Growing Where I’m Loved
At first, I resisted mingling with Best Friend’s family and most of his friends.
I was safe with him, deeply, genuinely safe. But, everything else around me felt unstable. I had left my husband, and at the same time, my own family was unraveling in ways I didn’t yet have language for.
My mother would have my soon-to-be ex-husband over for dinner. My brothers stopped communicating with me. And my sister… I tried. But there always seemed to be an unspoken jealousy that made our relationship feel heavy. When I made a friend, she talked it down. When i grew, the distance between us grew too.
So I decided isolation was safer.
Not complete isolation, just controlled connection. Superficial relationships. Polite distance. Nothing that required vulnerability.
But not everyone allowed me to stay hidden.
Roseann was probably the most persistent. We discovered we shared a birthday, and without hesitation I declared we were forever bonded, the first person I had ever met who shared my birthday. Not long after that, I met my first nephew.
I had been an aunt before, but my separation also meant losing those children. This little boy was only a few months younger than my Twinky, and something in me softened when I held him.
We bonded quickly.
The circle was small, but it was trustworthy.
Best Friend had friends from high school who accepted me without question. No explanations required. No backstory demanded. Just warmth.
For the first time, holidays weren’t obligations. They were invitations.
Not because we had to be together, but because we wanted to be.
It was also during this time the first invitation to return to church came.
Church itself wasn’t unfamiliar to me. I had gone regularly until I was about eighteen. Faith had always existed somewhere in my life, it just hadn’t felt personal in a long time.
When the invitation came, I hesitated.
I would pray for others willingly. I believed in the power of prayer. But when it came to my own life, I couldn’t bring myself to pray on my own behalf.
From what I understood at that point, God wouldn’t want my prayers for me.
I only asked certain people to pray for me, and even then, I kept my prayers narrow. Careful. Contained. I didn’t know how to bring my whole life before God without feat.
Some of my family was quick to condemn me. Verses were used like verdicts, not invitations. And somewhere along the way, that seeped into my understanding of God Himself.
If the people who were supposed to love me could look at my life and find fault so easily, why wouldn’t God do the same?
So I prayed around my life-for strength, for others, for circumstances-but not for myself. Not for mercy. Not for guidance. Not for healing.
I believed in God. I just didn’t yet believe He would meet me with grace.
If I’m being honest, the verses that were once slung at me like offenses did something unexpected.
They pushed me to read my Bible.
At first, I did it quietly. In secret. Afraid of what I might find.
I looked up those verses with a knot in my stomach, worried I would discover that I was beyond the limits of salvation, that the weight I carried somehow disqualified me.
But instead, I found something else.
I found the first real verses that held me.
I began opening my Bible at random, unsure where to start, and I would read- and somehow, there was an answer waiting for exactly what my heart needed in that moment. Not condemnation. Not rejection.
Invitation.
Grace.
Room to breathe.
Those pages became a place where surrender didn’t feel demanded, it felt possible.
And little by little, through words I once feared God began to show me who He really was.
Not a judge waiting for me to fail, but a Father waiting for me to come closer.
📖Scripture Reading
Romans8:1-4 (ASV)
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. 2. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. 3. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4. that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Scripture Summary
Paul is speaking to people who knew rules before they knew relationship.
Romans 8 does not begin with a connection, it begins with a release. It declares that condemnation is no longer the lens through which God looks at His people. The weight has shifted. Judgement has answered. Fear no longer has authority.
This passage explains why grace is possible: not because we finally got it right, but because Christ carried what we could not. The law demanded perfection; God offered presence. What once kept people distant is replaced by the Spirit who draws close to us.
This is not permission to stay unchanged, it is permission to come honestly.
Why This Matters for Us
Many of us learned faith through fear before we learned it through love.
We absorbed verses without context. Correction without compassion. Truth without tenderness.
And somewhere along the way, we began to believe that God relates us to the way people have- watching closely, waiting for failure, measuing worth.
Romans 8 reminds us that God does not meet us with condemnation, even when others have. That the voice we learned to fear is not His. And that healing often begins when we stop bracing for punishment and start allowing ourselves to be seen.
Growth doesn’t happen where fear dominates. It happens where grace makes room to breathe.
🙏Closing Prayer
Father,
I bring You the version of me that learned to be careful-the one who prayed quietly, asked narrowly, and held parts of my life back out of fear. Where condemnation shaped my understanding of You, replace it with truth. Help me trust that You are not waiting for me to fail, but inviting me to come closer. Teach me to pray honestly, to believe fully, and to grow in the safety of Your love. Let Your Spirit guide me into freedom, not fear.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
