I know how that may sound.

But honestly, we really do.

We want to know what we are doing before we do it. We want to know where something is going before we begin. We want to know that we are making the right decision, choosing the right path, investing our time in the right thing.

We want certainty before we participate, so we don’t fail or “waste our time”.

And it’s wisdom.

But then again in some situations it’s just fear wearing glasses.

Because there are some things you simply cannot figure out from where you are standing.

You can think about them for months. Make lists. Ask everyone you trust. Research. Pray. Imagine every possible outcome.

And still not know.

Not because you are incapable of making decisions, but because you do not yet have the information that experience is going to give you.

There are things you can only know after you have done them.

You don’t know whether you actually love something until you spend time doing it.

You don’t know whether you can handle something until you have had to handle it.

You don’t know what you want from a particular season until you have lived through it.

You don’t know whether a door is for you by staring at it.

Sometimes you just have to open it.

And I think this is the part we don’t talk about enough.

Sometimes you really just have to put your head into it.

You have to risk being a beginner.

You have to risk choosing something and discovering that it wasn’t for you.

You have to risk caring, risk your heart in it.

You have to be willing to move while still carrying unanswered and scary questions.

Because clarity doesn’t always come before movement but movement in itself has the ability to create clarity.

You start the thing, and then you realize what you actually want.

You enter the room, and suddenly you understand why you were drawn there.

You try something and discover that you don’t like it and somehow, knowing what you don’t want is its own kind of clarity.

You take one step, and the next one becomes visible.

Then another.

Then another.

And one day you look back and realize that you were not actually lost.

You were just in the middle of finding your way.

Maybe this is why growing up feels so strange.

Everyone keeps asking what you want to do with your life as though there is supposed to be a fully formed answer somewhere inside you, waiting to be uncovered.

But maybe becoming a person isn’t about uncovering the entire blueprint.

Maybe it is about participating in the process of becoming one.

Taking things little by little, making wrong choices, changing your mind and outgrowing things you once thought were permanent.

You will begin things you don’t finish.

You will finish things you never thought you could.

And somehow, through all of it, you will learn about yourself.

Not all at once.

Not perfectly.

But enough to take the next step.

So yes, you will actually just figure it out.

“Oh, what’s meant for you will find you. If it’s yours, it shouldn’t be difficult.”

And I was so irritated, and the next question that popped into my head was,

“Find me where?”

I mean, when did we decide that everything meant for us would come wrapped in ease?

And why did “if it’s meant for you, it will find you” become this universal rule we use to make sense of life and what we want out of it?

And how and when did we convince ourselves that if something is truly “meant for us,” we won't have to work too hard for it?

That it won't confuse us.

It won't scare us.

It won't keep us up at night.

It will just... happen.

And when it happens, it will somehow be perfect.

I don't believe that's actually how life works, because I've seen that the things that matter most to us actually require a lot of effort.

They require thinking. Trying. Failing. Trying again. Having uncomfortable conversations. Making difficult decisions. Taking chances when you don't know exactly how things will turn out.

Sometimes they require you to keep showing up long after the initial excitement has disappeared.

And I'm not saying this because I think everything difficult should be fought for.

Please, no.

Not every difficult thing is worth pursuing.

But I think we've become too quick to interpret difficulty as evidence that something isn't meant for us.

Something can be difficult simply because it matters.

Think about the things you genuinely care about.

If you're taking a real chance on something, shouldn't there be some fear?

If there is absolutely nothing at stake, what exactly are you risking?

We get scared because we actually care about what happens. We lose sleep because we don't know how something we really care about will turn out.

Fear isn't always proof that you're on the wrong path. Sometimes it can simply be what uncertainty feels like when the outcome actually matters to you.

And I think this applies to people too.

We say, “If this person is meant to be in your life, it shouldn't be this hard.”

But people aren't just things that happen to us.

The best relationships actually require a lot of work.

They require communication, patience, forgiveness, honesty, boundaries, compromise and choosing to show up for each other.

Some people being important in your life doesn't mean keeping the relationship healthy will always be easy.

And this doesn't mean you should force a relationship that is unhealthy or carry something that the other person has no interest in carrying with you.

I'm simply saying that I find it ridiculous that once something becomes difficult, we are now advised to give up and go home.

And then there's another statement that comes from believers that I disagree with.

I've heard from some people say if God is involved in something then it shouldn't be difficult, and I always this urge to say, please just shut up.

I mean, have we even read the Bible?

Just look at the life of David, for instance.

He was anointed king, chosen by the Lord, but being anointed did not mean his life immediately became a smooth, straightforward journey to the throne.

If anything, it looked like everything in his life had been turned upside down.

Between being told what he would become and actually becoming it, there were difficult seasons.

And the difficulty did not mean God had changed His mind or was not involved in it in the first place.

The promise was real, but the process was difficult and that's fine.

Unlike what many people want to believe today, difficulty or a lack of ease does not automatically disqualify something from being God's will.

Because I'm sure if something of that sort happened in this day and age, someone would have the audacity to say,

“Maybe it's actually not God's will for you to be king.”

And I'm not saying every difficult situation is from God, or that God is in every difficult situation.

But we also have to be careful not to use “God's will” as a way of avoiding everything uncomfortable and unusual.

Sometimes what we call discernment is actually just fear.

Sometimes saying, “I don't think this is what God wants for me,” is really just an excuse for not wanting to do what achieving that thing will require of you.

And those are not always the same thing. We shouldn't turn God's will into another name for the path of least resistance.

Because obedience can be very scary, uncomfortable and painful.

Sometimes doing the right thing requires a lot of courage and persistence and even looking like a fool to most people.

And when pursuing something worthwhile, I believe it's normal to experience fear and uncertainty and to do a lot of thinking.

It requires patience, trust and perseverance.

So, will what’s meant for me just find me?

I don't know.

Maybe some things will.

Maybe some things will fall into my hands in ways I could never have imagined and make me work really hard to keep it.

But I don't think we should build our understanding of life around the assumption that everything meant for us will arrive without effort.

Because a lot of the time what is meant for you still requires you to move.

It may require you to ask, apply, try, risk rejection, have the difficult conversations, wrestle with uncertainty and keep showing up.

So will it just find me? or is it worth the difficulty of me going after it?

Because it felt like if I ever admittee to not being okay, then i was admitting to being some new identity, like if i allow myself admit a pain or a struggle i would now be identified by it. And I didn’t want that.

In my mind, I unintentionally created this connection between acknowledging a struggle and accepting it as part of my identity.

So I became quite good at avoiding certain things.

I would tell myself I was fine, “move on quickly”.

I would shove certain experiences somewhere in the back of my mind and convince myself they weren’t worth dwelling on.

Because, to me, being strong meant not allowing things to get to me. And, it meant not allowing myself to admit that they had gotten to me…

But the irony is that refusing to acknowledge something doesn’t ever make it disappear.

Sometimes it just makes you less honest about what you’re carrying and unintentionally you begin to allow it define you.

But there is a difference between acknowledging something and allowing it to define you.

Meaning, I can say, I failed, without it meaning I’m a failure..

And in our self-aware generation.

There seems to be a name for almost everything we experience, anxiety, burnout, people-pleasing, attachment styles, imposter syndrome, abandonment issues, trauma responses, and countless other ways of understanding our emotional and mental lives.

And I actually think there is something beautiful about that.

There is relief in having a language for something you’ve struggled to explain.

You read something and think,

That’s me.

That’s why I do that.

That’s why that hurt.

Sometimes a name gives you a mind of map.

But I’ve been wondering if the map can slowly become the territory.

We begin by saying, *this is something I’m experiencing or feeling *

And suddenly we turn it into, “this is who I am”.

We take a season and turn it into what defines our whole lives and personality unintentionally.

We take a wound and turn it into an identity.

We take a pattern and turn it into a permanent description of ourselves.

And when that happens, our struggle begins to affect us in ways we may not even notice.

Because once something becomes part of the way we define ourselves, we start seeing everything through it.

For instance once your mind has decided you are incapable because of certain experiences and mistakes you could start to interpret every mistake as proof and a person who has decided they are broken may start treating every moment of difficulty as evidence that are broken.

And eventually, we don’t just experience the struggle.

We organize our lives around it and make decisions around it.

We explain ourselves through it and we anticipate certain things because of it.

We begin to give it so much attention and authority that it becomes the center of our lives and the worst part is how unintentionally we do it.

Because we are describing ourselves as our experiences and challenges.

In a strange way, we idolize the very thing we are trying to overcome.

Not because we love suffering and not because the struggle isn’t real.

And certainly not because people who are genuinely struggling should simply “get over it.”

This isn’t about minimizing any of struggle but making room for the person beyond the struggle.

Because your struggle can be real without being your entire identity.

For my fellow believers, your identity should be rooted in Christ alone, you should continually remind yourself that your identity is the righteousness of Christ not anything you may struggle with.

When it detects a threat, your body prepares you to respond. Your heart may race, your breathing may change, your muscles may tense, and your attention may sharpen.

This is useful when a car is speeding toward you.

It is less useful when someone sends you a strange text and your brain has already written a five-part explanation for what it could possibly mean.

The important thing is that your nervous system doesn’t only respond to physical danger but also to uncertainty, rejection, conflict, embarrassment, loneliness, stress, painful memories, and the possibility of something going wrong can also trigger a threat response.

Sometimes your body reacts before your mind has figured out why.

