Faithful, Not Silent: Holy Disruption

Disruption. Even typing the word makes me feel like I literally need to look over my shoulder. There are times that I talk about things with people who are close, and I get that feeling. I have learned to acknowledge it and let it pass. Tonight I lit a candle to type beside because of the symbolism and the flickering reminder that this is holy and refining work. And that the Lord is right here in the disruption.

Sometimes faithfulness feels like lighting a candle in a room that keeps getting blown open by drafts. The doors and windows are closed, and then something else happens that blows them open again. So we light the candle and march on, honoring all that it brings forth.

I had a bit of a realization this week; a small awakening if you will. I bounced the self-insight off of my husband who has a talent for calling things how he sees them with boldness. He is wise and can speak into a situation with complete honesty and objectivity with a Biblical perspective, and I value his ability to see things from a different angle. And I don’t always agree with his interpretation of a situation, and that’s ok. But when his words line up with how I’m feeling, it’s a balm to my soul. He often gives me the words I can’t quite string together in times of overwhelm. To sum it up, we decided that I was realizing the exhaustion and counterproductive spirit that comes from being pushed to be smaller in the name of being “good.”

I want to pause here and make a disclaimer. What I’m discussing below fits many scenarios that I can name across different times of my life. I’m not referencing any single scenario. I’m referring to a pattern I have noticed from 40+ years of life in the Body of Christ. And by the content of the post I’m sharing below from author Jenna Kutcher, I’m not the only one. I have run each scenario/life experience through this filter, and the words still ring true.

Tonight I read something that I have not been able to shake. See the original post from Jenna Kutcher HERE. I have quoted her words below:

If you're a woman who can't stop feeling everything right now, I have a pretty good idea how you got here.

If you've gone from "don't rock the boat" to "I will burn the boat if I have to" and you're wondering how you got here, let me walk you through it.

Not all of this will be your story but enough of it will be.

We were the girls who were told you can be anything while being quietly taught to be everything for everyone and nothing that inconveniences the room.

We watched towers fall in our classrooms, graduated into a broken economy, built lives on ground that never stopped shaking, and smiled through every single aftershock because that's what good women do.

We birthed babies into a pandemic and became the teacher, the daycare, the breadwinner, the emotional anchor, the everything, overnight, with no blueprint and no backup and we were told this is just what moms do.

We sat in rooms where we were told to pray harder, try harder, lean in, be grateful, and every time we opened our mouths to say something isn't right here we were told we were too emotional, too dramatic, too much.

We watched systems we were taught to trust reveal exactly who they were built to protect, and when we said something about it we were told we were overreacting, being too political, making it about us. But it was always about us. We just weren't supposed to notice.

(Jenna Kutcher, 10, Feb, 2026)

It named a familiar ache: the kind that forms when you’ve spent years being the one who doesn’t rock the boat, then one day you realize the boat has been rocking you and calling it holiness.

If you’ve ever received the messaging in church culture, in familial and friend relationships, in misplaced theology and incorrect scriptural interpretation:

• “Pray harder.”

• “Try harder.”

• “Be grateful.”

• “Don’t make this about you.”

• “You’re too emotional.”

• “You’re being dramatic.”

• “You’re making waves.”

• “Just serve more.”

…then you know how spiritual language can be used to keep a person quiet.

And I want to say this carefully, as someone who loves Scripture and loves the Church:

God does not demand your numbness as proof of your maturity. And “keeping the peace” is not the same thing as living in the truth.

When Nothing Feels Special, Faithfulness Still Counts

I planned to write this week about “Faithfulness When Nothing Feels Special.”

Because most of life is not mountaintops. It’s daily routine and late-night worry. It’s another day at work. It’s showing up again and again, sometimes grumpy. The ordinary, unseen, uncelebrated, unpostable. And there is a quiet holiness to that kind of ordinary perseverance.

But here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

Sometimes the reason nothing feels special is not because God has gone silent.

Sometimes it’s because you’ve been living in survival mode.

You’ve been faithful, yes. But faithful in a way that required you to swallow your voice, minimize your needs, and carry a constant low-grade shame for having a nervous system at all. So you keep serving. Keep smiling. Keep being steady.

And your body starts telling the truth you’ve trained your mouth not to reveal in either word or facial expression: Insomnia. Anxiety. Panic. A simmering undercurrent you can’t name. A fatigue that isn’t quenched. Tears that come out of nowhere. Not because you’re broken. Because you’re human.

God Gave You Emotions (and Scripture Refuses to Shame Them)

There’s a popular idea floating around Christian spaces that emotions are automatically suspicious. They are something to “rise above” to prove you’re living by truth. I have a visceral, righteous anger when it comes to this subject. Why? Scripture doesn’t treat emotions like a spiritual infection. It treats them like part of being alive in a fallen world and part of being alive before God.

Jesus Himself shows us that holy love includes real feeling:

• “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)

  Not because He lacked faith; He was about to raise Lazarus. He wept because love grieves.

• In Gethsemane, Jesus is “sorrowful even to death” (Matthew 26:38), and He asks for support, and He prays with honest distress.

