Real Love.
Real Truth.

Aloha Friends, Last week, we paused to make room for care, rest and presence. Sometimes, simply being beside someone without asking them to explain everything is a meaningful place to begin. But eventually, we may ask a young person, “How are you doing?” and hear a familiar answer. “I don’t know.” Perhaps they shrug, look away or become irritated. We may wonder whether they are avoiding the conversation. But sometimes, they really do not know. They feel something, yet finding

Aloha Friends, Tamar’s story was a heavy one. Before we move forward, I want to pause with you. There is no need to rush into another lesson. Sometimes we need a little room to breathe and let what we have read settle. Over these past few weeks, we have been asking what lies beneath someone's desire to numb themselves. As we pause, here are a few things I hope we will carry with us. Our emotions need somewhere safe to go. Sadness, anger, loneliness and grief can be brought ho

Aloha Friends, Today’s email discusses S.A. Please read with care. In our last email, we explored lament as a way of bringing pain into the presence of God. Tamar’s story in 2 Samuel 13 shows us both the power of expressing pain and the terrible consequences of leaving someone to carry it alone. Tamar was the daughter of King David. After her half-brother Amnon deceived and sexually assaulted her, she did not pretend she was fine. 2 Samuel 13:19 (NIV): “Tamar put ashes on her

Aloha Friends, In our last email, I shared how I kept serving others after the hurricane while quietly carrying my own grief. When someone finally recognized that I needed help too, I wept. That moment reminded me of a practice we need to make room for in our homes and churches: lament. Lament is an honest conversation with God about what hurts. We see it throughout the Psalms. In Psalm 13, David asks how long his pain will last. He does not rush past the question or pretend

When we hear the word numbing, we may picture drugs, alcohol or serious addiction. But emotional numbing often looks much more ordinary. A young person comes home from school and immediately reaches for their phone. Another spends every spare moment gaming. Someone watches episode after episode because they do not want to be alone with their thoughts. Another continually checks social media, hoping to feel noticed or wanted. Someone else loses hours scrolling through short vi

What happens when the emotions are uncomfortable, the pain feels overwhelming, or we simply don't know what to do with what is happening inside of us? We often look for relief.

Aloha Friends, What Are We Trying Not to Feel? It seems that we have become very good at helping ourselves feel better without necessarily becoming better. There is something I have been thinking about as we continue looking beneath the surface of some of the struggles our young people are facing today. Quite frankly, this may be true for most of us. When we are lonely, we can reach for our phones. When we are bored, we can find endless entertainment. When we feel rejected, w

Aloha Friends, You have probably seen it before, even if you could not quite name what you were watching. A teenager who seems to have everything: friends, family, a home where they are loved, and yet keeps returning to something that you know is hurting them. A relationship that brings more pain than peace but they cannot seem to leave. A screen habit that has quietly become something darker. Somewhere beneath the frustration, a parent finds themselves asking a question that

For most of my teenage years, I was not struggling with a behavior problem. I was struggling with a secret.

There is a question living inside every teenager that they may never say out loud but are answering in a hundred quiet ways every single day. They find those answers in the accounts they follow, the communities they drift toward, the language they begin borrowing, and the places where they finally feel like someone truly sees them.

Aloha Friends, Most Christian parents we talk to are not struggling because they stopped caring. They are struggling because they sense something shifting in their teenager and cannot quite name it. It looks like a slow withdrawal, a new vocabulary, a different set of values quietly taking root, and they are not sure how to reach them anymore. You are not imagining it, and you are not alone. The cultural moment our teenagers are navigating is unlike anything previous generati

Aloha Friends, In our last email, we reflected on the quiet but powerful truth that belonging is often formed in the smallest of moments, not usually in the grand or dramatic, but in the ordinary places where love becomes tangible through presence, attentiveness, and being truly seen. I have been sitting with that thought this week, letting it linger in my heart, and I keep returning to a simple but profound question: Where do we first learn what belonging feels like? For mos

Aloha Friends, Can you recognize or discern the signs of rejection? Being someone who has experienced much rejection and shame in my life I think I am pretty good at recognizing the cues. But what do you do when you notice it? First, click here to get the sample phrases that reveal rejection and how to respond. Second, lean into this Jesus model below as a way to see transformation in the lives around you. Have a blessed Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday from all of us at

Aloha Friends, In our last email we mentioned that we would explore the language of loneliness and how someone's words can reflect their struggle. Abandonment, rejection, and neglect are all traumatic experiences that shape our thoughts, words and actions. Today, we will take a look at abandonment. At its core, abandonment is a form of loneliness that develops when someone begins to believe they are not safe in relationships or not worthy of love. This is often a stronghold t

Aloha Friends, Connecting with God isn’t an easy task for all of us. Perhaps you read the practical activity in the last email to cultivate a deeper awareness of God by being in nature and felt unmoved. We are not offended by that at all. The reality is that our ability to perceive God is often connected to how we view Him, and that understanding is shaped in our early years. The relationships we have with parents or guardians, peers, and our community profoundly influence ho

Aloha Friends, Sin had isolated us, but Jesus stepped into the mess and took on the punishment for our sin, thereby acquiring peace with God on our behalf. By His stripes we were all healed. (Isaiah 53:5). I grew up in a very close-knit extended family with many aunties and uncles. They all took turns caring for my brothers and I throughout our childhood as mom and dad worked. But despite all the family around me, I still found myself stranded on an island of my own. In today

Hey there friend! Loneliness is never an excuse to willfully sin against God, or our own body. We are not writing these emails to make a case in defense of someone who has made hurtful decisions because they felt lonely. Instead, these emails are meant to bring awareness and help us to be ready in season and out of season to testify of the hope that the lonely, rejected and abandoned can find in Jesus and the family of God. Consider this... After Jesus’ interaction with the S

Aloha Friends, Did you know that loneliness and isolation have become such a serious public health issue that the U.S. Surgeon General has called it an epidemic? (Click here to read more) I would have never known if I had not looked it up myself. In that advisory, researchers explain that chronic loneliness is linked to increased risks of cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and premature death. Some studies even suggest that the physical impact of prolonged loneline

Aloha Friends, From the well to the wilderness, Scripture reveals how deeply rejection can wound the human heart. Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well in the middle of the day. She was most likely avoiding other women and their judgments about her life decisions. The New Testament writers do not offer much backstory about her or her life experiences. However, we can confidently say that Jesus knew everything there was to know about her, and He was not ashamed to speak wi

Aloha Friends, Were you ever asked a question that caused you to re-evaluate your beliefs? This month, Michele and one of our speakers, Joshua Kaina were asked to speak to staff members of a private Christian school on O’ahu. Joshua shared a part of his testimony on leaving behind a LGBTQ+ identity and lifestyle that he has never shared before. It started with a simple question that his dad asked him. In 2014, while living an active homosexual lifestyle and contemplating a ma