Super Dad

clean your glasses

I don’t tend to see Christians talk about this much, or in a very nuanced way, and I think it’s worth talking about. and that is that suppression and surrender are two different things.

suppression is the refusal to acknowledge feelings you’d rather not feel. it’s stuffing them down out of shame or guilt, or the belief that you’re not “supposed” to feel them, in favour of pretending that you don’t experience them at all. suppressing anger, for example, leads to long-term bitterness, grudges, and burn-out from pretending you’re a happy peppy optimistic Christian all the dang time. it is deeply unhealthy.

surrender is the active, honest acknowledgment of your feelings, desires, and temptations, without attaching undue shame to them, and then bringing them to the feet of Jesus and choosing to live by His Word anyway. it is not a dismissal of feelings but the very act of bringing them to light so He may show you what to do about them. 

surrendering to God’s way does not mean shoving feelings of anger or bitterness or anxiety into a dark crevice, or acting like you can brush off years of pain in a moment.

surrender is telling God you are hurt, letting yourself feel the pain of being wronged so that your pain may be healed by Christ’s tenderness and love. 

surrender is telling Him you are anxious, you are desperately frightened, and letting Him be present in your trembling, letting Him be peace and steadiness and unconditional love while you breathe and count and grounding-technique through the wave of panic.

surrender is allowing yourself to say you did not deserve the abuse, you will not stand for abuse, you will not return to your abusers, and working day by day to forgive your abusers and pray for them anyway. 

surrender is telling Jesus you are sorely tempted- to cheat on the exam, to cheat on your partner, to objectify your cute coworker, to talk shit about your boss- and allowing Him to lead you away from acting on it and into doing the right thing anyway.

surrender is the exact opposite of suppression.

I so often see this message online, explicitly and implicitly, that whatever you’re feeling is valid– and it is!– but then it just… stops there. if you’re angry, good, stay angry. you shouldn’t have to forgive anyone. you shouldn’t have to treat people with dignity if you don’t like them. nobody has the right to tell you to act in a way that doesn’t completely indulge your feelings. treat yourself. you do you.

I disagree. indulgence may seem like the right fix because it’s surely the polar opposite of suppression. but being a slave to your thoughts and emotions is no better than being a slave to shame. it is good to express anger. it is also good to place limits on your anger so you express it in healthy ways. it is okay to have a mental illness. it is also important to not let that illness define your very being, to remember you are more, to fight for recovery. it is completely normal to be tempted in a thousand ways. it is important to resist temptation and seek to do the right thing, and run to the grace and overwhelming love of God when you don’t.

true freedom in Christ comes when you are open with Him about all you are, and willing to let Him lead you through the maze. true freedom makes room for limits and boundaries, ones that will help you grow and flourish.

Sunday Will Come

“I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest.

But the doom of that day did not endure.

The despair did not linger because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord burst the bonds of death. He ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind.

Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.”

—Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, “Sunday Will Come” 2006 (emphasis added)

bro doesn’t even have a certain je ne sais quoi

I think the really insidious part of the whole "I don't need to forgive the people who hurt me" attitude that's so prominant nowadays, is that it perpetuates the cycle of abuse.

Not every person who does bad things has a tragedy fueling their behavior. But a lot of them do. You can be a victim and also an abuser. Those are not mutually exclusive things. In fact, one of the best ways to become an abuser is to take the pain of the injustice you've experienced and to let it fester inside you. And that is what happens if you don't forgive.

And before anyone tries to tell me that you can't forgive someone because that means letting them to continue hurting you. That's not what forgiveness is. Resuming a relationship with someone who hurt you is Reconciling. Forgiveness is when you choose to let go of the anger and the hate and the bitterness and heal. I know this is an honest misunderstanding, but it's a dangerous one.

You don't have to remain a victim in order to forgive. But if you do not forgive you will become the same as your abuser. That's not a risk, but a fact. The cycle of abuse can be broken but you have to choose to do it.

You have to choose to heal. You owe it others and to yourself.

this image.......

Hosanna!

The way you change your immediate reactions to things is that you catch yourself having an uncharitable/bigoted/overly judgmental thought and you catch it and replace it and then you do that a hundred times a day for your whole life and eventually one day like five years later you realize that you think differently now and you’ll always be working on something but that’s how life goes and that’s fine.

I hardly ever make a Sim outfit without layering with some sort of accessory top.

Accessory Top Masterlist

I’ve been making quite a few accessory tops / bras / chains over the years and they are all scattered around my download posts so I decided it’s time to make a proper masterpost for them.

🤍 Acc tops and bras 🤍

1 / 2 / 3 - 4 / 5 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20

💚 Other 💚

1 - 4 / 5

💙 Male 💙

1 / 2

Anniversary of APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING

On July 20, 1969, 109 hours and 42 minutes after launch, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin entered the lunar lander ‘Eagle’, made a final check, and the Eagle undocked from the lunar orbiter ‘Columbia’, where the third member of the crew Michael Collins, stayed in orbit around the moon. Partially manually piloted by Armstrong, the Eagle landed 0 degrees, 41 minutes, 15 seconds north moon latitude and 23 degrees, 26 minutes east moon longitude. Armstrong stepped out, and Aldrin followed 20 minutes later: human beings stepped on the moon for the first time. The two men spent 21 hours and 26 minutes on its surface. One of the astounding aspects of the mission was the seeming simplicity of the technology used to get man to the moon. According to Oliver Gassmann, professor of Technology Management, the mobile phone in your pocket has one million times more memory than the Apollo 11’s computer. Same about the procesor: the latest phones typically have more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon 50 years ago.

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” –Neil Armstrong

(gifs from the documentary Chasing The Moon, 2019)