My Articulate Heart | Finding My Identity, and Freedom in Christ

In the beginning, humanity was different. Adam and Eve were not divine. They were human—but human nature existed in a harmony that we no longer experience. Their relationship with God, with each other, with creation and even within themselves was ordered toward the good. Then came the Fall. The great tragedy of Original Sin was not simply that humanity broke a rule. Something was lost. The special gifts that protected and perfected human nature were no longer present. And the effects are still visible in every human life. The four preternatural gifts traditionally associated with humanity's original state were integrity, infused knowledge, impassibility and immortality . When these gifts were lost, human beings became subject to something very different: disordered desire, ignorance, suffering and death. The gifts themselves did not literally transform into these conditions. Rather, once the gifts were lost, humanity became vulnerable to the realities from which those gifts had pro...

What Did Humanity Lose in the Fall? The story of Original Sin is often reduced to a simple act of disobedience: Adam and Eve broke a commandment, and God punished them. But the Christian understanding of the Fall is far deeper. Something fundamental happened to the human condition. Humanity lost a harmony it had originally received from God. The Fall did not destroy human nature, but it wounded it. What was once ordered toward God, truth, goodness, relationship and life became disordered. To understand what was lost, Catholic theology traditionally distinguishes between supernatural gifts and preternatural gifts . Two kinds of gifts The supernatural gifts elevated humanity beyond what human nature could achieve on its own. At the heart of these was sanctifying grace —participation in God's own life and friendship with Him. Adam and Eve were created in a state of original holiness and justice. They possessed a supernatural relationship with God that was not something human nature ...

Some wounds are obvious. A broken relationship. A traumatic event. The loss of someone we love. Abuse, neglect or abandonment. But some wounds are much harder to recognize. They don't look like wounds. They look like personality . “That's just how I am.” “I don't trust people.” “I have always been a perfectionist.” “I just get angry easily.” “I don't need anyone.” “I have to take care of everyone.” “I don't like talking about my feelings.” “I just like staying busy.” We may have lived with these patterns for so long that we no longer question them. But sometimes what we call “the way I am” is actually the way I learned to survive. What If There Is a Story Behind Your Reactions? Think about the things that repeatedly trigger you. Why does criticism hurt you so much? Why do you become defensive when someone corrects you? Why do you find it almost impossible to say no? Why do you need everyone's approval? Why do you shut down when someone gets angry? Why do you bec...

There are moments when I feel like a nobody. Not successful. Not important. Not admired. Not needed. And those are the moments I most want to escape. To scroll, work, achieve, win someone's approval. Anything that makes me feel significant again. Somewhere along the way, I learned to draw my value from how other people see me. If I was appreciated, I felt valuable. If I was needed, I felt important. And when none of that was available, something inside me whispered: You are nobody. I used to think that feeling was something to get rid of. Now I wonder whether it is an invitation. The unbearable feeling of being nobody Healing has shown me how much of my identity rests on how other people respond to me. I learned to read faces, perform, be useful, make people happy. Beneath all of it was a frightened question: "If I am not achieving, pleasing, helping or impressing anyone, am I still worth loving?" So when appreciation disappears, something in me can collapse....

Being honest about our brokenness is not the same as surrendering it. In the previous reflection, we explored the courage it takes to be known. To come out of hiding. To allow someone trustworthy to see what we would rather keep hidden. To discover that being known does not necessarily end in rejection. Sometimes, it is the beginning of healing. But there is another danger we need to recognize. We can become vulnerable without actually becoming free. We can tell the truth about our wounds, explain our behaviours and share our struggles—and still hold tightly to the very things we say we want to change. In a strange way, vulnerability itself can become another hiding place. When telling the truth feels like enough There is something deeply liberating about finally saying: “This is what I struggle with.” The secret is no longer entirely secret. Someone knows. Someone listens. Someone doesn't walk away. The shame begins to lose some of its power. That is real. But there is a subtle da...

Radical vulnerability brings what is hidden into the light. But what happens next? There is another danger in vulnerability. We can become very good at understanding ourselves without actually surrendering ourselves. We can learn to name our wounds, explain our behaviours and tell our stories—and still hold tightly to the parts of our lives we do not want Christ to touch. We can become experts at saying, “This is why I am the way I am,” without ever asking the harder question: “What is God asking me to do about it?” That is where vulnerability must lead somewhere deeper. Obedience. When the light reveals something There is something beautiful about bringing what is hidden into the light. We tell the truth. We discover that we are not alone. We experience the relief of being known and still loved. But sometimes, once the truth has been revealed, we discover something uncomfortable. God is asking something of us. Perhaps the vulnerability reveals a relationship we need t...

There is something strange about the human heart. We long to be known, yet we are terrified of being known. We want someone to see us—not merely the version of ourselves we carefully present to the world, but the person underneath. Yet when someone comes close enough to see our wounds, failures, fears, addictions, insecurities and shame, something in us wants to hide. Perhaps this is one of the deepest wounds of the human condition: We want intimacy, but we fear exposure. And somewhere between the two, we learn to hide. Recently, I came across a powerful conversation on “radical vulnerability” in the context of addiction, healing and Christian life. Jon Seidl speaks openly about his own journey through addiction and the hidden wounds beneath it. One of the themes that emerges is that freedom cannot always begin with simply trying harder to change a behaviour. We have to become willing to look beneath the behaviour—to the hurt, fear, shame and disordered desires that may have bee...

How the devil turns our wounds into an identity—and how Mary leads us back to belonging There is something sinister about the way the devil works. He doesn't always need to make us openly reject God. Sometimes he does something far more subtle: he takes a wound we already carry and builds a lie around it. Then he repeats the lie until we stop hearing it as a lie. We begin hearing it as our own voice. You are unworthy. You are dirty. You are a hypocrite. You are an old creep pretending to be holy. Look at what goes on inside your head. What kind of Christian are you? You are a pervert. This is who you really are. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, something terrible happens. A lie becomes an identity. We stop saying, "I struggle with this." We begin saying, "This is me." We stop saying, "I have a wound." We begin saying, "Something is fundamentally wrong with me." And once shame becomes identity, the devil doesn...