
In the Spirt
I am finally liberated
The Veil torn
My face unveiled

He steps into my tomb
And when I look Him in the eyes
I see myself
He tells me who I am
Not thorn but Lily
He tells me Rise and live

I believe, help my unbelief.

Co-written with Sandra.

I certainly felt emotionally secure. However, a specific part of my life began to chip away at this security. At home, mum and dad often did not seem to get on. I didn’t think much of it as a child as I assumed most people’s parents fell out from time to time. This was surely nothing I couldn’t take in my stride, I used to think. However, the problems continued to escalate. As the years went by, the division between my parents grew and it began to put a strain in the family. My younger sibling chose to distant themselves from the issue and seemed to want nothing to do with it. I didn’t have a friend close enough to speak to about it, I did not feel connected to any church or a particular priest I could open up to, and I was often made to feel that this topic was such a taboo that it should never leave the front door of the house anyway.

My original belief that I could handle anything myself was beginning to fade away, so I looked to God. “That’s what He’s there for, right?” I told myself. I love both of my parents and I knew they loved me too, wanting only the best for me. I spent years praying for God to intervene and fix their relationship. I asked Him to show me what is was that I had to do in order to play my part. I spent numerous years being the peacemaker in the house, refusing to take one side over another, and feeling too much of a sense of responsibility to detach myself from the issue completely. I refused to stop believing that with my perseverance and prayers, the problems would be resolved and one day we would finally live as a peaceful, happy family.
This day did not come. The cracks turned into gaping crevasses and after moving away to university, I found myself being the recipient of endless phone calls from each individual complaining about the other. It was taking a toll on my studies, my social life, and ultimately on my spirituality. I can recall long nights being in torment with God. I was filled with anger that after all the prayers and belief, He hadn’t come up with the goods. If anything, things were much worse than where we started.

I began to loosen my grip and reliance on Him, and slowly started to revert to my original strategy of handling it all myself. The stress of it led me to take comfort in other areas. I began to make wrong decisions at university and things began to slip. I was losing control – a concept that was previously so alien to me. I had blocked out everyone in my life, including God, refusing to listen to Him. I only had myself to contend with and for the first time, felt truly alone. This broke me. In all of my efforts to try and restore my family, I found myself with nobody.

In my fourth year at university, something within me revved me to get up and make a change. I was not content in staying in this slumber. I loathed self-pity and knew deep down that although I had turned my face away from God, He was still the only one that could change things. In my depths lurked a voice that kept telling me to look at Him and listen one more time to what He had to say.
I got myself back into church; one that I had frequented during my time at university, but never made an effort to get fully involved with. I chose to make a conscious effort to get to know the people there and engage with the community. There was instant gratification. I quickly found a friend I was confident to open up with, pretty much from our first meeting. I had never done anything like this before, but it felt so comfortable. It was amazing to unload to someone who was essentially a stranger. They helped me to start making steps towards the right track and made me feel welcomed in the group. I was wary of revealing my secrets to anyone else, still believing that I was an outsider with a shameful background. I could not have been more wrong. I quickly learnt that I was not the only Copt to have come from a far from perfect family, and was soon able to confide in someone that had been through something very similar.

Through further involvement in the church, I attended my first conference and heard a quote that truly resonated within me;

“The almost impossible thing is to hand over your whole self to Christ… but it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead” C.S. Lewis

I realised that striving to maintain full control of each aspect of my life was foolish, and it was essential that I hand over the reins to my life to Him. I must put Him firmly in the driving seat.

For a long time I knew that the situation at home was my cross to bear, and that I must carry it. However, I had no clue how to carry it. For a great deal of time I wondered what it was that I practically needed to do. I would often find myself being put in situations with my parents, being forced to balance my time equally between them so as not to make one upset that I was picking a side. I often wanted to take a step back and distance myself from the whole situation, but I felt overwhelmed with guilt and the sense of selfishness. Was putting them before myself and my own happiness how I was meant to carry my cross? These questions were so simply answered by my friend who had gone through a similar situation, and who I had previously confided in:

I needed to make sure that whatever I do, it was according to the will of God. I must keep God in my heart and that is who I should aim to please. Only He will satisfy my longing for happiness.

I realised how much I had complicated my life when I tried to work out what I needed to do, alone, not considering His will in my decision making.

This realisation has brought me so much peace.

Through all of the struggles and the anger that I felt towards God, I have learnt that it was all for my benefit. I wanted to work out how to carry my cross with minimal struggle, but instead I have been shown how to live with peace in my heart. I have learnt the true meaning of love and grace.

I longed for a family, and He has blessed me with an entire Church.