There are two statements people often reach for when the topic of age and relationships comes up: “Age is irrelevant when love is involved.”“Love is irrelevant when age is involved.” They sound like opposites. In reality, they are shortcuts, ways of avoiding a more uncomfortable conversation. Because the real issue has never been age alone. … More When Love and Age Collide
January 1st carries a strange pressure. We’re told it’s a reset, a clean slate, a moment where the past is supposed to disappear and everything ahead is somehow brand new. But real growth doesn’t work that way. New beginnings are not about erasing what mattered before. They are about building on it. The past year, … More New Beginnings Don’t Erase the Past
People often say they want what’s best for you. They pray for your happiness, speak it sincerely, and mean it, at least in part. But woven quietly into that wish are conditions, boundaries, and unspoken limits. You can be happy, they say, just not that way. Not if it disrupts what feels safe, familiar, or … More When Happiness Comes With Conditions
People sometimes ask why I write so often. Why I blog. Why I coach, speak, teach, and keep returning to the same themes of growth, discipline, faith, leadership, and becoming whole. The honest answer is simple: I write because silence would be dishonest. Writing has always been the place where clarity forms. Before ideas are … More Why I Write, and Why I Keep Showing Up
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”— Proverbs 4:23 The people others turn to in moments of collapse rarely think of themselves as “safe spaces.” They are not offering shelter out of detachment or neutrality. What they offer is born of something far deeper, love, protection, and a willingness … More Love Without Pressure
Some people are made differently. Not louder. Not tougher in the way the world defines strength.Just wired to stay when things begin to fall apart. It took me a long time to understand that about myself. I used to think it was a flaw, caring too deeply, feeling what others are trying to outrun, not … More I Got You…
Every year, Christmas turns into a competition. Bigger gifts. Higher prices. More stress. More debt. We convince ourselves that value can be measured in dollars, boxes, and receipts, and somehow we forget something painfully obvious: Most people don’t need more things. They need to know they matter. I know what it feels like to believe … More The Most Important Christmas Gift Isn’t the One We Buy
People move through our lives in seasons. Some leave little trace.Others leave fingerprints that only become visible much later, after time, loss, and experience have done their work. There are people we love without realizing the full weight of it in the moment. Not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t yet understand what … More When We Finally Understand What We Once Had
There is a shift that happens in a person’s life that few talk about, but many eventually feel. When people are young, intimacy is often viewed through the lens of pleasure, access, and personal satisfaction. Desire becomes transactional. If two people agree, the assumption is that no harm exists. What happens outside that moment, other … More When Maturity Changes the Meaning of Intimacy
Heartbreak is something every person eventually encounters, but we rarely talk about what sits beneath it, the truth that quietly connects all of us: Everyone who has ever experienced heartbreak has likely caused it for someone else. That realization hit me harder than the pain itself. It’s one thing to feel shattered by someone.It’s another … More We Are All Both the Wounded and the Wounding
Troy P Zehnder 