Feeling Betrayed

One of the recent fights I had with Riley really shook me. Right now, the only word I can find for it is betrayal. As Jim Caviezel said, “We do not love Jesus enough,” and I feel the weight of that truth. I carry guilt for my own shortcomings in that.

But it’s even harder to face this: the person I’ve loved so deeply, the one who introduced me to Jesus and whom I’ve supported for years, still chooses the enemy. I know he wants to want the light, he has said it himself. But the fact that he keeps choosing the wrong side breaks my heart. In that moment, I realized how truly powerless I am.

Maybe this is where my struggle begins. I believed I had to help, to fix things for others, to hold everything together so we could maintain peace and joy. But it never works that way. I see now that I was doing it for myself too. Anyone around me who connected with darkness felt like a threat to my joy, so I fought. But I forgot something important. My joy does not come from them. It should come purely and solely from God. If I truly lived from that truth, it could never be threatened.

So now, I lay my husband and my marriage on the altar. I recognize I am not in control of anything. The only thing I can do is to remain grounded in who I am, no matter what kind of mud I am standing in. That is where true peace is found. My heart is the temple for that peace.

As a human, I feel angry. Looking at him makes me sad. And still, Jesus keeps asking me to love him more. Maybe it is time to learn a different way of loving. I used to think love was about joy, light, and happiness. But strangely, Riley seems to resist that. Sometimes it feels like he even hates it. His rejection makes me feel guilty for being happy around him. That is a deep sadness, and it feels so wrong.

The devil sneaks in with thoughts like, “I am better. He is wrong.” Lord, you see it all. Please guide me across this narrow path between arrogance and false humility. The enemy is too strong, and I am too weak without you. Take away my sadness and anger, so I can keep guarding your light.

The meaning of giving

“There is one major difference in the role of Heaven’s messengers, which sets them off from those the world appoints. The messages that they deliver are intended first for them. And it is only as they can accept them for themselves that they become able to bring them further, and to give them everywhere that they were meant to be. Like earthly messengers, they did not write the messages they bear, but they become their first receivers in the truest sense, receiving to prepare themselves to give. “

This month has been incredibly hard for me. I find myself sitting in sadness almost constantly. God created me to naturally radiate joy, but this season feels like that fire has been submerged in an icy lake and held there. I feel suffocated. Sometimes I want to scream. But even in this painful stillness, I know the Lord is performing a kind of surgery on my heart, stretching me so I can become bigger than before.

In the silence, I’m beginning to see how wrong my approach to life has been these past few years. As I write this, I hear Jesus gently correct me: “Wrong is not the right word.” I pause and ask, then He gives me a better word—“twisted.” What I clung to wasn’t truly goodness. It was a performance of goodness. And within that performance, the enemy had embedded subtle traps of self-centeredness and pride. I see it now. And I thank You, Lord, for revealing this.

Thank You for planting this wisdom in my heart: it’s not goodness that sets us free, it’s truth. Amen!

I used to believe I needed to do more and help more. But that was just another twisted desire of the ego, trying to build its own kingdom in Your name. I don’t need to live like that anymore. I only need to be like the white lotus You showed me in prayer. Just bloom. Be. No striving. No goals. Just rootedness in You.

Those whom You have chosen to carry Your work are not sent out to save others first. They are sent to save themselves by fully surrendering to You. In that surrender, our transformed hearts become the channel through which the world is sanctified. Just as Jesus did, not by using power to force salvation, but by holding the weight of the world within His heart. He carried it in silence and gave it to the Father in death, so that through His forgiveness, everything He bore could be redeemed.

“We will not recognize what we receive until we give it.”

The meaning of giving is not about offering goodness to the world. It begins with offering ourselves to the Lord, especially through the darkness. Because in the end, ourselves is the only thing we truly possess. That is where true giving begins. Until we fully surrender ourselves to Him, we cannot truly understand what goodness is. And if we do not possess it, how can we offer to the world something we have never genuinely known?