The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals
You are sitting at the kitchen island Tuesday morning, replaying a moment from a week ago when your spouse, your colleague, or your friend asked for your honest take — and you had one. You felt it the second they finished the sentence. And you said something softer. Something less. Maybe nothing at all. A top female litigator I worked with knew the cost of this firsthand. At work she could tell a Fortune 500 client they were about to lose the case if they did not change course. At home, when her husband shared something brewing at his office, she had an instinct — a strong one — and did not say it aloud. Weeks later he was almost fired. When she finally spoke up, he was grateful and frustrated. He kept his tone soft and asked what kept her silent. She said she had frozen. She was scared that naming what she saw would somehow make it worse and she would be blamed. He asked if he had ever done that before. She said no. The truth came out: she had grown up in a home where there was no conflict, and the absence of honest words had cost that family deeply. She had become a litigator in part to flee that pattern — but she had not let the courage travel home with her. She apologized. She cried. She forgave herself. She started saying the harder thing in the kitchen too. At first it came out too blunt. Her husband told her he preferred the blunt to the silence.
The reason you swallowed the sentence is rarely the reason you think. It is almost never about the other person. It is about a story you absorbed long before that conversation began.
“Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.” — Proverbs 12:19, ESV. God does not protect the people closest to you by your silence. Scripture reveals that the courage to speak honestly is one of the surest acts of love a Christian can offer the people who share their kitchen table. The Holy Spirit reshapes leaders who are willing to bring the same truthfulness home that they show at work. Trust that God’s love is fierce enough to carry both the sentence and the relationship.
Here is the question for this Tuesday: If I really believed God’s love is strong enough to hold both me and the person I have been protecting with my silence, how would that change the sentence I have been swallowing?
One move before Wednesday: Think of the one person you have not said something honest to in the last two weeks. Notice what you were feeling in the moment you almost said it — and name it in one word. Then go to that person today and say the sentence. If this is the only thing I do from this CHEW today, it is enough.
If today’s story named something real, The CHEW Hub has free assessments and tools to help you go deeper.
With you on the journey,
Ryan
If you had to put this into one sentence for today, what would you say God is inviting you to rest in or return to?
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