Start With Yours 💔💖

🕯️ It's Wednesday morning, and my studio still holds the boxes from the convention. They're stacked where Elias set them down on Sunday afternoon, some still sealed, a few spilling over with notebooks and leftover programmes. I've stepped around them for three days now, the way you step around something you know you'll need to face eventually, and I keep coming back to one small moment from that day.

Four days of the PSANZ Trailblazers Convention had filled me to the brim and emptied me out all at once. Elias didn't simply drop me off at home. He carried the boxes into my studio, helping me bring the weight of those extraordinary days to a close. Then, on his way back to his car, he noticed the magnet on my door, pointed at it and read it aloud:

Healing 💔heARTs💖. Changing the world 🌏 one broken 💔 heart at a time.

A mission that grew out of my own journey through brokenness, depression, restoration and rediscovered joy.

Then came the words that completed the sentence. "Start with yours."

Then he turned away, got into his car and left.

✍️ Healing 💔heARTs💖. Start with yours. Five words. No lengthy explanation, no attempt to turn the moment into a counselling session, just an invitation spoken almost in passing, yet worth sitting with. They landed in me like a pebble dropped into still water, and the ripples haven't stopped since.

🪨 What strikes me most is the timing. For weeks I'd been giving so much of myself: creating clarity from chaos, carrying responsibilities, anticipating needs, holding countless details together so that others could experience something beautiful. At the same time, I've been learning to receive the kindness and affirmation others offer me. Elias has reminded me again and again that my work is good enough, that I'm adding value, and that I don't need to exhaust myself proving my worth.

Standing beside my car, he touched something deeper than my professional contribution. He wasn't reading my job description; he was reading my calling.

I've driven that message around Auckland for months. I've parked it outside churches, cafés, the supermarket and the homes of people I've sat with in their grief. I chose those words carefully, and I believe them with everything in me. Somewhere along the road, though, I quietly stopped counting my own 💔heart💖 among the ones it was written for. There's a part of me that still feels safer being the helper than the one being helped.

🕊️ As I sit with his words this morning, I sense Holy Spirit leaning in, not to correct me, only to gently turn my face towards the mirror. "What about yours, Trixi?🤔" I'm not excluded from the compassion I so freely extend to others.

There's a beautiful distinction here. My 💔heart💖 isn't waiting for healing to begin. God has already done extraordinary work in me. The woman who once believed she must never cry, never need and never ask has travelled a remarkable road of restoration. Yet healing isn't always a single moment; sometimes it's the continuing work of learning to live in the freedom Christ has already begun to establish.

Learning that I can be loved without performing.
That I can rest without earning permission.
That I can receive without feeling indebted.
That my own 💔heart💖 deserves the same tenderness I offer every broken 💔heart💖 entrusted to my care.

🌱 I think of kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. I've spoken about it so many times, painted it, held it up as a picture of what God does with our brokenness. The gold doesn't hide the fractures; it honours them, traces them, makes them part of the story. Even a bowl that's been beautifully mended still belongs in the Potter's hands. There are hairline cracks from seasons of disappointment, from doors that closed, from the weariness of always being the strong one, little losses I never grieved because there was always someone else's 💔heart💖 to tend first. A bowl can't be mended while it's pretending to be whole.

📖 *"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." — 2 Corinthians 1:3–4 (NKJV)*

🕯️ There it is, right there in the order of things. Who comforts us … that we may be able to comfort. The comfort flows to me before it flows through me. Freely you have received, freely give, and somewhere in my eagerness to give, I'd skipped over the receiving.

I picture a feather caught on the wind, light and carried, not striving to stay aloft. That's what receiving feels like when I finally let it happen. The Father isn't asking me to fix my own 💔heart💖 before I'm allowed to keep serving. He's simply asking me to let Him near it.

🪨 There's something especially meaningful in the fact that Elias spoke those words after carrying my boxes. He'd already shown practical care before offering a personal challenge. He didn't ask me to abandon my mission; he simply pointed towards the person who must never be forgotten within it.

Me.

I keep returning to one thought. I've spent years asking God to send me and to use my hands to help heal broken 💔hearts💖. Perhaps this season is also teaching me to open those same hands and allow others to help care for mine. Not instead of my calling, as part of it.

✍️ I'm still sitting with what happened inside me in that moment. Were those words tender or confronting, affirming or painful?🤔 Perhaps their meaning is still unfolding, the way ripples keep spreading long after the pebble has sunk out of sight.

So this morning, amongst the unopened boxes, I'm choosing to start with mine. I don't fully know what that looks like yet. Maybe it's a slower pace this week. Maybe it's a conversation I've been avoiding, or a quiet hour with my paints where I create for my own healing instead of for anyone else. Maybe it's simply sitting here, letting the tears flow as the light falls through the window across my hands, feeling the emotions that have been stirred this weekend and admitting that I'm utterly exhausted. Maybe it's accepting that my inbox and to-do lists can wait, and that I'm permitted to rest.

🌱 One broken 💔heart💖 at a time, it says on my car door. Today, the first one is mine, and I'm placing it gently into the hands of the One who mends with gold.