Today, at TreeHouse, is our All-Staff Fiscal Year-End Celebration. Today’s event is our annual review and celebration of what God – through people – has been doing at TreeHouse in the past fiscal year. We’ll enjoy lunch, have fun together and sing celebration songs.

Today will also be the announcement of our “Persons of Hope” award winners.

Each year, staff submit their votes for awards are given to recognize TreeHouse employees for their excellence in what they do. As our Executive Director Becky Walker explained, “we know that some go above and beyond the ‘call of duty’ each and every day and we want to acknowledge those efforts!”

Is grace happening to you?
Is grace happening in you?
Is grace happening through you?

I’ve been stuck emotionally and spiritually more than I’d like to admit. Raise your hand if you can relate? Okay, we’re all “not alone.” But, let’s not stay stuck!

Looking to take a step forward in your life?

Want your actions to more closely match your intentions?

Me too!

Each of the themes below links to a previous mysilentscream post that has been helpful to readers looking to make a change. 1

Love – Tired of empty expressions of “love”?

God transforms. God heals. God restores. God does so in my life and can do so in yours.

Max Lucado wrote, let grace, let God, “so seep into the crusty cracks of your life that everything softens. Then let it, let him, bubble to the surface, like a spring in the Sahara, in words of kindness and deeds of generosity.”

God will change you, my friend.

“Jesus’ death is the means to new life for others…suffering is an avenue for God’s life to transform situations.” 1

I meet many people in my work. The vast majority of the people I meet are generally normal people. Children are children. Teens are teens. Adults are adults.

I live in a community in which the high school is populated by about seventy-percent “people of color.” Generally speaking I like people different than me.

Across from me is the other kind of person.
I have really tried to like that person, but woah!

Background

I’ve known her family for about twenty years. I’ve been in their house. I’ve pet their dog, talked to their cat, spent time with her parents, and gotten to know her siblings. I have tried to like her, but woah.

Sometimes it’s a challenging to feel safe enough to share our true feelings with others.

We fear the rejection, the judgment of others.

Sharing our feelings helps us.

When we share positive feelings we increase our positive self-regard. When we share our heavy feelings we often decrease the emotional weight we had been carrying alone. Sharing our feelings also helps us to build deeper relationships with people you care about and people who care about you.

In my experience connecting with God has been transformative.

Recently a friend posted on Facebook: “Remember that we are human. Before you judge us or decide how you’ll deal with us, walk awhile in our shoes. If you choose to judge us still, we have one request. Take the time to learn the facts, then judge us for who we are and not for who you think we are.”

I know I won’t see you do this, but by a show of hands, who has had to face a challenge bravely even though other people didn’t understand?

While you were facing that situation, what feelings did you experience?

“We may not be directly to blame for the sufferings of others, but we cannot ignore the connections,” wrote Christopher Wright.

Wright, the author of The God I Don’t Understand challenges us to see our deep connection to the pain, suffering and impact of evil in our world.

“Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

Last year I read Grace by Max Lucado in which I found some profoundly good news.

Jesus does not say, “Come to me, all you who are perfect and sinless.” Just the opposite. “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28 NASB).

There is no fine print.

A second shoe is not going to drop.

God’s promise has no hidden language. Let grace happen, for heaven’s sake. No more performing for God, no more clamoring after God. Of all the things you must earn in life, God’s unending affection is not one of them. You have it. Stretch yourself out in the hammock of grace.

I’m on a private retreat – yesterday and today – but I can’t stay alone. 

To tired, weary, worn out people like me and you, Jesus Christ said, “If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest.” 1

It’s a message many of us need to hear.

Yesterday I sent this song to a friend, and today I’m leaving it with the rest of you mysilentscream readers.

“Lay ‘Em Down” by Needtobreathe keeps echoing through my mind, so here it is so it will echo through yours too.

When I was little I wondered what it would be like to be blind. I didn’t know anyone blind, but I did read Daredevil comic books.

While reading Daredevil comic books I learned that main character Matt Murdoch was blinded as a boy, but remarkably his other senses were heightened to compensate for his blindness.

Later I learned that not all people who lose their sight have such benefits.

God inspired Jesus Christ’s close friend John to recorded the following story about a blind man. “As Jesus walked along, he saw a man who had been blind since birth. Jesus’ disciples asked, “Teacher, why was this man born blind? Was it because he or his parents sinned?”