REPENT

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REPENT: A Return to Freedom — Kimz Pondosities™

Last month, we explored Rejoice — a joy not manufactured or forced,

but the quiet kind that remains steady beneath the chaos.

This month brings an unexpected twist: repent isn’t the enemy of joy —

it is how we return to joy again and again.

Is there underlying sorrow when we truly examine our failings?

Yes — and yet having joy in the returning

is what keeps us aligned with truth, freedom, and belonging.

Repent isn’t the cold anti-joy of punishment — because to repent is not to be punished —

it is the warm invitation into deeper connection with God, others, and our own soul.

Rejoicing and repenting are not opposites — they are companions in restoration.

The word repent has been burdened with meanings it was never meant to carry.

For many, it evokes shame, fear, or the sense that something is wrong with us.

Yet repentance was never intended to be a spiritual penalty.

At its core, repentance is an act of clarity — a return to what is aligned, grounded, and whole.

This reflection is not a rejection of repentance, but a return to its original meaning —

one rooted in responsibility, freedom, and grace.

Repentance is humbly returning —

acknowledging what went wrong before the One who created us,

the Author of life,

the Designer of the soul,

the Source of truth, love, and every breath —

and turning back toward the Creator, toward others, and toward what is true, what is right, and what is good.

When we repent, we expose ourselves authentically.

We see ourselves for who we truly are, and we move forward in clarity.

Remorse can sound convincing — but it often arises when we are caught.

It is a reaction to consequence.

Repentance is different.

It is an internal pivot — truth-telling that begins within, before anyone else knows.

Repentance steps forward.

It restores dignity.

It leads to freedom.

Grace Before Truth — The Surgical Room of the Soul

In graduate school, a professor I deeply respected shared an analogy I will never forget:

Grace is the anesthesia given so that the necessary surgery can be performed

and truth can finally be revealed.

Without anesthesia, the body would resist — pushing away the very instrument designed to heal.

Pain would overwhelm progress.

Deeper work would be impossible.

Grace comes first because it is the safety which allows the truth to be seen rather than feared.

Only then can what harms us be identified, removed, and the deeper healing begin.

The only exception is in an emergency — when immediate truth is needed to prevent imminent danger.

I once lived the opposite story.

For the first 50 years of my life, when dealing with my own issues I faced into truth first, rarely allowing for grace, and if grace entered in, it played a secondary role.

There is no dyslexia in my history, yet every time I read Scripture,

I somehow flipped the divine order of these two words.

A mentor once told me why:

“If you see truth before grace,

you were likely raised in a home

where correction came before comfort

and punishment before understanding.”

So for decades, I read the Bible through fear-based thinking, as if God the Father were primarily a judge watching for my mistakes, and God the Son, Jesus, was the only one I could run to for safety.

When I was finally able to understand and see the words in their correct order, my perspective of God's grace also came into a restful and clearer view. In the Bible—grace precedes truth, and that gave room for a great sigh of relief to my deepest wounded parts. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit became equally safe to me. Their character was never in contradiction; they were, and had always been, perfectly consistent with one another. I had known that theologically from the beginning. I simply had not experienced God in this safe way.

As so many of us do, I had equated my Heavenly Father with my earthly parents, which was unfair to our most magnificent Creator—and also unfair to my parents, who, like the rest of us, were human, flawed, and trying their best despite the circumstances.

A Childhood Moment of Grace

In third grade, during a current-events moment, my friend proudly shared that his mother was having a baby. How I wanted what he had—belonging, excitement, a family expanding, a new baby to enter the picture. And in that classroom, at that moment, I wanted to be important and to matter too.

My dad taught me competition early in life. He was a poor sport, frustrated and angry when I won, laughing tauntingly when I lost. Whether it was a game of Scrabble, Cribbage, Monopoly, or tennis, I learned that winning or losing was uncomfortable. 

Even when I was learning to drive a car, my dad strangely made it into some type of competition—especially learning how to parallel park, on a steep hill in a busy city. Instead of celebrating my successes, he became irritated and excuse-driven when I won and he didn’t. 

I learned that winning meant high stakes and worth. Winning meant safety. Winning meant value. And losing meant LOSING...confidence, worth, emotional safety and value.

My mother was the opposite. She actually celebrated my wins. However, if I struggled, fell short or failed, love and acceptance were completely withdrawn. I learned early that, for her, belonging had conditions, and I needed to perform—to perfect—in order to protect my place as a member of the family in our home.

My home life had great emotion, but it was the kind that depleted rather than nourished. I longed for connection—real, safe, steady connection.

So in the classroom that day, I raised my hand, wanting to share what was really the desire of my heart. I stood up, proudly walked to the front of the classroom, and went bigger than my friend.

“My mother is having twins.”

“And if they are two girls,” I added, “my mother said that I could name them after my two best friends, Marlene and Enid.”

Marlene and Enid were in my third-grade class with me, and I looked directly at each of them as I said each name, as if including them in my wish might make my wish come true.

