A few months ago, my brother-in-law Roger walked up to me with a big smile on his face. Roger is the marriage pastor at a large church here in North Fort Worth, which means he spends his days helping people love each other better. He's good at it. And on this particular day, he was excited.

"Michael, I met an amazing woman. She's your age. I'd love to introduce you two."

You want to know the very first thought that fired through my brain? Not "tell me more." Not "what's she like?" Not even a polite "I'm not ready yet."

My first thought was: "Well... she's a liar."

A woman I have never met. A woman I know absolutely nothing about. A woman whose only crime was existing and being described as amazing by a pastor who loves me. And my nervous system had already tried her, convicted her, and sentenced her before Roger finished his sentence.

I want you to sit with that for a second, because this final article in the Loved series is about what happened next. Not just in that conversation, but in me.

This is the last article in a six-part journey. We started with the Father who pursued you in the garden with the first question God ever asked a human being: "Where are you?" We walked through the Father who stays, who sees, who delights. We watched Jesus move toward the mess and never once say "clean up first." We saw Him hold boundaries and tell the truth even when it cost Him everything. And last time, we met the Holy Spirit: the Co-Regulator who lives inside your actual body and the still small voice who whispers when the noise dies down.

Which leaves us with the question every one of you has been carrying since article one, whether you knew it or not:

Now that I know God loves me, how do I actually live in it?

The answer has two parts. First, you have to receive it. Second, you have to heal toward something, not just away from something.

Let's take them one at a time.

The Receiving Problem

Here's something I've learned after thirty years of sitting with hurting people. Most of you are phenomenal givers. You serve. You show up. You carry other people's burdens. You stay up late listening to a friend in crisis. You hold families together with duct tape and prayer.

And you are terrible at receiving.

Someone compliments you and you deflect. "Oh, it was nothing." Someone offers to help and you wave them off. "I'm fine, I've got it." Someone tries to love you, really love you, not for what you do but for who you are, and something inside you flinches. You change the subject. You crack a joke. You find a way to bounce the spotlight back onto them, because sitting in the light of being loved feels physically unbearable.

We like to call that humility. It's not. It's a wound.

I know because I lived it. My receiving problem didn't come from self-loathing or anything that tidy. I grew up in a family that got a lot of attention. My dad was well known, our family ministry was well known, and by the time I was an adult, strangers regularly told me how much I meant to them. People I had never met would fall all over me like we were old friends.

That's one of the strange things about any kind of public life. People think they know you. They can't. They only know what they've seen or read. So when a stranger poured out kindness on me, my gut response was suspicion. You don't know me. You know a version of me. And I learned to hold every compliment at arm's length like it might be carrying something contagious.

Then, during my master's program, a mentor caught me doing it. I deflected some kind words, probably with a joke, and this mentor stopped me and said something I have never forgotten.

Sometimes people need to be kind. They need to say something positive. And it honors them when you receive it.

Read that again. Receiving isn't just something you do for yourself. It's something you do for the person loving you. When you deflect a kind word, you're not being humble. You're refusing a gift and handing it back to the giver still wrapped.

That mentor changed the way I move through the world. To this day, when a client says something kind to me, I look them in the eye and say, "I receive that, thank you." And I mean it. Every time. Not because I need the compliment, but because their kindness deserves a landing place.

Martha, Mary, and the One Thing That Matters

Jesus dealt with the receiving problem head on, and He did it in somebody's kitchen.

Luke 10. Jesus comes to visit two sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha does what most of us would do: she starts cooking, serving, managing, producing. Mary does something scandalous. She sits down at Jesus' feet and just... receives.

Martha, understandably, gets frustrated and asks Jesus to tell Mary to help. And Jesus says, "My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:41-42 NLT).

That verse has caused arguments for two thousand years, mostly from recovering Marthas who want to defend her. And listen, serving matters. Jesus never said the dishes don't need washing. But He named something Martha couldn't bring herself to do.

Stop. Sit. Receive.

Martha couldn't sit down because busyness was her identity. Her value lived in her productivity. Take away the serving, and who was she? Just a woman on the floor doing nothing. And her whole life had taught her that doing was worth more than being.

How many of you are Martha? Be honest. How many of you fill every moment with doing because sitting still and simply receiving love feels like laziness, or selfishness, or worse, like you're not earning your spot?

You cannot have God's love taken from you. But you can refuse to sit down long enough to receive it.

Peter and the Foot Washing

If Martha shows us the busy version of the receiving problem, Peter shows us the proud version.

John 13. The night before the cross. Jesus gets up from the table, wraps a towel around His waist, and starts washing His disciples' feet. The King of the universe, on His knees, doing the job of the lowest servant in the house.

Peter is horrified. "No, you will never ever wash my feet" (John 13:8 NLT).

And I get Peter. Receiving from Jesus meant admitting he needed to be washed. It meant being the one on the floor instead of the one holding the towel. Peter was the strong one, the bold one, the "I'll die for you" disciple. He could give his life for Jesus. He could not let Jesus kneel in front of him.

Jesus' answer is stunning: "Unless I wash you, you won't belong to me."

Receiving isn't optional in the kingdom of God. It's the entrance requirement. The whole thing runs on grace, and grace by definition is something you cannot earn, produce, or repay. You can only receive it.

Which brings me to the line I want tattooed on the inside of every performer's eyelids: love that requires repayment isn't love. It's a business arrangement. And God doesn't do business. He does covenant.

From Healing From to Healing Toward

Okay. So you receive it. You put down the towel, you sit at His feet, you say "I receive that, thank you" to God Himself. Then what?

Then the direction of your whole healing journey changes.

