DEAR KINDREDS,
Dear Kindreds,
Hi my name is Jessica. I started this site with two of the best artists and people I know. Sincerely, Kindred was a beautiful flower beginning to bloom. It was wonderful. We got busy. Overwhelmed even. But, it was the best. Then, we started getting bigger than we knew what to do. Then, we got burnt out. Then, we got here.
But the thing is, there is a heart to every trial. There is an epicenter. There is a mecca of where doubt pilgrimages to.
For me, it was sin. It was a lack of community. It was not caring for my own spiritual growth when other people stopped.
But since we started a year ago, my heart started making room for another. His name is Cameron, you’ll hear from him in soon. We were/are growing, deeper in love with each other and God. The dream? Right?
Well the dream was shattered by the pains of reality. My tall, handsome, joyful, and sweet youth pastor boyfriend was was fired by his church just a month after my church leaders stopped my discipleship lessons. This left us in a season where we were asking ourselves and God a lot of questions:
How do you do ministry when you’re told by older Christians that you can’t?
How do you pick up your heart for others, when the said others, broke it in the first place?
How do you move on when spiritual fathers spoke with their actions that YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH?
Sin lures. It tempts. It lingers. And it pounces when the church fails. It strikes when we are the most vulnerable to believe we are alone.
Hi my name is Jessica and I’m not okay. I haven’t been “okay” for a while. Which I guess is why we hadn’t been posting on Sincerely, Kindred.
But I realized something while I was selah-ing in some nature. My pain and shame have silenced me. And I’m done being silenced. I’m done letting the comfort of my flesh, the enemy of my soul, and the trying circumstances around me dictate who I am and what I do.
Because the problem is not that God hasn’t forgiven me. I believe He has.
The problem is how do you forgive others and even more so, how do you forgive yourself?
I’ve come to see that God is bigger than the petty drama in our churches. He is bigger than the leaders that are human and imperfect. He is the one I answer to. And there is so much freedom in that.
If I want to say “fly as hell” I can do that. If I want to take a break from serving because I’m broken, I can do that.
Because here is what I’ve realized from the pains of this season:
The people we try to people please are not who we answer to.
We answer to God first.
And He knows the inner workings of theirs, mine, and your hearts.
Which means dear friends, we don't have to dwell in the wounds others have intentionally or unintentionally given us. That is not our identity. Our Lord, Jesus Christ is before, in the midst, and after it all. He is our everything. He is who we serve.
So here we are now, a little older, a little wiser, and a little more eager to do life with you as a familiar friend who hopes to help you with your walk with Christ.
Sam and myself are abundantly thankful for where our Lord has been leading us and how He has been building up who we are in Him.
We are artists. We are encouragers. And we are your kindreds.
We want to minister to your hearts, meet you where you're at, and I whole-heartedly believe that God will use the trials during our break from this publication to showcase His redemptive glory while encouraging you.
So would you like to join us in praying for our publication? Would you like to join us as we hope to encourage our sisters (and brothers)?
Sincerely,
Jessica Bills