For a moment, I felt the warmth of belonging. But when I sat down, fear crept in. I knew I had lied, and it was a big lie.

After school, my mother came to pick me up, and I climbed into the car only to discover, to my dismay, that it was parent-teacher conference day and my mother had a conference with my teacher.

I was terrified, and I panicked. Certainly, that lie would cost me my safety.

I begged my mother not to go. I began making up all sorts of stories and more lies ensued—that my teacher couldn’t see her because she was sick—anything I could think of to get my mother to take me home. But my mother said no. She was going to go in and have that talk.

So while I sat in the car waiting for her, trembling, my tummy in a knot, I bit my nails below the quick.

Unbeknownst to me, my teacher congratulated my mother on her pregnancy, and all of a sudden, for both of them, the confusion turned to clarity.

My dear teacher could have exposed me, made a spectacle of me, shamed me. But instead, she became my defender.

She explained gently that, as an only child longing for connection, sometimes a child gets caught in wishful thinking, speaking from the heart instead of the facts.

She gave language to what I could not say.

I wasn’t trying to deceive. I was trying to belong.

“Grace” (who, in this case, was my third-grade teacher) stood up for me before I ever knew I needed protection.

When my mother returned and opened the car door, I braced myself for punishment.

But it never came.

When the root of my lie was actually revealed and understood, it did not cost me my safety.

And that alone felt like a miracle.

When I felt safe, I could finally tell the truth, confess without excuse, and repent.

It may have been the first—and possibly the last—time I ever experienced grace from my mother.

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Repentance — The Turn Toward Restoration

Repentance is not about shame.

It is about direction.

It is a turning — a 180-degree shift of the heart.

It creates an examination of the soul not to condemn us — but to restore clarity, relationship, and alignment.

It is the doorway into freedom.

Not perfection.

Freedom.

Repentance also brings a discomfort we often avoid.

That discomfort has a name: cognitive dissonance — the tension between the truth we now see and the patterns or beliefs that no longer fit.

But this tension is not failure or shame.

It is the first sign that transformation has begun — the evidence that something deep within us is waking up and turning toward freedom.

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Etymology — “Repent”

The English word repent comes from Middle English repenten, through Old French repentir,

which traces back to the Latin verb paenitēre —

meaning to feel regret, remorse, or contrition about something done.

But in the language of Scripture, the word carries a deeper shift:

• In the New Testament, the Greek term is metanoeō —

literally “to change one’s mind” or “to think differently afterward.”

• In the Hebrew tradition, repentance is tied to teshuva —

meaning “to return” — to turn back toward truth, toward wholeness, toward God.

So, while English emphasizes sorrow for the past, the biblical meaning emphasizes a forward-moving transformation — a turning, a returning, a renewed direction, not punishment… but freedom.

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With that deeper meaning in mind, and now that we’ve looked at the etymology of “repent”,

gently turn inward and notice what this word stirs in you…

Pause & Contemplate

In what area of your life do you sense an invitation to turn — meaning to turn back, or to turn toward, or to return — not in shame, but in truth?

Pause & Center

Where in your body does safety live as you face what is true and step into the freedom that is already yours?

Pause & Commit

What is one intentional step you are willing to take in the next week that creates momentum toward the freedom that is already yours?

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Before we close this Repent Pondosity™, I want to share two of my favorite passages from Scripture — along with a few gentle ponderings of my own:

John 1:14 (AMP):

And the Word (Christ) became flesh (human, incarnate) and lived among us;

we actually saw His glory, glory as belongs to the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace (favor, loving-kindness) and truth (absolute truth).

If you’ve never heard of Jesus… if you don’t really know who He is… if you’ve thought about Him and brushed Him aside… or even considered Him once, but never truly explored who He is — not just historically, but personally — who might He be in your life, or who might He become to you…

What would that look like?

Would you be open to exploring Him gently this year?

Nothing hard.

Nothing forced.

Nothing scary.

Just small ponderings and curiosities, as one does with a Pondosity™ — letting questions soften and invite discovery.

Jesus changed my life when I was only five — and He still invites me back every day

to grace,

to truth,

to freedom,

to His love,

and to His safety and concern.

He tells us in Matthew 11:28–30 (AMP):

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavily burdened [by religious rituals that provide no peace], and I will give you rest [refreshing your souls with salvation].

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me [following Me as My disciple], for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest (renewal, blessed quiet) for your souls.

For My yoke is easy [to bear] and My burden is light.

AND even when I try to take back

what I have given Him — HE gently reminds me to leave it where I placed it — before Him — and He continues to carry what I cannot.

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Consider

Grace makes genuine repentance possible.

What if this next year could become your own Pondosity Year of Grace and Truth?

A year of curiosity,

a year of pondering,

a year of gentle turning,

a year of returning to Love…

to the Love of your Creator —

to the beauty He formed in you —

because you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

💜💜💜