Author: Stephanie Henderson

i love you

On a day that had been hard anyway, headed into an appointment I was dreading, after a meeting I regret… an older woman spoke up to tell me she loved my shirt. It took me a moment to catch what she meant, and by the time I looked up she was almost past. Almost… but not quite. As my eyes found hers, she smiled. I said a quiet thank you and kept going.

It’s hard to know who is safe anymore. Many are debating wearing things that identify them as such, while others are frustrated at the performative nature of things like that. When safety is not felt, it cannot be forced. I get that.

For me, the clothes I have taken to wearing over the last several years have become a beacon. People notice the messages. They share their stories. Strangers and I laugh and cry and then walk away from each other, never to speak again. It’s not performative. It’s because people matter. Choosing health matters. Empowering us all and each to do better matters. Allowing people to really show up matters.

Love matters.

Today’s shirt? Simply true. I will love out loud for all those who aren’t safe enough to do so.

And it’s Christmas time in our house. No ifs, ands. or buts about it. Because twinkling lights are the only way to end a day like today.

Know you are invincibly precious just as you are. Right now, without changing a thing, you are loveable and worthy. And I will speak this over and over and over you until you can say it to yourself… and even after.

I love you.

November 13, 2024
liturgy after loss

This landed in my awareness at just the right time in the wee hours of this morning when I was resting fitfully. I am now praying this liturgy repeatedly this morning.

“At times my urge is to foster a false harmony through silence or by pretending to agree, diluting my beliefs to ease this tension that broods over us.”

So many with whom I am journeying now are struggling with the outcome of the election. Trauma responses are high, felt safety is non-existent, and it is so difficult to reconcile the world in which we now exist with continued life or possibility or hope…

At the same time, there are so many around me who believe the outcome that occurred is best. Those with whom I have been close, whom I have sat with and held space for and have deeply done life together… many voted for what they believe to be economic policies that will better their lives financially. Many voted for the party that has always been the “right” choice. Many voted for the only option they believed they had.

“When I feel judged or attacked, I want to tighten my arguments to prove I am right and protect myself from pain.

Anger beckons me toward self-righteousness;

I lose empathy and cannot see the other as they are.”

Existing in the midst of the two groups on either side of the current conversations has created a bubble in which I have made space for further processing of my own, and I am deeply saddened at the recognitions of how entrenched the harmful thought patterns are and all the damage they can still do.

“Remind me that this person I have loved so long is not now my enemy.

May I give no ground to our true enemy, who seeks to choke out what is good and beautiful and tangle us with hatred and dissent.

Keep my heart tender, yet strong to forgive as you have forgiven me.”

We are so divided. The world is so broken. Our communities are so ravaged by fear and anger and doubt that many are moving with eyes downcast, praying just to make it from place to place without encountering further pain. At the same time, others are moving through the country with such elation at the perceived “win” that they are completely unaware of why or how this is any different than any election in the past. They do not comprehend (and many do not care) that their celebration further communicates to people around them that the pain caused by these systems of oppression and violence matters far less than the price of groceries, goods, or gas.

If you feel that you have won this past week, please be compassionate with those who are grieving all the losses your win represents for them. If you feel you have lost this week, please be compassionate with yourself as you move through all that is to come.

As for me, I am working hard to allow my responses to be gracious to both sides. I am moving to dig into the privilege I do have and understand as much as possible how to use it to effect change. And also, I am making time to sit with the reality of the continued harms from my lifetime, recognizing the ways in which shame is still being weaponized and refusing to allow those patterns of violence against myself to take over.

“Let me not attempt to force them now into my own image, but teach me to trust that you keep reaching out to them even when I discern no immediate evidence of your movements.”

I have control only over myself. My presence or absence. My choices. My voice or my silence. My compassionate or violent responses. I control me, not others’ perception of me. Not others. I will not force anyone to do or hear or believe or choose.

I will love.

I will live love out loud.

I will love myself out loud through boundaries that keep me safe.

I will love others out loud through as compassionate presentation and application of those boundaries as is possible for each situation.

“Let me embody your care by pressing in, knowing you can use even my awkward attempts at truth and honesty when they are offered in love.”

I will likely get it wrong sometimes. Please, forgive me. Call me out. Push back. For it is the primary aim of my life to love better. Just know that I will no longer be quiet to maintain comfort. Not my own or anyone else’s is worth the life and safety of any other.

This week may be radically different than the last, or it may be more of the same.
I can’t control what comes, but I will choose love in response.

