Shalom Starts with Honesty and Truth

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was driving home from a family get-together, crying so hard I nearly needed to pull over.
I had just wrapped up a conversation with my parents, siblings, and their partners about the upcoming holiday schedule. It took everything in me not to scream from the heartbreak of my singleness. 

On that drive home, my singleness felt so loud and isolating. I remember crying, yelling, and shouting to God, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” My immediate family was becoming an extended family and I was left alone. Isolation felt loud. It also felt really familiar. Though I’ve always been surrounded by people, feeling alone in my thoughts and feelings was normal in my story. 

I had just returned from attending Level 2 of Freedom Academy, where we learned about the importance of grief. Grief is something I had to walk through. 

When I got home, I sat on my bathroom floor and wept. I yelled. I revealed my heart and hurt to God. I said things that may warrant judgement from others but no one was around. It was just God and my true emotions. And as I wiped the tears from my eyes, I took a deep breath and heard a voice say, “Finally. Now we can be honest.” 

You see, I had become a professional at minimizing my personality, needs, and pain to yield to others around me, taking life as it came, without vocalizing my fears or dreams to anyone.
 

Being honest felt like a liability. 

Being fully me felt like a vulnerability I couldn’t let people see. God was inviting me into a new space…an honest one, about being authentically me. 

What I’ve learned in the last few years is that shalom restored isn’t finding a “new me” or a “healed me.” It’s been about returning to who I was created to be. It’s been about coming to God honestly with all my feelings and hurt. 

It’s a returning process.  

Who did God create me to be before the weight of the world came crashing down?
The honesty I expressed on that bathroom floor led to a season of honesty with God unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I felt the filters and masks that were minimizing who I was begin to fall away.
 
I felt wild again like something long buried came back to life. 

I felt peace again, the kind that didn’t need me to perform.  

I felt more whole.

When we talk about shalom restored, we aren’t talking about “shalom discovered” or “shalom created”. It’s shalom restored…. a restoration of what was broken and lost and a returning to who we were created and crafted to be. It’s a return to communion with God, like it was in Eden.
 

And that communion begins to whittle the isolation away. 

The honesty on the bathroom floor led to helping me find Courtney again…the Courtney I was created to be, not just cultivated to be. 

If you’re in a season where everything feels loud or lonely, you’re not lost. God is not afraid of your honesty. He meets you there and with his guidance, He will walk with you on the road to peace and wholeness again. 
 

Courtney
Freedom Coach & Client Relations Manager