Steadfast Love
Emotional safety began with visibility, the chance to reflect and be seen. He says,“For me, emotional safety looked like having visibility for reflection of my emotions and experience,” he explains. His mother often checked in with him after school, not in passing but with intention. “There was room for exploring feelings when my mom would check in with me after I was home from school. She knew how to be persistent but not in an overbearing way. She also provided a healthy space and then would revisit it if needed.”
As he grew older, those conversations changed shape. “These convos looked different after I reached preteen-teen years as my own understanding of self-image made it so that I was very defensive and introverted with how I felt about the big things in life.” He recognizes now how those shifts marked the beginning of self-protection, the quiet building of inner walls.
His upbringing, he says, “has significantly shaped the way I express emotion today.” From his mother he learned that delivery is key and that expressing feelings is “a treasure,” requiring consistency and patience. Over the years, those lessons became cornerstones of how he listens, communicates, and builds relationships. “Knowing that people are different,” he says, “you must contour and respond to people in different ways to make safe connections.”
When speaking of intimacy, his tone turns thoughtful. “Intimacy is trust with transparency,” he says. “It can be scary but very powerful.” He reflects on the way culture often narrows intimacy to the physical and how faith expanded that meaning. “Sometimes we forget that we are whole beings, not just random parts slapped together that we can compartmentalize.” He has learned that spiritual and emotional honesty are inseparable. “It’s a big commitment to live with a facade,” he says quietly, “but sometimes the comfort of it all makes it so that we won’t fix what isn’t broken.”
He likens intimacy to a lifelong process of unlearning and relearning. “As a child it was easy,” he says, “but as you get older, you give yourself to people in different ways. They can take advantage of you, abuse, or mistreat you, and this can cause permanent damage.” Even so, he believes in restoration. “I believe when God brings healing and when you can trust, intimacy of any kind is very rewarding, especially in this world of counterfeits and pretense. With God, true intimacy gets easier as time goes on, not because of the condition but because it’s based on His unmovable character.”
He mentions Genesis 25:27 for reflection: “As the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents.” That verse reminds him of identity and difference. How one’s environment and personality are shaped through inheritance and calling.
“Because I was more emotionally inclined, I was teased and bullied by my sibling and at school by others,” he recalls. “I didn’t like sports or sneakers. I liked drawing and comics and being creative. I liked to talk.” He smiles as he adds, “These are things that can be frowned upon or questioned in the culture, but they are still good. What God created to be good in you can be used against you if it doesn’t fit the norm people expect.”
The story of his family is one of survival and adaptation. “My father did not have the tools, respectfully, to pour into me in an emotionally expressive way, he did not receive that either,” he explains. His grandparents came from Puerto Rico to New York, bringing both strength and generational pain. “My grandmother was abused as a child and came from a broken home. She wasn’t very nurturing. My grandpa was kind, easygoing, and friendly, I can see a lot of that in my father.”
Those early dynamics shaped his father’s way of being. “There was no space or time to explore feelings and emotion,” he says, “so no priority, you basically had to find a way to minimize and get over it.” Over time, he has come to see how survival itself can teach silence. “When you’re just trying to survive, feelings just get in the way.”
Still, healing runs through his family line. “My mom somehow came out of a broken home, single parent, low income, same survival instincts, but was able to hone in on emotionally healthy practices.” He calls her story one of quiet transformation. “With the differences in my home, I gravitated toward the positive, productive things when it came to communication and expression. This has really become an integral part of my person.”
He recognizes that this balance, between inherited silence and learned expression, has not been without struggle. “Although my family is different from the tree we’ve come from, you are still visited by the norms of your family of origin,” he says. “Even for someone like me, who has worked to cultivate clarity in communication and reflection, you still have to sort through the mess of it all.” He pauses, then adds, “The great downfall of family strongholds is waiting at the door.”
That awareness keeps him intentional. “It’s easy to fall into self-preservation,” he says, “to hold back small details that could help share the bigger picture because you’re afraid of rejection or judgment.” Overcoming that fear has been a journey. “My ability to do this has really enriched my marriage, parenthood, and friendships with parents, siblings, and friends as an adult.”
He now defines emotional honesty in deeply practical terms: “It means being able to identify an emotion you are experiencing and understanding what it means, even if it makes you look foolish.” For him, truth and emotion are inseparable. “The truth is emotions are important, and we have to allow them to hold their rightful place while preventing them from taking the highest priority.”
Faith remains central. “Glory to God for His Spirit and word that bring truth and clarity to our lives,” he says. When emotions run high, he turns again to prayer and presence. “The Lord, of course, is our help. We cannot do this on our own…”
He states, “I am not who I used to be,” he says. “Thank God for that. I feel more myself after years of fighting against false identities. The truth is freeing when it comes to having peace with who you are and how you interact with others.”
In that peace, he has found a rhythm of faith and reflection — learning that transparency does not weaken a man but restores him. Each step toward honesty, each word spoken instead of withheld, is another layer of inheritance being redeemed.
And with quiet assurance, he adds what might be the truest mark of his growth:
“My confidence in God’s promises and the hope of His word helps me understand I don’t need to protect myself. I can be transparent and vulnerable.
It doesn’t mean I will be defeated; the truth is very powerful and learning that has been very freeing when it comes to having peace with who you are and how you interact with others.”
In his words, you can hear what it means for a man to be both steady and surrendered, one who has learned that peace is not the absence of emotion, but the presence of God within it.
(Philippians 4:7, AMP)
“And the peace of God [that peace which reassures the heart, that peace] which transcends all understanding, stands guard over your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”
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