And this matters for the believer because we can be quick to give spiritual explanations to experiences that may also have psychological and physiological ones.

I don’t have enough faith.

I’m spiritually cold.

Maybe I’m not in alignment.

Something must be wrong with me.

Maybe this is demonic.

Spiritual discernment matters. But not every uncomfortable experience is a spiritual attack.

Sometimes your nervous system is simply doing its job.

Our nervous systems can become more sensitive to things that have previously been associated with danger, stress, rejection, or pain.

That means something happening today can remind your body of something that happened years ago.

A particular tone of voice.

Someone becoming distant.

Maybe even a certain environment.

Speaking in front of people.

A disagreement.

Waiting for an uncertain outcome.

The present situation may be harmless, but your body can recognize something familiar and respond before you have consciously assessed it.

This is one reason two people can experience the same situation very differently.

This doesn’t mean every strong reaction is trauma, or that every anxious person has experienced trauma. It simply means that our reactions can have histories.

Sometimes the intensity of a reaction has less to do with what is happening now and more to do with what the situation represents.

And threat doesn’t always make us more alert.

Sometimes it makes us shut down.

Prolonged stress, overwhelming experiences, depression, trauma, and exhaustion can contribute to emotional numbness or detachment. You may not feel particularly sad or happy. You just feel… nothing.

For a Christian, this can be confusing.

Why don’t I feel God?

Why don’t I feel anything when I pray?

Why am I so emotionally disconnected?

But feeling numb is not necessarily the same as being spiritually numb.

Your emotions are real, but they are not a perfect measurement of your spiritual condition.

You can love God and still feel exhausted.

You can believe God is present and still experience His absence emotionally.

You can want people around you and still need to be alone.

You can be lonely and still feel overwhelmed by people.

You can be excited about something and still feel physically overstimulated.

Human beings are complicated. Our nervous systems are part of that complexity.

The familiar “fight or flight” idea is only part of the picture.

Some people confront.

Some run, freeze, some become extremely agreeable because keeping everyone happy feels safer than conflict, some withdraw, some constantly seek reassurance, some become hyper-vigilant, always scanning for the next problem, some do all…

These responses can become patterns, especially when they have been reinforced by difficult experiences.

Understanding where a response comes from doesn’t mean every behavior is healthy. It simply helps us understand what is happening before deciding what to do about it.

So to help ourselves we can start by asking,

“What is happening inside me?”

“What is my nervous system interpreting as a threat?”

“Is this danger happening now, or does it remind me of something?”

Because your body can give you information without giving you the final interpretation.

You can feel unsafe without being in immediate danger.

The goal isn’t to distrust your body. It is to understand it.

And faith doesn’t mean your nervous system stops functioning.

The Bible doesn’t present human beings as disembodied spirits who are supposed to transcend ordinary human experiences. Jesus became tired. He slept. He wept. He withdrew from crowds. He experienced distress. He sought companionship. He was fully human.

There is nothing inherently unspiritual about having a body that reacts to stress, fear, grief, excitement, loneliness, or exhaustion.

The Psalms are full of people bringing fear, confusion, loneliness, and distress honestly before God.

Biblical faith isn’t pretending that you are never afraid or never feeling fear but instead it is learning what to do when you are afraid.

That is why understanding your nervous system doesn’t have to compete with your faith.

You can pray and learn how your body responds to stress.

You can trust God and seek professional help and you can seek spiritual wisdom and recognize when something needs psychological or medical attention.

These things don’t have to compete.

Your nervous system is not your enemy. It is trying to protect you.

But a protective system can become overly sensitive.

Think of an alarm system. It is useful when there is a fire. But if it goes off every time someone makes toast, the answer isn’t to hate the alarm.

You need to find out why it keeps going off.

The same can be true of us.

The goal isn’t to silence every uncomfortable feeling. It is to learn what the feeling is communicating and decide what deserves our response or as I’m normally told, FACE IT.

Sometimes the answer is prayer.

Sometimes it's rest or an honest conversation.

Sometimes it is processing an old wound, seeking professional help.

And sometimes it is realizing that you’ve been trying to solve your entire life at midnight when you actually need sleep.

So you are not necessarily under spiritual attack because your body is reacting strongly.

Sometimes, your nervous system is simply trying to keep you safe.

Perhaps part of maturity, both psychologically and spiritually, is learning to recognize the alarm, understand where it came from, bring it honestly before God, and then decide what deserves your response.

So yes, your nervous system is part of how you experience the world but it doesn’t have to become the authority that tells you what the world means.

In the simplest sense, it is an answer to a rather ordinary question:

What makes you want to get up tomorrow?

This may seem like a lot of ideas in one, but stay with me.

I’ve been thinking about how heavy life can seem, how frustrating living can get, and how easy it is to lose sight of why we are doing any of it.

Some people seem to find their way through incredibly difficult seasons while others struggle to keep moving.

So I’ve weirdly been studying what keeps people going? When life gets difficult, why continue?

~ Meaning

Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist and Jewish prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. He lost his pregnant wife, his parents, his brother, and much of his life’s work during the Holocaust.

Yet he continued to imagine what he might do if he survived. He imagined returning to psychiatry and reconstructing the manuscript he had been working on before his imprisonment.

After the war, Frankl developed logotherapy around the idea that the search for meaning is a fundamental human motivation.

His story makes me think about what happens when a person has something to move toward.

But meaning doesn’t always come from knowing what the future will look like.

Sometimes it comes from deciding what you will do with what has already happened.

Harold Kushner experienced this after losing his son, Aaron, to progeria at just fourteen years old.

There was no explanation that could make that loss okay. Kushner didn’t try to pretend there was.

Instead, he began writing.

He wrote When Bad Things Happen to Good People, trying to make sense of suffering that he could not undo. His search was not simply for an explanation of why his son had suffered, but for how a person continues living after something happens that permanently changes them.

He wasn’t trying to make the tragedy good.

He was trying to make sure that the tragedy did not have the final word on what the rest of his life would mean.

Meaning doesn’t always mean finding a reason for what happened. It can mean deciding what you will do with what happened.

But if meaning gives us something to move toward, then what happens when we are still too exhausted to keep moving?

~ Start

Sometimes having something worth moving toward isn’t enough.

You can know what matters to you and still feel too drained to do anything about it and too hopeless to move forward with it.

David Goggins, author of Can’t Hurt Me, has spoken extensively about the role of discipline in his own life. His story is one of repeatedly doing difficult things even when he didn’t feel ready or motivated to do them.

But the part of his story that interests me here isn’t the extreme things he has accomplished but the idea of starting.

There are days when you don’t feel particularly strong or inspired.

Sometimes you don’t even feel like doing the thing you know matters.

And yet, you can still begin.

Get out of bed. Open the book. Write the first sentence. Put on your shoes. Do the first five minutes.

You don’t have to finish. You just have to begin.

Once you start, you may discover that continuing is a little easier.

If you can start, you can continue.

Not always indefinitely, and not by forcing yourself when you genuinely need to rest. But often, the first step creates the possibility of a second.

But even when we manage to start, there is another problem.

What happens when the person doing the moving is exhausted?

~ Move

Haruki Murakami is known around the world for his novels, but another important part of his life is running.

He began running seriously in his thirties, around the same period that he committed himself fully to writing. Over the years, running became a regular part of his life, and he has written about the relationship between running, writing, discipline, and endurance.

The interesting thing isn’t that running somehow solved all his problems.

It is that he recognized**, the mind doesn’t live separately from the body.**

Sometimes we spend so much time trying to think our way out of exhaustion that we forget to take care of the body carrying all that thought.

There’s a Latin phrase I learnt from the book Ikigai,

Mens sana in corpore sano.

A sound mind in a sound body.

We cannot completely separate the health of the mind from the health of the body. What happens to one affects the other.

Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living spends much of its time exploring how prolonged worry or overthinking can affect us not only emotionally but physically, contributing to things such as sleeplessness, exhaustion, and tension.

Surprisingly, the answer to the multiple running thoughts in your head can be physical.

Walk. Stretch. Go outside. Rest. Sleep. Eat. Take care of yourself. But there’s another side to it of course when it’s not physical, you’ve just been consuming way too much for others.

~ Create

We spend so much time consuming from other people in so many ways that aren’t actually good for us. We forget that we were created to be creators ourselves.

So when you find your interest, take your time, write, draw, build, code, solve problems,help someone

Just create.

You shouldn’t only consumer of life, you should also take time to participate in creating it.

And I have found that making something gives us a reason to keep showing up.

~ Meet

But ikigai isn’t something we are supposed to discover entirely by ourselves.

Fred Rogers spent his life creating television for children, but what he was really creating was a sense of connection.

He wanted people, especially children, to know that their feelings mattered, that they could talk about difficult things, and that they were not alone.

His work was built around a simple and powerful idea** that is, people matter to one another.**

And that’s something we forget when life becomes difficult.

We can become so focused on finding our purpose, our calling, our reason that we forget that much of what makes life meaningful comes from other people.

So talk to someone. Sit with a friend. Join a community. Help someone. Let someone help you.

Sometimes another person cannot solve the problem.

But they can sit beside you while you face it.

We aren’t designed to carry everything alone.

Sometimes community gives us strength when our own strength is running low.

And as strange as that may seem now, helping someone else reminds us that we still have something to give.

~ Moment

And finally, there is the problem of actually experiencing the life we are trying so hard to build.