• Jesus expresses righteous anger when worship is turned into exploitation (see Matthew 21:12–13). His zeal was not “too much.” It was love defending what was sacred.

The Psalms (God’s own prayerbook) are filled with emotion: fear, frustration, longing, despair, joy, confidence. Lament is not rebellion. Lament is prayer.

And Scripture gives a direct command that actually assumes you will feel anger:

• “Be angry but do not sin.” (Ephesians 4:26)

Notice what it does not say: “Do not feel anger.”It says: when anger rises, let it be purified: directed by love, restrained by virtue, and turned toward what is true.

Emotions aren’t the enemy of truth. They are signals like dashboard lights on a vehicle. They can be misread, yes. BUT THEY SHOULD NOT BE IGNORED OR DISMISSED. Emotions are a gift:

Sometimes your anger is telling you a boundary has been crossed.

Sometimes your grief is telling you something mattered.

Sometimes your anxiety is telling you you’ve been carrying what you were never meant to carry alone.

A Catholic Lens: Passions Are Not Sinful; They’re Meant to Be Ordered

Catholic theology has a beautifully grounded way of talking about emotions: it often calls them the passions. The Church doesn’t teach that feelings are automatically virtuous or automatically sinful. It teaches that they are morally neutral and that holiness is not the removal of emotion, but the ordering of emotion under love.

In other words:

• You can feel intensely and still be holy.

• You can be tender and still be strong.

• You can be honest and still be obedient.

Virtue isn’t pretending you don’t feel. Virtue is allowing grace to shape what you do with what you feel. This is where so many of us have been wounded: when people use “truth” as a weapon to demand emotional silence. But God does not ask you to pretend you’re okay. He asks you to come into the light.

When “Don’t Rock the Boat” Becomes a Gospel Substitute

There is a counterfeit “peace” that is actually just avoidance. It sounds spiritual. It looks calm. It keeps the group functioning and can be named different things in different spiritual circles. But it comes at a cost. The cost is usually paid by the person who is most sensitive, most conscientious, most willing to absorb discomfort to protect everyone else.

“Don’t rock the boat” can become code for:

• Don’t name what happened.

• Don’t make them uncomfortable.

• Don’t ask for accountability.

• Don’t call it sin.

• Don’t tell the truth if it disrupts the image of harmony in the Body.

But the peace of Christ is not built on denial.

Real peace is built on truth and justice and repair.

If you’ve lived as the amenable one, especially as a woman in church spaces, you may have been subtly discipled into believing that holiness means:

• being agreeable no matter what,

• absorbing harm quietly,

• confusing silence with humility,

• calling self-abandonment “dying to self.”

But friends, that is not the Gospel. That is a coping strategy dressed up in religious language.  Jesus didn’t keep the peace with the Pharisees to protect the vibe. He told the truth because love demands it.

Here’s a difference I want to name:

Rocking the boat is not the goal. Love is the goal. Sometimes the “peace” you’re protecting is actually enabling something that is crushing human dignity: yours or someone else’s. If you are made in the image of God, then your voice matters. Your conscience matters. Your story matters. Your “no” can be holy.

“You’re Too Emotional” Is Often a Control Tactic

Let’s be honest: “You’re too emotional” is rarely a spiritual diagnosis. It’s often a strategy. It shifts the focus away from what was done and onto how you reacted. It makes the person the problem instead of the problem the problem. And sometimes it gets wrapped in Bible verses to make it sound like wisdom.

If you’ve been told you’re “leaning on emotion instead of truth,” please hear me:

God is not threatened by your feelings.He is not offended by your tears.He is not surprised by your anger. He is a Father, not a brand manager. Bring the emotion into prayer. Bring it into confession. Bring it into spiritual direction. Bring it into community that is safe. But do not let anyone convince you that the existence of emotion means the absence of maturity.

Sometimes “faithfulness when nothing feels special” looks like doing the next right thing quietly. And sometimes it looks like finally saying:

• “That wasn’t okay.”

• “I’m not carrying this alone anymore.”

• “I won’t be talked to like that.”

• “I need accountability.”

• “I’m not called to be invisible.”

There is a kind of faithfulness that is simply endurance. And there is a kind of faithfulness that is a redemptive reclaiming; the rebuilding of a self that God never asked you to bury. If you’ve spent years suppressing what God placed in you (your gifts, your clarity, your holy discontent) this might be your season to stop apologizing for having a voice.

Not to become harsh.

Not to become cruel.

But to become whole.

If something is stirring in you right now, if you’ve gone from “don’t rock the boat” to “I will not disappear anymore”, you are not crazy. You are waking up.

And waking up can feel like grief at first because you see how often you called self-abandonment “peace.” But hear this:

God’s will for you is not suppression. It’s sanctification.

And sanctification does not erase you. It makes you more fully yourself; who He created YOU to be: purified, strengthened, and free.

So yes, be you.

Tell the truth.

Rock the boat when love requires it.

And let faithfulness look like more than quiet endurance.

Let it look like dignity.

Let it look like courage.

Let it look like a woman who knows that the Spirit of God does not shrink souls;

He expands them.