I was a young, messed-up kid who didn't mature until he became a Christian. That was in 2008 - the rest of my life, I'd been living a lie.

Meditation changes your character.

I don't think roles help you resolve your issues. I just think they're good markers.

Changing the way we have lived for twenty or forty or sixty years is nothing short of a revolution. 4.

We can't change—or better said, invite God to change us—when we are unaware and do not see the truth.

In this journey of emotionally healthy spirituality, we are talking about radical change at the core of our being. At least two critical forces hinder such a profound shift. First, the pressure of others to keep us living lives that are not our own is enormous. And second, our own stubborn self-will is much deeper and more insidious than we think. The possibility of self-deception is so great that without mature companions we can easily fall into the trap of living in illusions.

Most of us never examine the scripts handed to us by our past.

Our goal is the same: union with God in Christ, transformation into his image, and the freeing of our hearts from anything that stands in the way of Christ living in and through us.

To become a Christian and to be adopted into God's family with the new name of "Christian" does not erase the past. God does not give us amnesia or do emergency emotional/spiritual reconstructive surgery. God does forgive the past, but he does not erase it. We are given a new start, but we still come in as babies drinking milk and are expected to die daily to the parts of our lives that do not honor God and follow Jesus.

Sadly, when we look deep beneath the surface of our lives, most of us are not doing anything fundamentally differently from what our families did. God's intention, however, is that our local churches and parishes are to be places where, slowly but surely, we are re-parented on doing life Christ's way. God intends that his new community of people be the place where we are set free.

way. Part of the sanctification process of the Holy Spirit is to strip away the false constructs we have accumulated and enable our true selves to emerge.

Stage One: "You are wrong for changing and here are the reasons why." Stage Two: "Change back and we will accept you again." Stage Three: "If you don't change back, these are the consequences" (which are then listed).21