This is where Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow becomes interesting.

He became fascinated by people who could become completely absorbed in what they were doing. Artists, musicians, athletes, and others could become so engaged in an activity that they lost track of time.

That experience became known as flow. You may have experienced it yourself.

You start doing something or talking to someone and suddenly an hour has passed.

You begin writing and forget to check your phone.

You are coding, reading, playing an instrument, cooking, designing something, or solving a difficult problem, and for a while, everything else becomes quiet.

Worry pulls us toward yesterday and tomorrow. Flow brings us back to now.

For a while, you aren’t worrying about what happened or what’s happening or what will happen

You are simply present.

And it doesn’t always happen but it’s good when it does, being where your body already is.

Because what good is building a meaningful life if we are never present enough to experience it?

So, What Is Your Ikigai?

It doesn’t have to be some extraordinary purpose that suddenly reveals itself to you. It is found in the accumulation of things that make life worth participating in to you.

The people you love. The things you create. The work you care about. The things you want to learn. The communities you belong to.

The moments when you become completely absorbed in something. The hope that tomorrow might contain something worth seeing.

It’s discovering the many little reasons that make you say, “I want to be here for this”.

You don’t have to figure out your entire life today.

You just have to find something worth moving toward. Something that makes you “excited” to get up again.

It was actually the first article I published, and honestly, I was still shy then. I held back more than I should have. Now, seven months later, there are a few more truths I would like to share.

When we talk about loving God, I don’t know about anyone else, but sometimes it feels strange to me. How do you love someone you cannot see? How do you cultivate affection for a Being who is invisible?

For someone like me, who doesn’t naturally feel a lot, or rather doesn’t know how to name my emotions, it has been really difficult on some days to tell if I love God.

Perhaps that is why loving God with my mind has become so precious to me.

So now, let’s do some Scripture work.

In the first part of this article, I spoke about faith and reason, and how they are not enemies but companions. Faith was never meant to silence our minds, and reason was never meant to replace our faith.

But over the past few months, I’ve been asking, 

What happens when faith and reason come together?

Reason compels us to seek, to ask, to study, and to wrestle with truth, while faith gives us the courage to trust God even when our understanding is incomplete. Reason keeps us searching, while faith keeps us abiding.

When they work together, they don’t simply produce more knowledge.

They produce worship, humility and transformation.

And perhaps that is what it truly means to love God with all of our minds.

Loving God intellectually practically means loving God with all of your mind.

When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, He replied,

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

So basically, your whole being.

Jesus didn’t include the mind unintentionally.

God never intended for our intellect to exist apart from our faith. He created our ability to think, reason, question, and understand. Therefore, these are not obstacles to loving Him but gifts that can draw us nearer to Him.

Loving God intellectually means using your mind, your thoughts, and your reasoning to know, understand, and honor Him.

But it is more than accumulating facts about God, as many people do unknowingly.

It is allowing the pursuit of truth to continually produce humility, worship, and transformation in and through you.

The mind is not merely a storehouse for information. It is where truth reshapes the way we see God, ourselves, and the world. As our understanding is renewed, our love deepens, our worship matures, and our lives begin to change.

Stay with me…

Throughout Scripture, we see that whenever people receive a deeper revelation of who God is, their natural response is worship.

Take Isaiah, for example.

In Isaiah 6, Isaiah is given a vision of the Lord seated on His throne. He hears the seraphim crying,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”

Now, unlike many of us today, Isaiah doesn’t immediately begin serving, preaching, or asking God for anything.

Instead, he worships.

And in his worship, there is conviction:

“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips…” (Isaiah 6:5)

Because in seeing God more clearly, Isaiah also sees himself more truthfully.

This is what revelation does. There is a certain level of conviction that leads to transformation.

The knowledge of God doesn’t merely increase what we know; it transforms how we see and therefore how we live. We begin to see God in His holiness, ourselves in our need for His grace, and the world through His eyes.

This is why biblical wisdom is so much more than intelligence or information.

Proverbs teaches that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and that “the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Wisdom begins with God because only He enables us to see reality as it truly is.

The goal of gaining biblical knowledge is not simply to know more about God, but to know Him so deeply that our entire way of seeing is transformed.

As our minds are renewed, we begin to love what He loves, hate what He hates, pursue what He values, and extend His compassion to His creation.

In that sense, loving people is not separate from loving God. As Scripture says, whoever loves God must also love his brother and sister. When we learn to see people as those made in the image of God and as those for whom Christ died, as God sees them, loving them becomes one of the clearest expressions of our love for Him.

Worship is born when truth captures the heart. The more clearly we see God, the more naturally awe, reverence, obedience, and love flow from our lives. Emphasis on naturally… it isn’t forced.

Meaning, worship begins long before we sing, act, or live.

It begins when we truly see God for who He is.

The more we understand His character… His holiness, wisdom, justice, mercy, faithfulness, and love, the more impossible it becomes to remain indifferent toward Him.

Think about someone you deeply admire.

Imagine discovering more about their life, their character, and the things they have accomplished. As your understanding grows, so does your respect. You begin to appreciate them in ways you couldn’t before because you now see more of who they really are.

Now imagine that with the Creator of the universe.

The One who spoke galaxies into existence.

The One who entered His own creation, suffered, died, and rose again to redeem it.

If learning more about an ordinary human being can increase your admiration for them, how much more should growing in the knowledge of God increase our awe of Him?

Loving God is not blind emotion.

It is the natural response to rightly seeing God.

The more clearly we know Him, the more naturally we worship Him.

Worship shouldn’t and cannot be forced. It is the proper by-product of getting to know Someone who is more amazing than words can describe.

Now The Knowledge That Produces Humility

One of the greatest surprises about loving God intellectually is that it doesn’t make you feel smarter.

It makes you feel smaller. At least it should, if you ask me.

The more you learn about God, the more you realize how little you know.

His wisdom cannot be exhausted.

His character cannot be fully comprehended.

His ways are higher than ours.

And when I truly came to that understanding (as I still do), I realized that it is so freeing.

Because loving God intellectually was never about mastering God or becoming theologically accurate about Him, but about being transformed by Him.

The pursuit of God should not end in pride—intentional or unintentional—in thinking, “Oh, I know God,” but in humility, because every new truth reminds us that there is infinitely more of Him yet to be discovered.

You will never reach the end of Him.

So loving Him intellectually is knowing Him enough to be truthfully transformed by Him.

But how do you know Him?

That’s what His Word is for.

The Word is the truth. Yes, you’ve probably heard that many times, but you can never truly come to understand what that means unless you search for it yourself, studying, meditating, and staying with it long enough, no matter how uncomfortable it becomes. Train yourself to stay with the Word.

And is it possible to feel like you’ve been studying for so long without seeing any change?

Yes.

It is frustrating. It can feel like you’re reading the same Scriptures, praying the same prayers, and asking the same questions without anything changing.

But the difference between the person who is transformed and the one who remains the same is that one stayed long enough.

Think about David.

David’s life was far from easy. He spent years running for his life, hiding in caves, misunderstood, rejected, and waiting for promises that, at times, must have seemed impossible. Yet through every season, he kept seeking God.

In the Psalms, we see him bringing everything before God, his fears, his doubts, his anger, his joy, his failures, and his worship. He didn’t pretend to have it all together. He simply refused to stop coming back.

He writes,

“One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after… to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.” (Psalm 27:4)

Maybe David understood that knowing God wasn’t a one-time event but a lifelong pursuit.

Even after becoming king, even after experiencing God’s faithfulness countless times, he continued to seek Him.

And that’s the point.

Transformation rarely happens because we’ve had one powerful encounter with God.

More often, it happens because we keep returning to Him. There will be days when you feel close to Him and days when you feel distant. Days when His Word feels alive and days when it feels silent. Return anyway.

And please, just pray, like, literally just talk to Him.

Knowing and loving God starts where hypocrisy ends.

The moment we stop pretending before Him is the moment we begin to truly know Him.

So go to Him, not with the polished prayers you’ve heard online or with borrowed intimacy, but with honesty.

If you want to know Him, tell Him.

If you struggle to love Him, tell Him.

If you have questions, bring them.

No one can reveal God to you more deeply than God Himself.

Not because I don’t know that human beings need to connect. That’s obvious enough. We hear it all the time. Humans are social creatures. No man is an island. We all need people.

But I kept wondering why.

Why does loneliness hurt?

Why can rejection linger for years after it happens?

Why can a single conversation change the direction of someone’s life?

Why do we spend so much of our lives longing to be understood while simultaneously doing everything we can to avoid being truly known?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this question could be answered from several different perspectives, and each one seemed to reveal another layer of what it means to be human.

Biologically speaking, we are social beings. For most of human history, isolation wasn’t merely uncomfortable, it was dangerous.

Human beings survived because they lived in families, tribes, and communities. Together they hunted, built shelters, cared for children, protected one another, and shared resources.

Belonging wasn’t simply a pleasant experience; it often determined whether someone lived or died. And our bodies still remember that.

Research consistently shows that people with healthy social relationships tend to live longer and experience better physical and mental health.

Strong relationships are associated with lower stress levels, better immune function, and reduced risks of anxiety, depression, heart disease, stroke, and premature death.

And that to me is fascinating.

Connection isn’t simply something that makes life happier. It actually helps sustain life itself.

But biology only explains how we developed this need.

It doesn’t explain why it feels so profoundly human.