Drop your shoulders.

Lower your tongue from the roof of your mouth.

Relax your eyebrows.

Loosen your stomach.

Hand on your heart.

Breathe deep.

I love you.

November 11, 2024
before sunrise

It’s early here… 4:30am is not a time I would normally choose to witness. A combination of health issues and their treatments leading to extreme anxiety and insomnia, the news, and projects that I want to complete to show my love and support for people who will likely be equally reeling as today dawns…

I’m finally understanding more clearly how we are ending up here. In all the heres in my life, there is much in common. Abuse is dismissed as inevitable and incurable. Children are taught unquestioning compliance as a spiritual discipline. Shame is weaponized to assert control. And liability… economy… money… dollars… are spoken of as the most important marker of success. Both within the church and beyond into the political arena, from dear people who don’t live as if the words they speak are true as well as from those who very clearly exhibit the exact things they say, this is an echoing refrain.

This won’t be the baseline for normal my children grow up with. I will do all I can to lay a different foundation. One that normalizes the ability and responsibility to change. Change is human. It’s terrifying, and hard, and heavy… but I will not go back to settling for compliance over connection. I will not go back to being silent to keep a peace that was never truly made. I will work in all the ways in which I am called to seek shalom by the abolishment of systems of oppression and violence that have become the status quo.

The Church I was raised in and raised by is not the church of the Nazarene. It was a collection of people who believed that holiness was possible as that denomination used to believe… not as it currently is exhibiting. It was a ragtag band of people who found for generations that humans were essential, gave freedom for the care and keeping of those humans, and united in the belief that it was God who did the perfecting… not the rules.

Since that faith tradition no longer exists, I will seek to find or create the healthy and healing community that is so desperately needed to combat the brokenness that has taken over. I will live love out loud in all the ways possible for all the people I can so that the legacy I leave reflects the work of all those who have paved the track so I could learn to fly over the hurdles and cross the finish line.

You can agree or disagree. Your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas, your story, your lived experiences are valuable and I am more than willing to hold space for you to share them. No judgement, regardless of what you have to say. We don’t have to agree to sit and talk. It’s often in the safety of a calm conversation that we can learn what unites us instead of just being told what divides us.

I’m here if you need to talk something through, cry something out, work something over, or just sit in silence in a space where you aren’t alone. You’re welcome to show up just as you are.

For now, I am practicing what I “preach”

Lowering my shoulders

Relaxing my eyebrows

Dropping the tongue from the roof of my mouth

Loosening my stomach

Hand on my heart…

And breathing slowly and deeply, feeling the beating or purpose in my chest, believing that good things happen, love is real, and we will be okay.

The sun is just beginning to brighten the sky outside. And as it spreads its warmth to the far reaches of the spaces around the globe where my people are, I send my love on its rays.

May this day be what you need it to be. May you speak love even if your voice cracks. May you recognize a moment in which you know that you are loved and loveable and invincibly precious.

Because you are.

I love you.

November 6, 2024
birthday again

38 is all but over. In a little less than half an hour, the calendar will turn and I will walk on into being 39. This day of transition often leads to much contemplation. Some years the self assessments have landed far more critically than others. Today, though, I have found myself noticing with gratitude that even though my system is still incredibly uncomfortable when things are going well, I can see that the baseline has shifted, and that life has leveled out significantly.

Someone thanked me today for living into my call, even as they recognized how difficult it has been to do so. As I look toward the next year of life, I am just so incredibly thankful to have the affirmation that choosing health is making a difference… not only in me, but in my family, in my work, in my whole life… and beyond all of that into those lives to which I have been gifted access.

This past year has been one of really learning in which healthy systems I would continue to engage, and where it was time to quit trying to force myself into a space that is not (and probably never was) healthy or healing.

For the coming year, that’s my goal. Intentionally, consistently, specifically, authentically showing up.

In this, the last year of my 30s, I will be more me than I have ever been. And I believe this will be the year when I start to find the people who are not just tolerant of that reality, but embrace me for all of who I am, largely because I have finally learned to do the same.

This mid-life period often seems to wreak havoc. I’ve seen it bring instability and insecurity to varying degrees in those I know. Somehow, for me, I both wish it would hurry up, and am working to not push forward too fast.

But… bring on the grey hair and 50s so that I can be who I have felt like I was since I was 10!

Monday is almost here. I’m off to celebrate aging with a good night’s sleep. Thank you all for sticking with me.

