Author: Stephanie Henderson

  • Africa

    At this time next week, I will be on the longest flight of my life so far. Preparation for this trip has been stretching, and the study and reading and learning and connecting I have done in the course of it have brought me to a new place of acceptance… of myself, of my journey, and my call.

    It’s not been without challenges, though… and sometimes the stretching just plain hurts. 


    I’ve come to believe that many people are struggling with pain that they have no hope of escaping, often stuck in the silence of shame that is put on them in order to keep the peace. 


    And so, there is none. 


    Because peace cannot be kept if it is not first made. 


    And the making of peace is a consuming process that few undertake for fear of isolation that they have not yet realized has taken over anyway. 


    I am learning that I must change my story. I’m the only one who can. While the past is already written, I must speak up instead of defaulting to silence for the future to be different. I must lean into the discomfort that I have historically run from. I must stand for those who have been hurt… and that has to start with myself. 


    Sometimes, that seems to be the hardest task… to stand up for me against my own internal critic as I learn that love begins inside. Loving me is the only way that I can love others to any extent or degree. I love you AS I love myself. All of which is only truly accomplished once I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.


    In standing up for myself and learning to love myself enough to speak up, I have found (and am still finding) a community that surrounds me and supports me in ways I never dreamed possible. God has shown up in ways that I didn’t even think to ask him to. 


    Now the peace that is made can spread… but only as I then do the work to keep it.


    Thanks for joining me on this journey.

    Thanks for praying me through. 


    I love you, friends.

    💜💜💜

  • moving

    I purged a lot of things tonight.

    Things that I have carried with me for a lot of years across a lot of miles.
    Packing for a big move is hard. Doing it in the midst of almost every other kind of stress imaginable is harder.
    I’m tired tonight. I’m tired, and I’m sad. Grieving a lifetime of losses and bad decisions.
    But that lifetime got me here. And there’s hope on the other end… I have to believe that.
    Be gentle with yourself and with others. Show yourself compassion and remember that you can’t always tell what someone is going through… so assume it is hard and always err on the side of love.
    I love you, friends.

  • beginning again.

    Morning always brings a new perspective. The shift from darkness to light is significant every single time I watch it happen. Whether it is because I don’t like mornings and so there is always a reason I’m up to see it or whether it is because sunrise is a time when God is able to speak to me more clearly, I don’t know. But sitting up and seeing the dark, night sky change colors and then be bright has tremendous impact on my spirit.

    So that’s what I did today. I watched the sun come up on a new life. I chose to get up and see the first morning of this new story that God is writing in me and around me and through me. And, just as he has many times since I’ve been here in Scottsdale, he came and sat with me.

    This week has actually been the hardest one I have ever experienced. My life has not been an easy one, most who know me are aware of some pieces of that. But this week I stopped, stepped out of life, and looked at the impact that all the losses have had. I detailed and documented the traumas. I gave a voice to the deepest wounds of my soul. I sat in the pain, allowing the child, the adolescent, and the adult who experienced those things to really acknowledge how much they hurt and how they affected me. As painful as living through those experiences the first time was, doing it again all at once was much harder.

    I literally did not think I would survive when it was dark outside. I ranted and raved as I worked on homework, railing against the process and refusing to believe that this much pain could ever be beneficial. These things that happened to me were mostly not anything I could have chosen not to experience. But this week I had the choice to do the work or not. I had to choose to live them again. I had to decide if the pain would cripple me or make me stronger. I had to figure out if my faith that God is working in my present was bigger than the fear that he had abandoned me in my past.

    And this week, faith won. God showed up. Sometimes in the presence of people I didn’t know who responded to his thumb in their back to reach out and be his arms around me. Sometimes in the willingness of the only person I did know to listen to my anger without judgement. Sometimes God showed up in a way that I can’t describe that actually allowed me to feel as if he were sitting right beside me, really listening and hearing the anger of the little girl whose understanding of a father who would be able to do that and still love her was lost a long time ago. Instead of just being somewhere beyond the sky, God sat beside me and accepted the shouting and the crying and the darkness and bit by bit the light of Christ engulfed it all.

    Today, I am me again. Or maybe I am finally me. And I don’t know exactly who that is, which is its own kind of terrifying. But, I’m also less alone than I have ever been… In many ways, 2020 feels like the start of life. And just as it probably was when my life was actually new, it’s scary but so exciting.