Psychologically, connection answers questions most of us have been asking since childhood.

Do I matter?

Am I understood?

Am I safe?

Can someone know the worst parts of me and still choose to stay?

When you think about it, almost everything we do carries traces of those questions.

We post because we want to be seen.

We speak because we want to be heard. We build friendships because we want somewhere to belong.

Humans don’t simply crave interaction. We crave recognition.

We long for another human being to witness our existence.

That’s why one genuine conversation can accomplish what a million casual interactions never could.

Connection isn’t the absence of loneliness.

It’s the presence of being known. Because connection isn’t the absence of people but the absence of being seen, understood and accepted.

Philosophically, we become through others.

I have an alter ego, who quite dislikes humans because of all the “baggage” they come with. She believes that being in connection can slow you down or leave you hurt and therefore it is unnecessary and she has dominated most of my life and how I interact with people.

But what she fails to realize is that we don’t just live alongside other people and eventually get hurt by them. We discover ourselves through others too.

Relationships don’t merely accompany our growth. They reveal it.

You don’t learn patience in isolation, nor do you learn forgiveness without someone to forgive nor trust without taking a risk.

You don’t learn compassion if you’ve never witnessed another person’s pain and you don’t learn sacrifice without someone worth sacrificing for.

Forgive my specific examples, but think about it. You can’t be generous in isolation nor can you forgive in isolation. You can’t encourage or be encouraged in isolation. You can’t serve in isolation. You can’t even love in isolation. Love, by its very nature, requires another.

Likewise, creation, I believe. The Bible doesn’t begin with commandments. It begins with relationship. Before humanity ever had rules to obey, they had a God who walked with them. Before there was rebellion, there was communion.

God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not three gods, but one God in perfect relationship.

Then He creates humanity in His image. He walks with Adam and Eve in the garden.

And before anything in creation is described as broken, God says:

“It is not good for the man to be alone.”

Everything else had been declared good... light, sea, land and animals.

Yet before sin ever entered the world, being alone was the first thing declared “not good”, because we were never designed to exist independently.

We were created for relationship with God and therefore relationship with one another and elationship with creation.

Connection isn’t simply a human preference. It’s part of God’s design, that’s why God didn’t create humanity as a single, self-sufficient individual.

But sadly, all this has become a game with a lot of rules

So the need for human connection isn’t just a quick run from being alone. It’s our original design, the way we grow and how purpose is achieved…

So to many like my amazing alter ego, whom I call Precious, the need to become and fulfill purpose needs genuine human interaction because purpose has never been merely about what we accomplish.

It’s about who we become as we accomplish it and we rarely become in isolation. Human connection normally breeds purpose even.

When we think about it; the people that taught us our first lessons, the people who have served as encouragement, people who believe in you before you believe in yourself, the people who pray for you, challenge you, loved you through your failures and mistakes.

None of those people were distractions from your purpose.

They were part of it.

And that’s why Scripture says,

“Two are better than one… If either of them falls, one can help the other up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9–10)

And sadly, purpose is not a straight road. It’s filled with disappointment, failure, grief, uncertainty, and seasons where we simply don’t have the strength to keep going.

In those moments, knowledge isn’t always enough. Discipline isn’t always enough neither is determination.

So most times what keeps a person moving is another person.

A friend who reminds you why they started.

A mentor who offers wisdom and a family member who refuses to let you give up.

Someone who lends you courage until they can find your own again.

Even Kung Fu Panda captures this beautifully. Yes I’m going back to my comfort film. Po is chosen for something far greater than he believes he’s capable of.

Throughout his journey, there are moments when he doubts himself, when the challenge before him seems impossible, and when giving up would have been the easier choice.

But he doesn’t reach the end of that journey by determination alone. He is shaped by a father who loves him unconditionally, a teacher who learns to believe in him, friends who fight beside him, and mentors whose wisdom changes the way he sees himself. His strength grows in relationship. His purpose is fulfilled in community.

And that’s because that’s how life works.

God could accomplish His purposes without us. Yet, throughout Scripture, He continually chooses to work through people.

Moses needed Aaron.

David had Jonathan.

Paul had Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, and countless others.

Jesus Himself gathered disciples, shared meals, walked with friends, and built a community and that’s not because He lacked power or because He was weak.

But because relationship has always been part of God’s design.

We’ve believed the lie that becoming requires isolation. We are convinced that connection would only lead to hurt.

But what if we’ve misunderstood the journey?

What if the conversations, friendships, encouragement, correction, betrayal, we experience along the way aren’t interruptions?

What if they’re part of God’s way of forming us into the very people He’s calling us to become?

So connection isn’t a distraction from purpose.

It’s one of the ways God accomplishes it.

We were never meant to become alone. We were meant to become together.

Okay this is another long one but stay with me?

Recently, Kung Fu Panda became one of my comfort films.

Which is funny because it’s literally a movie about a panda learning kung fu.

And I know some of you already think I’m weird, but hear me out.

I rewatched it after seeing an incredible edit, and I realized the movie isn’t really about kung fu.

It’s about identity.

It’s about what happens when everyone, including you, believes you’re the wrong person for the life you’ve been given.

Somehow, it’s become one of the most encouraging stories I’ve ever watched.

Everyone judged Po by what they could see.

He was clumsy.

Overweight.

Awkward.

A noodle shop worker who was somehow expected to become the Dragon Warrior.

Nobody understood why Master Oogway chose him.

Not Shifu.

Not the Furious Five.

Not even Po himself.

But Oogway did.

He looked at Po and saw possibility where everyone else saw impossibility.

Kind of like Jesus if you ask me, very unusual and unexpected for someone who’s meant to deliver and save the world.

One of my favorite lines from Oogway is:

“There are no accidents.”

To everyone else, Po accidentally flew into the Dragon Warrior ceremony.

To Oogway, it wasn’t an accident at all.

Po couldn’t believe in himself yet.

Sometimes belief is borrowed before it’s even owned.

Shifu certainly didn’t believe in him.

But Oogway did. Oogway saw something in Po that even Po himself couldn’t really see. I think I have my Oogway…

And here’s what I love most about Oogway.

He never tried to create something in Po that wasn’t already there.

He simply recognized it before anyone else did.

And that’s what real belief does.

It doesn’t invent potential.

It simply reveals it.

I think that’s one of the most beautiful pictures of how God works.

God doesn’t call us because one day we’ll become useful to Him.

He calls us because He already sees what He has placed within us, long before we do.

Sometimes the journey isn’t about becoming someone completely different.

It’s about finally seeing yourself the way God has seen you all along.

Sometimes all someone needs isn’t another opportunity, just one person willing to see what everyone else has overlooked.

Po was chosen to defeat the legendary Tai Lung, yet he looked like the least qualified person in the Valley of Peace.

So, Shifu did what made the most sense.

He tried to train Po like every other student.

It failed.

Po wasn’t lazy, well maybe a little.

He wasn’t incapable.

He was simply different in a unique way.

Then Shifu noticed something.

Mention food…

And suddenly Po became fast.

Focused.

Creative.

Determined.

So, instead of trying to remove what made Po different, Shifu used what Po loved to bring out who he truly was.

The Dragon Warrior wasn’t created that day.

Instead, he was revealed.

And that part really made me stop and think of how many times I have prayed for God to change parts of me that He actually wants to use?

The things I call weaknesses.

The things I wish were different.

The things I think make me less than everyone else.

What if God isn’t asking me to erase them?

What if He’s asking me to surrender them so He can shape them?

Maybe God doesn’t always work by replacing our uniqueness.

Maybe He works by redeeming it.

Then there’s Tai Lung.

He had everything Po didn’t.

Talent.

Recognition.

Years of training.

His master’s approval.

He looked exactly like what everyone imagined the Dragon Warrior should look like.

But somewhere along the way, he stopped loving kung fu and started loving the title.

His identity became wrapped up in becoming “the Dragon Warrior”.

So when Oogway denied him the Dragon Scroll…

He lost himself.

And that hit me in a way I didn’t expect.

I am someone who sadly and unintentionally has built her life around my success and failure, I’ve most times made my success and my failures my identity.

But success makes a terrible identity.

Because the moment success leaves…

You don’t know who you are anymore.

Near the end of the movie, Po finally receives the legendary Dragon Scroll.

And everyone expects it to contain some incredible secret.

Instead…

It’s blank.

Or at least that’s what it looks like.

But the scroll simply reflects whoever opens it.

No hidden technique.

No magical power.

No shortcut.

Just… you.

Then Mr. Ping’s words suddenly make perfect sense:

“To make something special, you just have to believe it’s special.”

The scroll wasn’t hiding power.

It was exposing a lie.

The lie that someone else has the secret.

I’ve spent years thinking other people simply had it better.

The better personality.

The better opportunities.

The better calling.

The better gifts.

But maybe the difference isn’t that they’re more special.

Maybe they’ve simply believed they could become who they were created to be.

And maybe that’s why challenges matter.

As Oogway says in another Kung Fu Panda story:

“If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be more than you are now.”

Finally, Po faces Tai Lung.

And Tai Lung obviously can’t believe this is the warrior chosen to defeat him.

A chubby panda, who bounces around.

Laughs.

Improvises.

Has fun while fighting.

Po never defeats Tai Lung by becoming more like him or even better than him.

He defeats him by becoming more like himself.

Everything people laughed at became an advantage.

His creativity.

