Author: Sterling Severns

March 13, 2025 ( pages 41–46)

We spend years trying to earn love—or at least, something that feels like it. We wear masks, curating versions of ourselves to gain approval. We achieve, perform, shape our identities around what will make us worthy in the eyes of others. But beneath the surface, a quiet fear lingers:

If they see all of me, will I still belong?

Nadeau wrestles with this tension, reflecting on the ways he spent his life trying to secure love: through success, usefulness, becoming exactly what others needed him to be. He thought he understood love. He believed in it. He knew, intellectually, that God loved him. But there’s a difference between knowing something in your head and letting it reshape your heart.

And when the carefully constructed mask—the one that made sure he was respected, sought after, admired—began to crack, a deeper question emerged:

Am I loved, truly loved, apart from what I do, apart from what I present?

He’s not alone in this struggle.

I would imagine the rich young ruler and the woman at the well both carried a weight they could no longer hold. Both were isolated, but from opposite corners—one less obvious than the other.

The ruler approached Jesus full of confidence, certain that he had done everything right. He wanted confirmation, assurance that he was on the right track. Jesus looked at him—loved him—and invited him to be free (Matthew 19:16-22, MSG).

The woman came to the well alone, burdened by her past, expecting nothing but silence. But Jesus saw her completely, naming the truth she thought she had to hide—and inviting her into freedom (John 4:1-26, MSG).

She knew she needed to be free. He didn’t yet realize he was in a self-made cage.

One walked away, unwilling to release the life he had built. The other ran toward her village, proclaiming, “Come and see!”

Maybe the difference wasn’t in how much they had to let go. Maybe it was in how much they were willing to trust that they were already loved.

And that’s the great truth: Jesus knows who we are through and through—even the parts of ourselves we don’t yet acknowledge, even the parts we try to hide from the world. And still, we are fully cherished.

Not when they impress. Not when they get everything right. Not when they finally become the person they think they’re supposed to be.

We don’t transform by performing. We transform by surrendering to love.

Some of us have known what it is to be lost, only to realize we have been found. Others may still be searching, wondering if they ever will be. The invitation remains the same.

Let yourself be loved.

I Wonder…

• I wonder how much of my life has been spent trying to earn love rather than receive it?
• I wonder if I have mistaken admiration for belonging?
• I wonder what it would feel like to be fully seen and still cherished?
• I wonder where I am resisting love?
• I wonder how God is inviting me to let go of the mask and step into freedom?

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here: https://www.tbcrichmond.org/an-invitation-to-reflect-a-lenten-journey-together/

More about the book and author: https://a.co/d/45D382Y

March 15, 2025 (Day 10, pages 55–58)

Get it together. Keep it together.

These two phrases are unrelenting. For so many of us, they hum beneath the surface, quietly and destructively applying pressure that has shaped far too many of our days. We tighten our grip, clench our jaw, convinced that if we just try harder, hold on a little longer, everything won’t come undone.

How much more of our precious time on this earth will we spend simply trying to hold everything together? As if survival is the goal. As if control is the prize. We convince ourselves it’s working—until the cracks form. Until what we thought was unshakable begins to shift beneath our feet.

The ground is shifting, and we feel it.

Could it be that grace is already working its way in—not in spite of the cracks, but through them?

Could it be that what feels like falling apart is actually making space for something truer, something more whole?

Beneath all that crumbles, something unshakable remains.

Love remains. Grace remains. God remains.

Perhaps what’s coming undone was never meant to hold us in the first place.

I Wonder…

• I wonder what I’m gripping too tightly that grace is asking me to release?

• I wonder if I’ve mistaken holding it together for actually being whole?

• I wonder how I might recognize grace in the shifting ground beneath me?

• I wonder if the unraveling is actually an invitation?

• I wonder who I’m walking with—and who is walking with me—all the way home?

___________________________________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here:

More about the book and author: https://a.co/d/45D382Y

March 13, 2025 (Day 8, pages 46–50)

The math seems so simple.

Want less + feel less = ache less.

But if we aren’t careful, we’ll spend a lifetime working at a misidentified problem. If we think hunger is the problem, we try to eliminate it—starving ourselves of desire, convincing ourselves we don’t need, don’t long, don’t ache.

But the hunger was never the problem. So many of us have spent years numbing ourselves, filling the silence with noise, losing hours to (de)vices. And yet the longing remains. Not because something is missing, but because something real is calling us deeper.

Henri Nouwen spoke of it as restlessness, the ache of a heart that hasn’t yet found its way home.