I love you!

November 4, 2024
abuse

This. Every last word of this post.

It’s why my children are not able to experience church like it was when my mom grew up in it, or like I did.

It’s why I live by “trust but verify.” And when the verification is, “it’s church… it’s fine.” I can no longer trust.

It’s why I am not quiet about what the church would rather be handled in secret.

We have to deal with the “addiction to ignorance,” as Dan Scott puts it. That cannot be done until the church admits it. And from what leadership in my branch of the American, Evangelical church is saying, they are not admitting it because it would cost them too much money… which clearly implies they are more comfortable paying in human suffering, individual pain, and ultimately the lives of those sacrificed on the altar of this addiction.

The narratives around why young people are leaving the denomination of my family’s history are varied. Most boil down to being stubborn, to being willful, to being disobedient, to having been lost to the current culture… none are true for me. I haven’t even left. But the church desperately wishes I would… and if I’m honest, I am on the way out largely because of their unwillingness to acknowledge this exact issue.

The dogged determination to place the blame for sexual deviance at the feet of absolutely anything but the refusal to even talk about human sexuality is creating increasing space for the harm to continue. They are willing to live in the false safety of that space, allowing the perception of accountability to hide the ongoing harm.

No more. I, for one, won’t sit quietly and watch this continue. The trauma has continued for too long. The shame-based control was never showing the love I know to be truth of the gospel message. And I’m done pretending like any of it is okay.

It’s past time for change, church.

If you’ve suffered at the hands of high-control, shame-based religion… if you’ve been abused by the church… if you are working out your own path now, because you know there has to be something better and the truth still beckons you…

I see you. I love you. I’m here for you.

October 19, 2024
plowshare

The last few weeks have been filled with a surreal mix of past, present and future. Sunday felt like a kind of jumble of it all, and gave me much to consider as life marches on. Spending the early morning in ministry, the middle of the day in community, and the evening hours considering whether the two will ever meet again… I was keenly aware of just how many times I noticed where I was, the people I was with, and the feelings I had swirling around because of it all.

Grief sometimes sneaks up quietly. This time of year when changing to a new season happens at a time that has become a celebration of both life and death, when the darkness of loss meets the beauty of life and a fresh start… it’s never the simplest of seasons. Not fall or Thanksgiving. Not winter or Christmas. And with each passing year, the dramatic differences seem to be equally hope-full and sorrow-full.

Some days, the dance of life is slower. At times, the steps feel to mostly move me backward. This year, the losses weigh a bit more and my whole system is ready for a holiday to just stop life for a bit.

I came across the song below as I was processing things this last week. As I have moved into the heaviness of this week, I have been listening on repeat and so thankful that I am learning to keep dancing even when everything in me would rather not. In continuing, in moving forward, in choosing growth and healing even when the systems around me would say that I am moving backwards… there is an increasing recognition of what I always believed should be possible.

Faith remains. The words of prayer may have shifted, but the heart behind it hasn’t.

I pray that this prayer finds you wherever you are, that you are moving toward health, and that you can be kind to yourself tonight.

If that’s a struggle, if you’re needing to be reminded that you are loved and lovable just as you are right now… don’t hesitate to reach out. Because you are worthy just as you are. You are enough.

I love you.

