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

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, 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, Do you know how empowering purpose is when discipling young people? At the recent Brave and Bold event, Nancy Vuu, a renowned fashion designer, shared her powerful revelation and parenting practice. She titled it the Garment of Grace: Weaving Stronger and More Impactful Bonds with your Teen . Her goal was to help parents shift from being a “Manager of rules” to an “Architect of Trust” by partnering with God and their child to reveal identity and purpose. The fi

Emotionally Healthy Teens and Emotionally Healthy YOU By Michele Okimura As Christian parents, we care about the spiritual growth of our...

By Mikela Kobayashi The Following is an Excerpt from the Explicit 21-Day Journal... I knew all the statistics about sexually transmitted...