“Restless is our heart,” St. Augustine wrote, “until it comes to rest in Thee.”

In today’s reading, Nadeau faces his hunger head-on. The moment he stops numbing himself, the ache remains. He’s tempted to believe something is broken in him, that the hunger itself is a flaw.

The hunger isn’t the problem.

You aren’t a problem to be solved.

You are cherished and the longing of your heart is holy.

It’s calling you home.

______________________________________________

I Wonder…

• I wonder where I’ve been numbing my hunger instead of listening to it?
• I wonder how my desires might actually be leading me toward God?
• I wonder where I’ve mistaken apathy for peace?
• I wonder what it would look like to be honest about what I truly long for?
• I wonder where God is inviting me to rest today?

____________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here.

More about the book and author.

March 12, 2025 (Day 7, pages 41–45)

The wilderness has always been part of the journey. The Israelites wandered in it. Jesus was led into it. And again and again, we find ourselves there too.

The wilderness wakes us up to the truth: the things we relied on can no longer hold us. But it’s also where we come undone, where we feel lost, where we grasp for what’s familiar—even if what’s familiar was destroying us.

Nadeau describes his own moment of reckoning—the choice to leave behind what was numbing him, knowing it would force him to face what came next.

“I left the bank so I could stop drinking. But then there was the wilderness.”

It’s one thing to step away from what numbs us. It’s another to face what surfaces in its absence.

Facing Ourselves in the Wilderness

It’s easy to think of wilderness as a single, defined season—forty years for Israel, forty days for Jesus. A moment to endure before moving on.

But if we’re honest, wilderness is never just once.

The Israelites returned to it again and again. The disciples faced it after Jesus’ death. The early church walked through it as they stepped into an unfamiliar world. Wilderness isn’t a detour in the spiritual life—it’s a place we return to.

Lent comes around, year after year—forty days, again and again, pulling us back into the wilderness.

We know this, too.

There’s the wilderness of early adulthood, when we leave behind what’s familiar but don’t yet know who we are. The wilderness of grief, when life no longer makes sense, and we can’t go back to what was. The wilderness of doubt, when the faith we inherited no longer holds, and we’re left searching for something truer. The wilderness of loss, transition, failure—threshold moments between what was and what will be.

Wilderness often marks a threshold. It strips away illusions, leaving us to wrestle with the question: Who am I, really?

The Ache for Home

The wilderness exposes our deepest longing—the ache to be whole, to be at rest, to be at peace.

We spend so much of our lives striving, proving, holding everything together, afraid of what will happen if we stop. But in the wilderness, there is no more hiding. No more distractions. No more escape.

Just the truth of where we are.

And in the stillness, God meets us there.

Again and again, God meets people in the wilderness—Hagar, Jacob, Elijah, the Israelites, the disciples. Again and again, God meets us there. Not once we’ve found our way out, but right there in the middle of it.

And beneath all the striving, beneath all the fear, beneath all the noise—there it is. The longing we’ve been trying to outrun.

“And, oh God, I just want to go Home.”

I Wonder…

I wonder what I’ve been avoiding that the wilderness is trying to show me?

I wonder where I’m resisting change because I fear what comes next?

I wonder if I’ve mistaken control for security?

I wonder how I might recognize growth in my faith as I walk through the wilderness again and again?

I wonder what it would feel like to trust that God meets me here?

_____________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here.

More about the book and author.

Today’s Lenten Reading: March 10, 2025 (Day 5, pages 27-32)

Some lessons can only be learned by doing—taking the hits and showing up again anyway.

“This is the path for all of us,” Nadeau writes. “It’s not just boxing; it’s all kinds of things. It’s dancing, it’s painting, it’s plumbing. It’s pregnancy and childbirth. It’s fatherhood. It’s being a true friend. It’s learning that to develop real skill or strength in life, to grow and change, we need to admit our weaknesses and face them.”

We don’t get to skip the hard parts. We don’t get to bypass the struggle. Saints aren’t made by avoiding pain but by pressing into it, by letting it shape us instead of destroy us.

We don’t walk this road alone. We stumble forward together, side by side, sometimes carrying each other, sometimes just keeping pace—reminding one another that nothing, not even this, can separate us from the love that holds us.

Things can always be redeemed.

_____________________________________________________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau.

No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here:

Information about the book and author of Room for Good Things to Run Wild: How Ordinary People Become Everyday Saints

#Lent2025 #LentenJourney #ThingsCanBeRedeemed