Plowshare Prayer

by Spencer LaJoye

Dear blessed creator, dear mother, dear savior

Dear father, dear brother, dear holy other

Dear sibling, dear baby, dear patiently waiting

Dear sad & confused, dear stuck & abused

Dear end of your rope, dear worn out & broke

Dear go it alone, dear running from home

Dear righteously angry, forsaken by family

Dear jaded & quiet, dear tough & defiant

I pray that I’m heard

And I pray that this works

I pray if a prayer has been used as a sword

Against you & your heart

Against you & your word

I pray that this prayer is a plowshare of sorts

That it might break you open

It might help you grow

I pray that your body gets all that it needs

And if you don’t want healing

I just pray for peace

I pray that your burden gets lighter each day

I pray the mean voice in your head goes away

I pray that you honor the grief as it comes

I pray you can feel all the life in your lungs

I pray that if you go all day being brave

That you can go home, go to bed

Feeling safe

I pray you’re forgiven. I pray you forgive

I pray you set boundaries & openly live

I pray that you feel you are worth never leaving

I pray that you know I will always believe you

I pray that you’re heard

And I pray that this works

Amen on behalf of the last & the least

On behalf of the anxious, depressed & unseen

Amen for the workers, the hungry, the houseless

Amen for the lonely & recently spouseless

Amen for the queers & their closeted peers

Amen for the bullied who hold in their tears

Amen for the mothers of little Black sons

Amen for the kids who grow up scared of guns

Amen for the addicts, ashamed & hungover

Amen for the calloused, the wisened, the sober

Amen for ones who want life to be over

Amen for the leaders who lose their composure

And amen for the parents who just lost their baby

Amen for chronically ill & disabled

Amen for the children down at the border

Amen for the victims of our law & order

I pray that you’re heard

And I pray that this works

I pray if a prayer has been used as a sword

Against you & your heart

Against you & your word

I pray that this prayer is a plowshare of sorts

October 15, 2024
bloom

It was a strange set of circumstances that combined to fill my time last week. The death of someone of familial importance, and a visit from my kindergarten Sunday School teacher collided with what life is now… full of parenting, work, ministry, and more. A hurried visit from my mother quickly brought to mind many things from both time periods… fluidly moving me from now to then and back again.

The smell of cattle in the fall always flashes me back to a simpler time in life. This time was no different. Our trip to the funeral of that family member this past weekend was laced with people I have known my whole life, scents that have long meant home, and time spent in a place that likely never will be again. Returning to the present to do life and community in new and healing ways, I very tangibly became aware just how much change can happen in the grand scheme of things even when it feels like so much is standing still each day.

And now, as a new week begins, as life marches on… love scatters on the winds of change. Moving outward from a life lived authentically and intentionally in pursuit of health. Moving inward from everywhere that other people are doing the same.

May the fruits of life always be such. Sometimes in hard lines that say “No more” to the systems and structures that do harm, hide harm, and allow harm… and sometimes in soft smiles and comforting presence… always, only love.

I’m calling it a night. Tomorrow is a new day… and from these wee hours of today it seems far away. But I don’t know what change it holds… and in that truth is the hope of a lifetime.

From my tiny fish pond to your heart… look for the beauty in change today. If it never happened, the flowers couldn’t bloom.

I love you, friends.

October 1, 2024
another voice

The reality he talks about in the video is what makes it so difficult to just walk away. The exertion of that type of insidious power structure for decades of a life does damage. It’s difficult to find yourself beyond it, or to find health within it.

One of the statements I have come to deeply believe as someone who is still working out healthy faith on the other side of a spiritual family of origin that claimed to believe that women were equal to men but didn’t live it out is that I cannot deny what I do not know. Self awareness (which is the enemy of the blind compliance that would have let me remain in that spiritual family) allows for choice, and that choice is what empowers a deeply authentic spirituality.

I’m thankful for all the people who are speaking this truth so that I can absorb it and believe that I’m not the problem child for pointing it out.

If you’re also relearning how to speak to yourself as Jesus did. Remember that no matter who you are, how you identify, or what you have done… it starts with love.

Shoulders down.

Relax your eyebrows.

Drop your tongue from the roof of your mouth.

Hand on your heart.

Deep breath.

I love you!

September 14, 2024
unspiral.life

I hate being cast as the villain in the narratives others write… but I refuse to make choices that force me to be the villain in my own story.

If me holding boundaries makes me a problem for you… maybe consider whether there’s a reason you feel the need to force the issue.

I’ve put in the work to know my place. And I’m standing in it.

Want to find out where you belong? I love talking circles on the journey of unspiraling. Send me a message at www.unspirallife.com and we’ll find a time to connect.

You’re worth the effort, friends. It will take time, but starting now is better than never starting.

September 14, 2024
You are.

Wow… This one really caused me to think. It’s not a totally new concept. But the application of it, and the extent to which that application could fit… What a difficult thought.

Not a light read. But the recognition helped me, and so I share.

Know yourself as the beloved. No matter who you are or where you find yourself on the journey, you are invincibly precious and worthy of gentle care.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-147099920

“Inside the church, I wasn’t given tools for self-regulating when afraid, probably because no one was present to the extreme nervous system dysregulation we were accommodating. And I certainly wasn’t given any real comfort in light of my fears. I’ve been learning, though, and I have a pack of friends who have had to do this same work. We breathe, we stretch. Sometimes we dance. We can’t seem to stop grieving. And we keep trying to get to know a God who is never surprised, never panicked. We try our hardest to pick up a bit of Her peace and tuck it like a stuffie in the crook of the arm, while we lie next to one another in the dark.

You are the Beloved.”

September 2, 2024