When Seeing Became Hard
You were made to see clearly.
To know God without fear.
To know yourself without shame.
Your heart was created like a mirror,
meant to catch the light of God’s love
and reflect it into everything you touched.
But somewhere, early in the story,
a whisper came.
A question, not asked in honesty, but in suspicion:
“Did God really say?”
“Can you really trust Him?”
It was the first distortion.
The first time love was made to look unsafe.
The first time trust was made to feel foolish.
And when that lie was believed,
something shifted deep inside humanity.
Not just in behavior.
In sight.
We no longer saw God clearly.
We no longer saw ourselves clearly.
Fear crept in where love had once breathed without resistance.
And the distortion didn’t stop there.
It rippled outward—
into relationships,
into families,
into societies,
into the very fabric of creation itself.
Even the earth carries the wound of that day.
“For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” (Romans 8:22, NLT)
Creation was made good.
Whole.
Radiant with the beauty and life of its Creator.
But when distortion entered, even the natural world was scarred by the break in trust.
And ever since, creation has ached—
not because it was made wrong,
but because it was wounded—
and it longs to be made whole again.
The trees, the oceans, the mountains—
they were all meant to echo the beauty of God’s design.
And even now, under the weight of distortion,
they are still reaching, still aching,
for the day when love and life will breathe through everything again.
And from that moment at the Tree,
the world—and every heart inside it—began to live inside a reality that no longer reflected the truth it was made for.
How Distortion Colors Everything
When distortion entered,
it didn’t just change the way we lived.
It changed the way we saw.
It bent how we see God.
Where trust once breathed easily,
fear now rises like a wall between us.
It bent how we see ourselves.
Shame flooded in where belonging had once lived.
It bent how we see each other.
Trust fractured into rivalry.
Compassion gave way to control.
It bent how we see the world around us.
The earth that was once a garden of joy and wonder
became a place of survival, struggle, and fear.
Distortion touches everything.
It isn’t just an idea floating somewhere far away.
It is woven into the air we breathe, the stories we tell, the fears we carry.
It’s why sometimes, even when you want to trust,
something inside you pulls back.
It’s why love can feel like a risk instead of a home.
And sometimes, without even knowing it,
we start living like the distortion is the truth.
Living Inside Distortion
When you grow up inside distortion,
it feels normal.
Like breathing air you don’t know is poisoned.
Fear feels natural.
Control feels necessary.
Shame feels deserved.
Isolation feels safer than trust.
Sometimes you catch a glimpse—
a flash of what life was meant to be—
but it slips through your fingers before you can hold it.
This is why trust feels like a risk now.
Why love feels heavy instead of light.
Why hope feels dangerous.
Why freedom feels like something you have to fight for,
instead of something that was meant to be as easy as breathing.
Even our own hearts,
the places that were created to reflect God’s image,
can start to feel like strangers to us.
But deep inside, under all the walls and weight,
something still remembers.
You were not made for this.
The Ache That Still Remembers
Maybe you’ve felt it.
That ache just under the surface.
The quiet sadness that rises when you see glimpses of what love could be.
The longing that stirs when you brush against something real,
something true,
something that feels like home.
That ache isn’t a flaw.
It’s not foolishness.
It’s not weakness.
It’s memory.
It’s the part of you that still knows what you were made for.
The part of you that hasn’t forgotten the world as it was created to be—
where trust was natural,
where love was safe,
where freedom was the air your heart breathed without fear.
You were created to reflect God’s design.
His love.
His character.
His way of living that brings life instead of fear.
Even though distortion has clouded so much,
it has never fully erased the imprint He left inside you.
The ache is proof you were made for more.
It’s not something you need to kill.
It’s something you are being called to remember.
Healing Isn’t About Earning — It’s About Clearing the Distortion
God isn’t asking you to build a new heart from scratch.
He isn’t standing at a distance waiting to see if you’ll become good enough to love.
He knows what distortion has done.
He knows how it’s clouded your sight,
twisted your trust,
weighed down your heart.
And He’s not angry about your wounds.
He’s not disappointed in your ache.
He’s here to heal it.
Healing isn’t about earning your way back.
It’s about clearing away what never belonged.
It’s about wiping off the dirt that’s hiding the mirror you were always meant to be.
It’s about seeing clearly again—
God, yourself, others, the world—
the way they were always meant to be seen.
“For we live by believing and not by seeing.” (2 Corinthians 5:7, NLT)
Because sight has been broken.
But faith—trusting the goodness you were made for—
is how you find your way home.
Healing doesn’t happen all at once.
Sometimes it feels like barely a breath of trust at a time.
Sometimes it feels like a single crack of light through walls you thought would never fall.
But it’s enough.
Because every breath of trust
is another piece of distortion falling away.
Every small opening
is another step closer to the life you were always meant to breathe.
You were created for freedom.
For love.
For trust.
And no matter how far distortion has carried you,
the way home is still open.
The ache that still stirs inside you
is not the sound of failure.
It’s the sound of life calling you back.
Trevor