Most of us spend years healing FROM. From the trauma. From the wounds. From the lies. From the survival strategies. That work is necessary, and honestly, it never fully ends this side of heaven. But there's another direction to healing that most people never discover.

You can also heal TOWARD.

Healing FROM asks: what happened to me? Healing TOWARD asks: what is God's love making possible in me?

That second question has no ceiling. It expands every time you answer it. It's the question of a life that is no longer defined by what was taken, but by what is being built.

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the LORD. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11 NLT). Notice the direction of that verse. It doesn't point backward at the disaster. It points forward at the future. God is not just cleaning up your past. He's building something with you.

So what does healing toward actually look like? Let me tell you about mine.

"Well... She's a Liar"

Back to Roger and the amazing woman.

When that thought fired through my mind, I had a choice. The old me would have done one of two things. I could have believed the thought and quietly filed that poor woman under "untrustworthy" forever. Or I could have turned on myself: what is wrong with you, Michael? You're a psychologist. You teach this stuff. You should be past this by now.

I did neither. And I want you to notice that, because this is the whole series cashing out in one ordinary moment in North Fort Worth.

Instead of believing the thought or condemning myself for it, I got curious about it. That's it. That's the move. I said to myself, huh, that's interesting. A woman I've never met, and my nervous system already decided she's a liar. That thought didn't come from her. It came from somewhere in me. There's a wound in there around betrayal that I haven't fully named yet, and apparently it's still tender.

No shame. No spiral. No pretending it didn't happen. Just honest curiosity, the kind the Spirit whispers in, and a quiet acknowledgment: there's more healing to do here.

And here's the healing TOWARD part. I'm not healing so I can date. I have no desire for romance right now, and I'm at peace with that. What I'm healing toward is bigger and better than a relationship status. I'm healing toward a whole heart for women. Period.

Because here's what's true: the women already in my life are in a really good place with me. My mother. My sister. My daughters. My friends. Those relationships are warm and safe and strong. The wound only shows up in one specific spot: when a woman might be interested in me romantically. That's when something in me falls apart a little. Nothing destructive. Just a nervous system saying, nope, not safe, everybody out of the pool.

Old Michael would have called that a character flaw. Loved Michael calls it a wound with a location and a story, being healed by a Father who isn't in a hurry, a Son who never said clean up first, and a Spirit who sits with me in the middle of it.

That's what receiving God's love makes possible. Not a life without wounds. A life where the wounds get curiosity instead of condemnation, and a direction instead of a diagnosis.

What Are You Healing Toward?

Now it's your turn. Look back over everything this series covered, and hear it as a description of your future, not just your theology.

You are healing toward being found instead of hiding. Toward trusting that He stays instead of bracing for Him to leave. Toward being fully seen and delighted in without performing for it. Toward letting Jesus into your mess before you clean it up. Toward boundaries without guilt and honesty without polish. Toward a nervous system that knows it's never alone in the storm, and ears that trust the whisper more than the shout.

And underneath all of it, you are healing toward the ability to receive love. To sit down. To let your feet be washed. To let the love land.

Not perfection. Not the absence of hard days. You will still have moments where the old programs fire and the old lies sound like truth and your jaw clenches before your brain catches up. I literally just told you about mine.

But the question you live in changes. Not "what's wrong with me?" but "what is God's love making possible in me?"

More patience with your spouse than you had last year. More honesty with your kids than your parents had with you. More compassion for the coworker who's struggling and doesn't know why. More courage to tell the truth when silence would be easier. More grace for yourself on the bad days. More hope. More freedom. More you.

That's healing toward. Not a destination. A direction. Not an arrival. A becoming.

A Practice for This Week

This week, practice receiving once a day. Just once.

When someone says something kind, don't deflect. Try my line: "I receive that, thank you." Then stop talking. Let it sit in your chest. Notice what happens in your body when you don't brush it off.

When someone offers to help, say yes. Even if you could handle it yourself. Let someone else carry something for you and notice how it feels to not be in control.

And every morning this week, before your feet hit the floor, before you produce a single thing, lie there for sixty seconds and say: "God, I receive your love right now. I don't have to earn it today. It's already mine."

If a painful thought fires this week, the way "she's a liar" fired in me, don't believe it and don't beat yourself up for it. Get curious. Ask where it came from. Thank it for trying to protect you. And then remind it who you belong to.

If you want to go deeper, read John 13:1-17. Watch Peter resist. Watch Jesus insist. And ask yourself: am I fighting the very thing I need most because receiving it means admitting I can't do this alone?

You can't do this alone. You were never supposed to. That's not weakness. That's design.

This Is Not the End

This is the last article in the series, but healing doesn't have a graduation ceremony. You don't finish six articles and get a certificate that says "fully loved" and never struggle again.

What you get is a compass heading. A true north you can return to every time you get lost.

The Father pursued you. He is still pursuing you. The Son found you. He is still finding you. The Spirit stayed. He is still staying.

"And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully" (Ephesians 3:18-19 NLT).

You are loved. Not the performance version of you. Not the cleaned up, got-it-together, Sunday morning version. The real you. The 3am version. The "well, she's a liar" version. The one reading this right now wondering if any of this is really true.

It's true. It's been true since before you were born. It will be true long after your last breath.

Let it in.

If this series stirred something in you and you don't want to walk it out alone, come join us in the Smalley Sojourners community. This is where we practice this stuff in real time, together, twice a week. Real people, real wounds, real healing toward. You can join us at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/FEfWKzN7/checkout

You can also text me at (303) 435-2630 or email [email protected] if you want help figuring out your next step.

What are you healing toward? Share it in the comments. Your answer might be exactly the direction someone else has been looking for.