His joy.

His love for food.

His unusual way of thinking.

Nothing about Po was wasted.

And maybe that’s what I’ve loved most about this movie.

We’re so busy trying to become the person we think God can use that we forget He chose us knowing exactly who we already are.

Maybe the things you’ve spent years trying to hide are the very things God intends to shape into your greatest strengths.

Maybe your story isn’t about becoming someone else.

Maybe it’s about becoming more fully yourself, fully who you were created to be.

Perhaps that’s why Oogway chose Po before Po had earned anyone’s respect.

He wasn’t looking for the strongest warrior.

He wasn’t looking for the most disciplined.

He wasn’t looking for the person who looked the part or knew how to play the part, like most of us do.

He was looking for the person who could become fully themselves.

The person who had the true heart and genuine passion for kung fu and people.

Because the world didn’t need another Tai Lung.

It didn’t need another Furious Five.

It needed Po, with all the messiness that came with him.

And maybe that’s true of you too.

Your world, everything you’ve been given, everything you are working for, everyone you love, and everyone who loves you, isn’t waiting for another version of someone else.

It isn’t looking for the smartest.

The most gifted.

The most accomplished.

Or the person who seems to have it all together.

It’s waiting for you.

Not a finished version of you.

Not a perfect version of you.

But the you that is willing to be shaped.

The you that trusts God enough to stop chasing someone else’s calling and start embracing your own.

Because maybe the things you’ve spent years trying to hide are the very things God intends to use.

Maybe the role doesn’t become extraordinary because someone extraordinary fills it.

Maybe it becomes extraordinary because you finally have the courage to step into it.

After all...

The Dragon Warrior wasn’t chosen because he fit the role.

The role became extraordinary because Po was finally free to be Po.

This one feels longer than usual but stay with me?

I’ve slowly come to realize that everyone carries some level of brokenness.

Everyone has a place within them that aches. A place they’re hoping will heal. A prayer they’re still praying, even while everyone else assumes they’re doing okay.

To me, that’s one of the most humbling realities of being human.

We’re all broken.

Some of us are simply better at hiding it than others. Some of us don’t even realize how broken we are until life asks something of us.

A season changes.

A door closes.

A prayer goes unanswered for what feels like years.

Something we thought we had under control suddenly begins to unravel.

A relationship that requires vulnerability and some strength.

A responsibility that demands some form of courage, we can’t seem to find anywhere.

A disappointment we can’t control.

A prayer that seems to go unanswered.

And we realize the issue wasn’t created by those moments.

It was simply uncovered by them.

Pressure has an interesting way of exposing what comfort allows us to ignore.

Brokenness wears many faces.

Some wounds are visible.

Others exist beneath the surface, unnoticed by almost everyone around us, even those closest to us, sometimes even ourselves.

Sometimes our brokenness remains private.

Sometimes it spills into the lives of the people we love.

Perhaps that’s one of the hardest parts about it.

Our wounds rarely belong to us alone.

They shape the way we love.

The way we trust.

The way we respond.

The way we receive love.

Sometimes we hurt people we genuinely care about, not because we intended to, but because hurting people often don’t realize how deeply they’re hurting.

And somehow, realizing that our wounds have wounded someone else can hurt almost as much as the wounds themselves.

I’ve recently been learning to accept that I’m broken too.

Not the kind of brokenness people immediately notice.

Mine is quite subtle.

It’s the kind that settles into your thoughts and leaves your heart carrying a weight you can’t always explain.

The kind where someone asks, “What’s wrong?” and you genuinely don’t know how to answer.

Not because you don’t trust them.

But because the story is complicated.

Or because you simply don’t have words for what you’re feeling or you don’t even know what you are feeling or why you are feeling it.

Sometimes your soul carries burdens your mouth cannot yet explain.

Lately I’ve been asking;

When does everything become okay?

When does everyone become okay?

When does healing stop feeling like two steps forward and three steps back?

One day you feel as though you’ve finally moved on.

The next day, the same wound feels painfully familiar.

Not because you’ve failed.

But because healing has a way of revealing deeper layers of the same place that still needs restoring. Sit with it.

For a long time, I imagined healing as a straight road.

Now I think it’s a journey marked by progress and setbacks.

By breaking and rebuilding.

By losing hope and finding it again.

And if I’m honest, that’s frustrating, because I personally would like healing to lead to perfection.

I have unintentionally convinced myself that there is a version of me waiting ahead, a version that no longer struggles.

But the more I heal, the more I realize that brokenness isn’t an exception to being human.

It’s part of it.

Not because humanity was created this way, but because we’ve been living with the consequences of a broken world ever since sin entered it.

Another thing I’ve painfully come to realize, both in my own life and in the lives of people I deeply admire, is that healing is often a lifelong process.

If that’s true, then healing cannot become a waiting room where life is placed on hold.

This isn’t me saying you should never take time to heal.

Some seasons require rest.

Some require counselling and therapy.

Some require silence, boundaries, and intentionally allowing God to restore what has been damaged.

Healing matters.

But taking your time to heal should never become the same as placing your ability to live, experience life, love people, create, and fulfill God’s purpose for you on hold.

Because if healing is lifelong, then waiting until you’re completely healed before you begin living means you’ll spend your whole life waiting.

Healing doesn’t have to place your life on hold.

Living doesn’t require you to hide your brokenness.

The two can actually, strangely coexist.

You can continue creating while you’re still growing.

You can continue loving while you’re still learning.

You can continue serving while God is still restoring your heart.

You can continue walking, even when your steps feel uncertain.

Perhaps what we need isn’t people who have it all together.

Perhaps we need people humble enough to admit that they don’t.

People who are patient with our healing because they know what it means to be healing themselves.

Perhaps we were never meant to heal alone.

When I first looked at the image above, the one thing that immediately caught my attention was, the light wasn’t shining despite the cracks.

It was shining through them.

And I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what grace looks like.

We spend so much of our lives trying to hide the places where we’ve been fractured.

Meanwhile, God never seems intimidated by them.

Paul writes,

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

— 2 Corinthians 4:7 —

A jar of clay is fragile.

It cracks.

It breaks.

Yet that is exactly the image Paul chooses.

Perhaps because the beauty was never meant to be found in the vessel.

It was always meant to be found in the treasure it carries.

Maybe that’s why God doesn’t always rush to remove every crack from our lives, like we would like Him to.

Not because He delights in our suffering, enjoys watching us struggle.

But because brokenness has a way of revealing what strength often conceals:

Our dependence is on Him.

Scripture never presents a God who waits for people to become whole before drawing near.

Again and again, He meets people in their weakness, not after it has disappeared like we imagine in our human minds, but while He is transforming it.

He doesn’t shame the broken-hearted.

He draws near to them.

He doesn’t discard fragile vessels.

He fills them.

So I guess I’ve been misunderstanding healing.

Maybe healing isn’t becoming someone who’s no longer broken.

Maybe it’s discovering that the places we thought disqualified us have become the very places where God’s grace is most visible.

Maybe the cracks are no longer simply reminders of what hurt us but have become windows through which His light shines.

So perhaps there really is nothing wrong with being broken.

Not because brokenness is beautiful or because pain should be celebrated.

But because brokenness is not where God stops.

It is probably where He begins.

He doesn’t ask us to become whole before coming to Him or being used by Him.

He walks with us into our brokenness, through our healing, and slowly teaches us that even cracked vessels can carry His glory.

Perhaps that’s why the light shines through the cracks.

Not because the cracks are good.

But because grace refuses to leave them empty.

Selah.

Not a fun experience, to be honest.

It went on for what felt like forever, and somewhere between trying to remember every bad decision that led to that moment and questioning my existence, something my father used to say popped into my head.

“What you eat is what you vomit when your stomach rumbles.” Or something along those lines in a less fancy way.

Now, is that a strange thing to think about while actively throwing up?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

But that wasn’t really the point.

Recently, I’ve been in a spiritual and mental slump, and while I was there fighting for my life over a toilet bowl, I had a strange realization.

Maybe my spiritual dryness and mental unrest were as a result of my feeding.

Maybe it was my diet, my daily consumption.

I’ve been feeding on all the wrong things while expecting spiritual growth and mental freedom.

Apparently, God isn’t fooled by vibes or “good intentions”.

Wanting to grow is not the same as feeding yourself in a way that produces growth.

So I had another thought, what we consume may not just come out of us, it may become a part of us first.

And can slowly start consuming us, eating up, bits and pieces of who we are.

Maybe that’s why it’s so difficult to stop consuming the things that are harming us.

Because after a while, they don’t just occupy our attention.

They start shaping our appetites.

Our thoughts.

Our emotions.

Our responses.

Eventually our character.

At some point, we stop simply consuming them...

...and they begin consuming us.

I thought I was just scrolling.

Just watching.

Just listening.

Just entertaining myself.

Just having simple conversations.

But every day, something was feeding me.

And every meal was leaving something behind.

That thought sends me back to work.

Back to my Bible.

Back to producing.

Back to doing the things I’ve been avoiding.

Because the intentionality that comes with feeding who you are is the issue.

But here’s what makes this even more frustrating.

You can still consume the right things and end up with the wrong outcome.

You can read your Bible in the morning and spend the rest of your day feeding on comparison, outrage, fear, and endless scrolling.

You can listen to a sermon on Sunday and let your mind rehearse your worries every other day of the week.

You can know the truth without ever sitting with it long enough for it to change you.

