When our compass breaks, God still points north. And every repentant heart that turns back toward that fixed star becomes the beginning of cultural resurrection.

Silence has a strange gravity. It can be sacred or suffocating, a space for reflection or a tomb for the soul. When people hurt, many go quiet—not out of wisdom, but out of a fear they can’t articulate. As a therapist, I’ve come to recognize that silence often speaks volumes. It is grief’s first language. But silence is also a paradox. What protects us early on can imprison us later. Healing, both psychologically and spiritually, begins when we can tell the difference between

“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” — Dr. Viktor Frankl Christmas is, on its surface, a story about joy — candles, chorales, and the warmth of reunion. But underneath that celebration lies a harder, older truth: hope entered the world through pain. The child was born in a stable, not a sanctuary. The King came wrapped in rags, not robes. From its very beginning, Christianity has insisted upon the same paradox Frankl uncovered centuri

Years ago, when I first started my career, I worked in the child and adolescent wing of a large psychiatric hospital. One of the patients I was tasked with supervising was a 12-year-old young boy named Michael. He was part of the half-day treatment program. Michael thought he was a dragon. This idea took hold of him when he was 6, and he quickly became completely convinced of it. Through years of imaginative mental creation and psychological gymnastics, he’d constructed an en