2023 was the hardest year of our lives.
It was a year of confronting our past, the bones in our closet. And if anyone has trudged this path before, you’d agree with us when we say the pain from healing your trauma is harder than living with it. Healing is messy.
We came face to face with the hurt, the bitterness, the shame. The fear and anxiety resulted in countless sleepless nights and it challenged our faith like never before. We felt constantly exposed, showing the world the most broken parts of us yet being unable to explain what was going on.
Many nights the pain would scream so loud that everything we knew about God seemed to fade. But as the nights went on, our dim vision of His nature grew clearer. There wasn’t a turning point. God just proved Himself to be an unchanging refuge, a steady and safe place. That even when we’re faithless, He remains faithful.
Looking back, we can see that we were actually being rescued by the pain and panic. We can’t heal from what we don’t know, so God used the sleepless nights to reveal all the areas that we had felt unsafe for so long. It demanded us to seek healing. We learned to create a friendship with our body, our emotions, our history and our safety. And now, we can’t thank God enough for 2023, for the sleepless nights.
To Gen Z, whom we know share the same battle we had, we created this shirt with you in mind. If you’re still in the sleepless nights, know that the pace of healing is slow. Let go of your own timelines and “shoulds”, learn how to be indefinitely in the process, and most importantly, rest in the arms of God who loves you the most. He is the safest place.
We are cheering you on, you’ll make it through!
-David and Esther