Because consumption isn’t the goal.

Transformation is.

Or at least...

I think that’s what I’m learning.

It’s not just about what enters your mind.

It’s about what you’re repeatedly chewing on, rehearsing, believing, obeying, and living until it becomes part of you.

Also, I recently came across this thought in a book, if you struggle with worry, chew on what gives you peace until peace becomes your first response.

If you struggle financially, feed on the wisdom that produces wealth until it starts shaping the way you think.

Because you can’t give what isn’t already in you.

You can’t bring out what you’ve never taken in.

I didn’t fully understand any of this until I watched the pasta and amala I had eaten earlier make their glorious return in the middle of the night.

There was nobody there with me.

Just me...

...and everything I’d been consuming.

Maybe that’s how life works too.

When life starts squeezing you, it doesn’t create something that wasn’t already there.

It simply reveals what has been forming you all alone.

So technically, pressure(the stomach rubble) doesn’t create what’s inside of us, it simply reveals it.

When life starts rumbling...

What will come out of you?

I’ve been learning a little about love.

Not from the books I read or sermons or even from the people who love me well.

I’ve been learning it from the places where it hurt.

I’ve been learning a little about love.

We ridicule the woman who stays because she believes the man who hurt her can be different. She has seen another side of him, and she hopes it is still there.

Yet we stand in awe of Jesus, who willingly died for people He knew would reject Him. We call Him ever-loving when He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” for the very people who mocked Him, abandoned Him, and nailed Him to the cross.

I’ve been learning a little about love.

Someone once said that if you’ve ever been in love, you’ve probably looked mad to someone else.

Maybe that’s why I’ve spent so much of my life running from God. His love has always seemed excessive, almost irrational.

His love never fit inside the logic I understood.

It was always too patient, too forgiving, too persistent, a little bit too “unreal”.

I’ve been learning a little about love.

I’ve realized how much I have endured for people, not because I was certain they would change or because I expected anything in return, but simply because I knew they needed me.

I’ve been learning a little about love.

Perhaps that’s why I can now understand, even if only faintly, why God sometimes asked me to stay in places He saw breaking my heart. Not because He delights in my suffering, but because He knew there were things about love I could not learn from a distance.

I’ve been learning a little about love.

It still makes no sense to me that He continues to call my name after I have rejected Him more times than I’d like to admit.

I’ve been learning a little about love.

And I think I’m beginning to see that what the cross revealed, wasn’t the absence of God’s boundaries, but the depth of His commitment. Love did not ignore justice, it fulfilled it. Love did not become weak, it became sacrificial.

I’ve been learning a little about love.

If God were simply another man walking the earth, loving as He does, right now, we would probably call Him a fool. We would tell Him to have more self-respect, to stop giving people so many chances, to know when enough is enough.

I’ve been learning a little about love.

But perhaps that is exactly why He is God and we are not.

Because where our love reaches its limit, His mercy keeps extending.

I’ve been learning a little about love and truthfully I don’t think I could ever learn enough.

And maybe, that’s because love isn’t something we were made to master.

Maybe love is Someone we spend our whole lives discovering.

I keep learning just a little about love.

And now I see that He truly will never leave me. Not because I deserve His faithfulness, but because He knows how much I need Him, more than I ever will and because He has chosen, in love, never to let me go.

In the middle of that reflection, I started asking myself again: What’s the point of everything I’m working towards? I mean, in the end, we all just die.

Whenever we talk about the seeming meaninglessness of life, people usually respond with things like, “That’s why you just need to enjoy it,” or “Don’t take life too seriously,” or “Live each day like it’s your last.”

But when you actually try to live that way, reality catches up with you.

Enjoying life isn’t as easy as it sounds. There is suffering. There is loss. There is love. There is sacrifice. There are disappointments, responsibilities, internal battles, and external circumstances that constantly affect our ability to simply live peacefully and wholeheartedly.

So then, what’s actually the point?

Is it where we are going?

Is it found in each day’s joys and challenges?

Or is it... who we are becoming?

As believers, one of the things we hear often is that we are being transformed into the image of Christ. But if we sincerely examine our everyday lives and our responses to them, is it truly Him we are becoming? Or are we simply living until we die, working toward no real end?

Because yes, you may obtain everything your heart desires, the wealth, the fame, the admiration, the relationship, the graduation, the job, the promotion, but then what?

The promotion leads to another ambition.

Graduation will eventually becomes employment.

Marriage brings about new responsibilities.

Even peace isn’t something you achieve once and keep forever. It has to be received and chosen again and again.

So basically, life is remarkably resistant to completion.

Therefore, nothing ever seems to be enough because nothing on earth was designed to satisfy us completely. Every achievement simply gives way for another pursuit. Again it’s the human nature.

Instead of arriving, we keep becoming.

And perhaps that’s the point.

Whether we realize it or not, every ordinary day is shaping us.

You can lose wealth.

You can lose influence.

You can lose health.

You can lose opportunities.

You can even lose people.

But every disappointment teaches us something. Or atleast it’s meant to.

Every success tempts us toward something.

Every relationship forms some habit of heart.

Every act of worship, every hidden sin, every resentment entertained, every forgiveness offered, they all answer the same question,

Who are you becoming?

With every passing day, with everything you do and everyone you engage with, who are you becoming?

Are you becoming someone you’re proud of?

Someone who is responsible?

Someone who is easy to be with?

Someone who is more patient?

More loving?

More gracious?

And to my fellow believers,

If our aim is truly to be conformed to Christ, that raises some uncomfortable questions.

Not,

“Do I believe the right things?”

But,

Does my response to inconvenience look more like Christ today than it did a year ago?

Does suffering make me bitter or deepen my compassion?

Has success made me more humble or more self-important?

Am I becoming someone who loves as He loves?

Because transformation isn’t measured by how many sermons we’ve heard or how many verses we’ve memorized.

It’s revealed in the ordinary reactions that no one applauds.

Perhaps that’s why the Christian life can sometimes feel so hidden.

The world measures destinations.

God often measures formation.

So maybe the question isn’t simply, “Where am I going? or what is my destination?”

Maybe the better question is, Who am I becoming?

Because long after the achievements fade and the applause grows quiet, the person you have become is mostly what remains.

I had to ask myself this question recently because I had unintentionally become a performer.

I recently called myself a hypocrite in one of my articles. One of the reasons I wrote that was because I had become so accustomed to being seen as "the spiritual one", the one with insight, conviction, and answers that seemed to come from only my Heavenly Father knows where.

The issue isn't that people see me that way.

The issue is that unintentionally, long the line, I began to feel responsible for protecting that image.

So when my spiritual life feels dry, I feel like I should still sound spiritually alive.

Even when it feels like I’m dying inside

When I'm weary, I feel like I should still appear strong, because I've convinced myself that if people see my weakness, they'll question everything else.

As I have been sitting with this thought, I realized I'm probably not alone.

Many believers seem to carry this unbiblical pressure to perform.

To always have the right answer.

To always be on fire.

To always be growing.

To always appear unshaken.

And I have to ask, where did this even come from?

When did we begin believing that maturity meant looking flawless instead of becoming honest?

The Scriptures don't hide the weakness of the people God used.

They don't edit out David's failures, Elijah's despair, Peter's denial, or the doubt of Thomas.

Yet we have somehow convinced ourselves that our testimony is strengthened by hiding the very places where we need God's grace.

Maybe that's why so many of us are exhausted.

We've confused spiritual growth with spiritual performance.

And eventually, maintaining the appearance becomes more important than tending to the soul beneath it.

So let me ask you the question I had to ask myself, when the crowd leaves...

When no one is applauding...

When there's no reputation to protect...

Who are you?

Not the version that performs, inspires and always has the right words.

But the person God sees when no one else is looking.

Because if you're constantly performing for others, there's a chance you've stopped living honestly before God.

Socrates once claimed that wisdom begins with the recognition of one's ignorance, not as defeat, but as alignment. To admit, "I do not know," is not to fall behind; it is to finally stand where reality is.

In a very real sense, the idea of knowing everything is impossible. And even if it were possible, it would be unbearably dull. It would strip life of discovery, remove the excitement of uncertainty, and rob us of the courage required to take a step without guarantees.

There is something beautiful about not knowing, I think. It allows us to try and see. To take wise risks. To walk down roads without seeing the destination. To be surprised by outcomes we could never have predicted.

The need to know everything is not wisdom like I originally thought. It is actually fear, the fear of failure, of regret, of making the wrong choice. Yet life has never promised certainty, it has only ever offered opportunities to learn.

And maybe just maybe that’s the point.

We learn through success and through failure. We learn when we are right and when we are painfully wrong. We learn through what we gain and through what we lose. Growth does not come from having all the answers beforehand, it comes from engaging with life despite not having them.

You do not need to know everything before you begin. 

You do not need to know everything before you achieve. 

You can just start and become, start and realize this isn’t really for you, start but don’t allow yourself get paralyzed simply because you are human enough to not know everything.

You only need enough courage to take the next step, enough humility to admit what you do not know, and enough curiosity to keep learning along the way.

Yeah..

Now I find myself wrestling with something I never expected.

Being hurt has become my excuse.

An excuse to pull away.

An excuse to resist.

An excuse to disobey.

Not because I wake up every morning determined to rebel, but because hurt changes the way I see things now.

