Last week I was freaking out. This week, I am pretty relaxed and expectant.

The difference? Well let me tell you.

First off, NOTHING has changed about anything and yet everything has changed.

It’s been a few things that have created the shift:

• First – I cried myself to sleep the other night. I was so incredibly discouraged about one part of my life that sobbing was the only decent course of action.

• Secondly – I expressed in one of my relationships, “I am so angry and I still haven’t forgiven you for that!”

• Third – I called on friends to pray for me. ‘Please Pray for me!’

• Fourth – I gathered with others to just sit before the Lord, allowing the decompression of tears and strain to drain away into sweet peace.

• Fifth – I told God off. “I’m not okay with this particular dynamic anymore!”

• Sixth – I gave thanks. “Thank-you God for… ” a long list of thanks.

And come to think of it, these are my normal repertoire of action when I am overwhelmed and coming under great amounts of stress.

It all comes down to brutal honesty. Honesty that must start in our own hearts and minds, honesty that has nothing to hide and everything to gain (or not).

Honesty that simply lays it all out there, the good the bad and the ugly.

We have to be able to see the ugly if we are to move forward in life.

Not focus on it per se, but simply yet truly see the ugly and name it for what it is.

“That is not okay”

“This should have never happened”

“What a boatload of $%&#@ and I am so very sorry that happened to you.”

In this we are kept real. Passion is kept alive. Sorrows are washed away in healthy grieving. And fresh winds blow through our hearts and minds.

Unless we allow the full range of emotions we become critical and narrow minded, pinched and caustic.

Been there, done that; have you?

Grief unexpressed causes all sorts of damage to ourselves and to others.

We simply must allow ourselves to be sad.

We must speak our truth, frankly and honestly.

What part of your life deserves an, “ITS NOT OKAY!”

When we’ve gone to the core of our beings and declared all this (a most precious gift to ourselves), we will find that the stuff around us, our circumstance and present realities step back from the limelight; they just don’t matter so much anymore.

Most of all, we find God in the mix of everything. Our eyes are blessed to see glory and honor and goodness and light and life. Even in the midst of the yuck.

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.” Luke 6:21b

Strength is not about always being happy. And its not about sugar-coating anything, pretending this and that is okay when it is not. Strength comes when we’ve faced ‘the stuff’ head on within our own emotions.

Strength is about honesty.

Where might you express the truth a little more honestly today?