All the time [years and years] I have spent feeling stuck and ill-equipped—like I was failing because I wasn’t where I thought I should be—I was being unmade and remade by the loving hands of my Creator.

There is a lie I had believed: I have to do it on my own. I didn’t believe this in my mind. My mind would have told you this was clearly a lie, because scripture says we are never alone, and when we are weak, He is strong.

But my heart believed it and my actions echoed it. The Enemy is like a pedophile; he targets the weak, the immature, the innocent. When I was a child, before I was mentally and spiritually developed enough to respond in Truth and maturity, a lie took root. And my experience seemed to confirm the lie. I was the Little Red Hen. She was not stubborn and independent. She asked for help. But no one would. And because the lie took root three decades ago, it will not be banished in a day. Or perhaps, it can be banished, but because there is a lie-shaped groove deep in my brain, it will keep trying to come back. It must continually be banished until the groove is reformed. My mind is the battlefield; I must declare war against every lie. Whenever the lies assault my thoughts, I will not turn to the testimony of my feelings, which can so easily be twisted and falsified, but to the testimony of God’s faithfulness in my life. His Word is true. His promise never fails.

Perhaps you also had burdens too heavy for you, thrust upon you when you were too young. Perhaps you also thought—trying to look at it in a positive light—that it simply made you stronger. But do you know what happens when one muscle group is strong and surrounding muscle groups are never exercised? Misalignment. Pain. You can have back issues just from muscular imbalance.

I desire to walk in Truth. But I am a work in progress. Building neglected muscle takes time. God is far more patient with me than I am with myself. And when I experience His grace and patience—His boundless Love—my heart is moved more deeply than anything on earth could touch. His Love awakens Love in me. And Love is a transforming power.

I am being made new.

Note: The majority of these chapters are Mr. Cupples speaking. I found it difficult to keep up the accent page after page. Please excuse any inconsistencies in the accents.

I do not mean that perfection does not exist, I mean rather our ideas of perfection are fundamentally erroneous. We judge each other’s chaos—and our own—and think that we can order our own way.

We correctly assess that feelings bring chaos. We label feelings bad. That thread leads to science fiction in which the perfect evolution of mankind is emotionless. Cerebral.

The truth is that God is perfect. The truth is that God has emotions. The truth is that emotions are not the culprit. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. So then the culprit is separation from God, for His presence is a perfecting force. Apart from Him there is only darkness and chaos.

To imagine that we must be perfect to approach Him is a lie of the Devil. Many of us remain imprisoned in the darkness, imagining we have to invent our own light. No. We need only approach the light, bringing our chaos to God; He alone can transform us into something perfect.