Healing requires humility. It requires admitting that you've been wounded and that you cannot fix yourself. It requires accepting that you need help.

And that is difficult.

Because if healing comes from God, then it means returning to the very One who allowed the pain in the first place. Yes I said it

And that is where the conflict begins.

I've seen where He has led me before.

I've trusted Him before.

I've obeyed before.

And sometimes the result was hurt. Well most times the result was hurt.

So now a part of me wants to go my own way.

Not because I believe my way is better, but because at least it would be my choice.

At least if I get hurt following my own plans, I won't have to wrestle with the question of why I trusted Him again.

The truth is, I don't think this struggle is entirely intentional.

It's human.

How do you completely trust someone when they have permitted so much pain?

How do you surrender when surrender seems to have cost you so much already?

These are uncomfortable questions, but they are real ones.

The strange thing about hurt is that it often disguises itself as wisdom.

We tell ourselves,

"I'm just being careful."

"I'm protecting my heart."

"I'm learning from experience."

And sometimes that's exactly what we're doing.

But other times, something else is happening.

Hurt quietly begins to transform into pride.

Not the loud pride that boasts about its strength.

The wounded pride that says,

"I know better now."

"I won't be vulnerable again."

"I won't trust enough to be disappointed again."

And before we realize it, we are no longer simply carrying pain.

We are building our identity around it.

Our wounds become evidence.

Evidence for why we should keep our distance.

Evidence for why we should remain in control.

Evidence for why God should not be trusted completely.

Without meaning to, we begin using our hurt as a case against Him.

Yet the gospel continually confronts that instinct.

It asks us to acknowledge something we would rather avoid,

the One who allows the wound is often the same One who heals it.

So,

Isn’t entirely true because,

I don't fully understand it.

I don't understand why some prayers seem unanswered.

I don't understand why some lessons arrive through suffering.

I don't understand why God permits certain pains that seem unnecessary.

But I am beginning to realize that refusing to trust Him doesn't heal the hurt either.

It only gives the hurt a throne.

And once pain sits on the throne, every decision begins to revolve around avoiding future wounds rather than following truth. As I’ve written before

Perhaps healing begins when we stop pretending that our distrust is wisdom.

Perhaps healing begins when we honestly admit,

"God, I am afraid."

Afraid of being hurt again because I believe I’m following His will.

Afraid of hoping again, just to feel betrayed.

Afraid of trusting again, for Him to leave me confused and broken.

And faith is not the absence of those fears.

Faith is bringing those fears to Him anyway.

Not because we understand everything He does.

Not because the wounds have disappeared.

Not because all our questions have been answered.

But because somewhere beneath the disappointment, beneath the confusion, beneath the hurt we have used as evidence against Him, there remains a very annoying and painful truth,

I have tried carrying my pain without Him.

I have tried making myself my own god.

I have tried building walls high enough to protect my heart.

And none of it has healed me.

So I come back.

Not because I have figured Him out.

Not because trust feels easy.

But because even in my resistance, even in my doubt, even in my hurt, He remains the only place healing has ever been found.

And my hurt has never healed my hurt.

My fear has never healed my fear.

My control has never healed my pain.

And so, with trembling hands, I return.

Not because I am all of a sudden certain again.

But because the God I am struggling to trust is still the God I need.

And that’s crazy

And I've noticed a new problem I have and I've come to dump.

As of last year, one of my greatest fears was displeasing God. That was until I heard someone say:

"Your fear of displeasing God is the exact reason why you will displease Him."

Chai.

That statement bothered me for a while because it sounded wrong.

How can my desire to please God be the reason I fail at pleasing Him?

Truthfully, we spend too much time stressing over how we want to do the will of our Father, yet we constantly find ourselves doing the opposite.

So join me as I analyze why.

I am actually a hypocrite.

Yes, I'm calling myself out.

Because if I'm being honest, a lot of my desire to please God comes from not wanting to deal with the uneasy feeling that He might be disappointed in me.

And maybe that's the first problem.

I claim to love Him, yet I don't fully understand His love for me.

Also, my desire isn't always pure.

Sometimes, hidden beneath all the language of devotion is another desire entirely.

The desire to be seen as devoted.

To be seen as someone who is "after God's own heart."

And saying, "I just want to please God" can sometimes become another way of protecting that image.

It keeps me focused on my performance.

My failures.

My progress.

My spirituality.

My reputation.

And before long, I'm spending more time managing how I appear before God than actually getting to know Him.

Honestly, I think that's why many of us keep failing in the very area we claim matters most.

Because how do you continually hurt someone you claim you want to live for?

Maybe it's because you're so distracted by trying to be perfect that you've stopped focusing on what actually matters.

His love.

It becomes another issue you're constantly trying to fix.

We begin looking at ourselves and idolizing this desire to please God instead of fixing our eyes on the One we claim to serve.

Rather than growing in love, we become consumed with self-evaluation.

Rather than knowing God, we become obsessed with measuring ourselves.

And there's another side to this.

My dear believers, I think we are too focused on being gods to be able to please God.

Hear me out.

What is with this obsession with control?

Why do we need to have everything figured out?

The point of believing in a God who is in control is that there is a God who is in control.

Yet somehow we keep trying to take His place.

We say we trust Him, but we want all the answers.

We say He is leading us, but we insist on holding the map.

We say He is sovereign, but we panic whenever life reminds us that we are not, because image of God believe it or not you are human and you must let go

Trying to solve every problem, carrying every burden, overthinking every possibility and then feeling unworthy when we fail is the clear path to anxiety.

So we place everything in our own hands while convincing ourselves we're following God's plan.

Then we crash when we realize we don't actually know what we're doing.

And the productivity we've been riding starts to reveal itself as insecurity and fear wearing a very convincing disguise.

We can't keep lying to ourselves with the same mantra.

I'm not sure I'm entirely free from this hypocrisy myself.

But I think recognizing the loop is one of the first ways we begin to address it.

Because many of us spend our lives doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons.

We want to please God, but we're focused on ourselves.

We want to trust God, but we're obsessed with control.

We want to know God, but we're preoccupied with our performance.

And maybe that's the irony.

We are so focused on pleasing God that we no longer see Him.

Maybe the goal was never to become perfect enough for Him.

Maybe the goal was to know Him well enough that obedience becomes the natural response to love.

So I’m let’s conclude, I’ve asked myself many times what the usual saying of let go and let God actually mess and I’ve come to understand that it may mean know God. Literally get to know God first. 

Then when that understanding is there, there’s this certainty that trusting in someone so divine keeps you instead of ruins your perfectly curated image and plan 

And I may be wrong but yeah

But not in the overly sentimental, “I’m searching for comfort and peace” kind of way. Not in the “everything is falling apart and I need someone to rescue me” way.

Rather, in the simple, uncomfortable reality that I need God even when I have it all.

Some one once said whatever you can have outside Jesus, is not the reason Jesus came.

Growing up, many of the reasons people gave for needing God seemed tied to some form of lack. You need God when you’re struggling financially. You need God when you’re sick. You need God when you’re lonely. You need God when you’re afraid. You need God when life falls apart.

And while God certainly meets people in all those places, I’ve begun to wonder what happens when those needs are met.

What happens when your bills are paid?

What happens when your health is good?

What happens when your relationships are stable?

What happens when life is not actively falling apart?

Do you still need God?

For a while, I wasn’t sure.

After all, God isn’t your financial security. God isn’t your doctor. God isn’t your therapist. God isn’t your construction worker. God isn’t your boyfriend or girlfriend who cuddles you and makes the pain seem less bad, I mean not necessarily.

Now, God can be all those things and more. He can provide, heal, comfort, and sustain.

But what happens when you don’t feel the need for those things?

Thankfully, I am healthy and I am not starving and financially I’m okay. And before you say, “Well, that’s thanks to God,” well so is the atheist who wants nothing to do with God and still has access to a good doctor.

I have had the privilege of comfort and well there was still a void only God could fill

So perhaps God isn’t necessarily the one you call when you need a raise.

Perhaps He is simply your Creator, the ultimate source and the very reason you exist.

And at first, that sounds somewhat underwhelming to me.

But maybe that’s because I had become so accustomed to thinking of God in terms of usefulness that I had forgotten the significance of being created at all and I had forgotten what a privilege it is to be His creation.

A painting does not outgrow the artist who painted it.

A story does not outgrow the author who wrote it.

A creation does not become independent of its creator simply because it is functioning well.

The relationship remains.

And perhaps that is what I’ve been slowly realizing, I’m still not entirely sure.

But my need for God is not rooted merely in what He gives me. It is rooted in who He is.

Because if God is only valuable when my life is difficult, then God becomes little more than a divine emergency service, someone I call when things go wrong and ignore when things go right.

But if God is my Creator, then my need for Him exists before every crisis and remains after every crisis has passed.

I think this is why Paul could speak about having much and having little. The deeper issue was never abundance or scarcity. It was belonging.

And whether I have everything or nothing, whether life is easy or difficult, whether every prayer seems answered or unanswered, that reality remains unchanged.

He is my Creator.

So, what happens when you see no need for God?

Maybe you discover that the idea of “need” was never the point.

Because God was never simply the answer to your problems, the cure for your loneliness, or the provider of your desires. He can be all those things, but if that is all He is, then He becomes useful only in moments of lack.

Yet a creation does not outgrow its creator because it has become comfortable.

And perhaps that is what I have been learning.

I do not need God merely because I am struggling.

