Poor Costis, Maintaining A Straight Face While On Duty Is Hard When Your King Is Constantly Bothering

poor costis, maintaining a straight face while on duty is hard when your king is constantly bothering you

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005) + letterboxd reviews 

(insp.)

I don’t tend to see Christians talk about this much, or in a very nuanced way, and I think it’s worth talking about. and that is that suppression and surrender are two different things.

suppression is the refusal to acknowledge feelings you’d rather not feel. it’s stuffing them down out of shame or guilt, or the belief that you’re not “supposed” to feel them, in favour of pretending that you don’t experience them at all. suppressing anger, for example, leads to long-term bitterness, grudges, and burn-out from pretending you’re a happy peppy optimistic Christian all the dang time. it is deeply unhealthy.

surrender is the active, honest acknowledgment of your feelings, desires, and temptations, without attaching undue shame to them, and then bringing them to the feet of Jesus and choosing to live by His Word anyway. it is not a dismissal of feelings but the very act of bringing them to light so He may show you what to do about them. 

surrendering to God’s way does not mean shoving feelings of anger or bitterness or anxiety into a dark crevice, or acting like you can brush off years of pain in a moment.

surrender is telling God you are hurt, letting yourself feel the pain of being wronged so that your pain may be healed by Christ’s tenderness and love. 

surrender is telling Him you are anxious, you are desperately frightened, and letting Him be present in your trembling, letting Him be peace and steadiness and unconditional love while you breathe and count and grounding-technique through the wave of panic.

surrender is allowing yourself to say you did not deserve the abuse, you will not stand for abuse, you will not return to your abusers, and working day by day to forgive your abusers and pray for them anyway. 

surrender is telling Jesus you are sorely tempted- to cheat on the exam, to cheat on your partner, to objectify your cute coworker, to talk shit about your boss- and allowing Him to lead you away from acting on it and into doing the right thing anyway.

surrender is the exact opposite of suppression.

I so often see this message online, explicitly and implicitly, that whatever you’re feeling is valid– and it is!– but then it just… stops there. if you’re angry, good, stay angry. you shouldn’t have to forgive anyone. you shouldn’t have to treat people with dignity if you don’t like them. nobody has the right to tell you to act in a way that doesn’t completely indulge your feelings. treat yourself. you do you.

I disagree. indulgence may seem like the right fix because it’s surely the polar opposite of suppression. but being a slave to your thoughts and emotions is no better than being a slave to shame. it is good to express anger. it is also good to place limits on your anger so you express it in healthy ways. it is okay to have a mental illness. it is also important to not let that illness define your very being, to remember you are more, to fight for recovery. it is completely normal to be tempted in a thousand ways. it is important to resist temptation and seek to do the right thing, and run to the grace and overwhelming love of God when you don’t.

true freedom in Christ comes when you are open with Him about all you are, and willing to let Him lead you through the maze. true freedom makes room for limits and boundaries, ones that will help you grow and flourish.

Here’s a hot take: villains should be relatable.

Not every villain, not every time, and certainly not to everyone at once, but there should be moments. We should, occasionally, be able to see ourselves in the bad guys, be able to understand how they got there.

Because it reminds us not to fucking go there.

Antis who get upset about villains having relatable qualities (often couched as being “romanticized” or “woobified”) are people who cannot bear to ever think of themselves as having the capability of being wrong.

Every human alive is capable of being a horrible person. Relatable villains remind us to keep an eye on that shit.

In the movies, Aslan gives the Pevensies their titles of Magnificent, Gentle, Just, and Valiant. In their own ways, they must live up and embody those titles.

However, in the books, they are just crowned by Aslan, and then we are told of their titles after they have already reigned for 15 years. So, in that case, they must have earned such titles.

There is such a difference being told you are “Valiant,” and another entirely to earn that name.

It just makes me wonder what kind of acts they each had to commit repeatedly to be deemed Magnificent, Gentle, Just, and Valiant

More commissions!! This was a set of Gen/Irene playing card designs for @zombee (ty so much these were soo fun), the request was to have one side be each of them in book 1, and the other side be book 5

P.S. I still have commissions open for september!