I need God because I am His.

And there is no version of my life in which I cease to be His creation.

I am a huge advocate for curiosity, for asking questions, for figuring things out — yes, even the kind of curiosity they say kills the cat.

Because truly, what is the point of living if you never attempt to understand life for yourself?

And there’s a problem in certain parts of our faith where questions are treated as though they are sinful.

But I’ve said before that when believers arrive at a point where they genuinely question their faith and still choose it, then they can boldly call themselves believers. Otherwise, they are merely accepting what has been handed to them without ever truly choosing it for themselves.

Questions should not be treated like rebellion.
Neither should doubt be treated like a crime.

And maybe we should stop pretending we know everything when we really don’t.

You do not know why that baby died so young.
You do not know why that girl lost her mother.
You do not know why wars continue to take innocent lives.
And sometimes, you do not even know how to help the young person whose heart has been so damaged by this world that they no longer want to live in it.

And saying, “The world is broken,” while true, can sometimes feel painfully vague when standing in the middle of actual grief.

So perhaps we should all just stay quiet for a while(literally shut up) and seek to know the nature of God for ourselves.

Especially believers.

Because it is one thing to admit that you are uncertain whether God exists and therefore choose not to make assumptions about Him. But it is another thing entirely to claim intimacy with God while consistently misrepresenting His nature.

I’m not particularly drawn to the overly emotional side of the faith, the side where people casually say things like, “God is such a girl dad.” I’m not condemning it, and maybe there is truth in it, but sometimes I think we forget who God is.

I struggle with reducing the Almighty God to something merely soft or sentimental because Scripture also reveals Him as holy, terrifying in power, and capable of destruction.

So let’s establish two things:
He is God, Creator of the universe.
And somehow, despite His greatness, He has chosen to love us.

Now we can move from there.

My unanswered questions have never really been the problem.
The problem has always been the lack of a stable place to stand while carrying them.

Because I know enough to tell myself that God is still deserving of worship, yet not enough to mend my own broken heart or the hearts of broken people around me.

Because how exactly do you explain to a little girl that God still loves her after she loses her mother in a car accident, especially after they prayed for safety that very morning during family devotion?

No really.
How do you explain that?

These conversations are uncomfortable, but they are necessary.

I have been angry at God before.
Not because I stopped believing He was powerful, but because it seemed like there were so many things He could do and simply did not.

And honestly, that has never fully made sense to me.

But eventually I had to confront something difficult:

God is still God.

Holy.
Mighty.
Unquestionably beyond human understanding.

And does that frustrate me sometimes?

Yes. Yes it does.

But my frustration does not reduce His divinity.

So what happens when you grow up hearing that God is good and in control, yet find yourself living through situations where, if God truly is in control, you almost feel like you should not believe in Him at all?

What do you do with all the questions in your heart then?

You stop pretending they are not there.

Do not resist the questions.
But do not worship them either.

Instead, let them push you toward knowing God for who He truly is — not merely who people have told you He is.

And I’m coming to understand that you can only know who He is, if He reveals Himself to you, so lately, I’ve really just been asking, God, who are you? even though there are days where it makes no sense.

I told a friend of mine how I keep getting in the way of all that God wants to do with me, and I expected her to give me some deeply inspirational, experience-based advice that would help me profoundly. But to my surprise, she simply said:

“Then get yourself out of the way.”

It felt like such an irritating response. Like what does that even mean

But the more I pondered on it, the more I realized how much sense it actually made.

It has been written in many ways throughout life that we are often the cause of our own stagnation. Yes, external factors exist. Life happens. Circumstances interfere. But our response to these external factors reveals so much about us. It reveals what we are capable of becoming and what we quietly permit ourselves to settle into.

And sometimes, the greatest obstacle in a person’s life is not the world, not circumstance, not even failure, but the version of themselves that insists on remaining comfortable, the version of themselves they refuse to let go of.

I’ve lived much of my life interfering with my own growth, not because I’m incapable, I’m proud enough to believe I am more than capable but because I allow fear, pride, perfectionism, overthinking, and constant analysis to get in the way.

Sometimes I become so consumed with understanding everything perfectly that I forget movement itself matters more than perfect understanding.

And maybe that is why so many of us remain stuck.

You say you want to heal, yet you constantly revisit the very things that hurt you because pain has become familiar to you.

You say you want genuine friendships, yet you keep people at a distance because vulnerability feels terrifying.

You want discipline, yet you wait to “feel motivated” before doing the things that would actually change your life.

You want a different future, yet your habits remain deeply attached to your old life.

You want growth, yet every time growth requires discomfort, you retreat back into familiarity.

And I think that’s the painful part about growth that people rarely talk about, if you truly want to change, something within you has to die, mentally and emotionally and spiritually.

Certain mindsets must die. Certain coping mechanisms must die. Certain versions of yourself cannot follow you into the life you keep praying for.

Recently, I’ve felt the need to confront many things within myself, my emotions, my thoughts, my fears, my need for control, my obsession with perfection — everything I must face in order to grow.

And I realized that one of the hardest parts is not necessarily confronting these things, but letting go of the version of myself that normally wouldn’t.

Because I have become comfortable with this version of me.

Comfortable with overthinking. Comfortable with emotional walls. Comfortable with needing certainty before action. Comfortable with protecting myself from disappointment before life even has the chance to happen.

At this point I’m just crashing out.

But perhaps that is where the internal battle truly begins and there are certain factors I’ve been considering,

The Mind Factor

The mere fact that my mind can carry thousands of thoughts at once says enough about how much influence it has over my efficiency. Sometimes I become so consumed with analyzing possibilities that I remain mentally active but physically stagnant.

I think too much. I analyze too much. I try to predict too much.

Sometimes I just want to pull my brain out and rest,

Literally.

And in trying to avoid failure, I sometimes avoid movement altogether, just to end up feeling like a fool when in reality I can actually just do what I need to do without overthinking everything.

The Emotional Factor

My detest for emotional baggage is difficult to explain, but I’ve realized how much control we unintentionally hand over to our emotions.

One moment of disappointment can ruin weeks of discipline if we allow it to.

One season of sadness can convince us to stop becoming.

Emotions are real, but they were never meant to become rulers over our lives.

Perhaps the problem now is that I have become too attached to everything I built as protection from the fear of the unknown constantly lingering within my mind.

My need for control. My need for certainty. My need for emotional safety.

All of it became protection mechanisms.

But protection can become imprisonment.

And maybe that is what truly getting yourself out of the way means.

Not hating yourself or destroying yourself.

But releasing the version of yourself that can no longer carry you into the life you are praying for.

I don’t know though, I’m still figuring it out.

Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote that a man with much intelligence and a deep heart suffers a lot. And he’s not entirely wrong, sometimes having knowledge can make you want to run mad

Still, I have a problem with that particular belief.

I am someone who deeply appreciates wisdom and its application in every sphere of life, so quite frankly, the conclusion that greater wisdom simply leads to greater suffering feels incomplete, even though to an extent, it is true.

At a certain point, being wise makes you more conscious and aware of how absurd and fragile life can be, which naturally makes you less comforted by certain beliefs and illusions. That part is valid.

However, I believe genuine wisdom should eventually lead a person to a less depressing conclusion, one that gives meaning to an otherwise meaningless life.

So the idea that “the more I see, the worse I feel” should not be the final conclusion of someone with enough understanding to create something useful from life. My point is that if I am able to acquire a great amount of knowledge, then I should also be able to arrive at some form of resolution that makes life a little less painful.

For instance, if you read the works of Dostoevsky, you begin to realize that yes, a wise man with deep awareness may not be as excited or carefree as an oblivious man. But with wisdom should also come the understanding that consciousness expands our capacity not only for pain, but also for meaning, hope, love, and growth.

Because even in Ecclesiastes, the meaninglessness does not come from knowledge alone. It comes from knowledge without resolution, seeing limits, injustice, mortality, and not finding a stable answer within them. That is different from awareness itself.

Being aware and conscious should not automatically make you suffer. Rather, it simply removes the unstable things you once placed your peace and comfort in. True knowledge may cause a distortion, but it does not have to lead entirely to unhappiness. Instead, it can lead you toward an understanding of where your true ground and choices actually are.

Something I have come to learn through all the unanswered questions I have about my faith is that my faith has now become a genuine personal conviction. Yes, I may lowkey have agnostic tendencies, but I still choose Him, not because I am hiding inside some fantasy religion built on the illusion of a perfect church or perfect Christianity, but because I have come to a personal conviction that Jesus must be Lord.

So my faith is no longer dependent solely on comfort, but on a truth I have chosen to hold onto despite confusion, contradiction, and the brokenness within humanity. And strangely enough, I find joy in the mere fact that I still believe despite everything.

So I am not being deceived into happiness. I am simply living on purpose with the choices I still have control over. Which means it is through awareness, knowledge, and genuine wisdom that man truly gains the ability to choose.

So it is not that you must suffer when you know more, but that the illusions which once comforted you begin to collapse. Yet even after that collapse, you can still choose to face reality for what it truly is and discover yourself beyond comforting romanticizations.

Wisdom does not guarantee happiness,

but if it is truly wisdom, it should eventually teach a man where to stand after illusion collapses.

Consciousness expands our capacity for suffering, but also our capacity to choose meaning without needing comforting fantasies.

So, true wisdom is not finding comfort in illusions, but learning how to live truthfully once they are removed.