A SEAT AT THE TABLE OF KINDNESS

When marital trauma packs the soil of our hearts with bitterness, the Holy Spirit enters the dark to do the gentle, devastating work of kindness.

Welcome to a special collaborative edition! Today, Laura Lynch, the insightful voice behind Beneath the Surface—a publication dedicated to sharing how the ‘Son’ breaks through our hidden places to restore what feels lost—joins me. Laura invited me to team with her to explore the theme of kindness. This is the fifth in her series on the Fruits of the Spirit. You can read our collaborative piece below, and if you appreciate Laura’s beautiful testimony, please take a moment to subscribe to Beneath the Surface on Substack to ensure you never miss her other inspiring articles.

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In the Soil of My Affliction…

a poetic reflection by JN Fenwick

In the soil of my affliction,

grew bitterness so deep.

Fed by my unwillingness,

to allow the light to reach,

the darkness that consumed me,

so sure my discontent,

would be the only fruit to grow,

in this garden of contempt.

I clung to my resentment,

fed the soil with fear,

I almost missed His presence,

when the Spirit of Truth drew near.

Not with condemnation,

but with mercy that proclaimed,

“With kindness I will feed this soil,

so it will breathe again.”

The garden I had fed with lies,

began to bring forth fruit,

blossoms filled with kindness,

where my disdain once grew.

Kindness that did not require,

perfection to generate,

a field that bore forgiveness,

and fed the soil with grace.

It drew me to the table,

where its bounty fed,

the seeds of grace the Spirit

had planted there instead.

JN Fenwick (©2026)

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The Town of Nothing and a Seat at the Table

a beautiful testimony by Laura Lynch

The dust cloud on the horizon of Lo-debar always meant the same thing. Death.

For as long as I could remember, I had been waiting for that dust. In the town of Nothing—a barren outpost whose very name meant “no word”—I had lived my life as a ghost.

I was five years old when the world cracked open. I still remembered the echoes of the screaming in the palace corridors, the breathless panic of my nursemaid as she whispered that my father Jonathan and grandfather Saul were dead. I remembered the sudden, violent drop—the sickening snap in both my ankles as we hit the stone floor in our flight.

My bones healed crookedly, leaving me permanently anchored to the ground.

I couldn’t run.

I couldn’t fight.

And in the ancient world, a crippled prince of a fallen dynasty is nothing more than a loose thread waiting to be cut.

I knew the rules of the kingdom.

I knew that David had taken the throne. And I knew that standard royal protocol dictated my execution. To the new king, I wasn’t a person; I was a rival lineage, a potential spark for rebellion. So, I hid my face, crawled through the dirt of Lo-debar, and waited for the day the King’s men would finally track me down.

And then, the day arrived. The heavy thud of royal sandals echoed outside my door. I was hoisted into a chariot, unable to stand on my own two feet, and carried all the way to the grand palace of Jerusalem.

When I was pushed into the throne room, I did the only thing a dead man could do: I collapsed into the dirt, pressing my face against the floorboards, waiting for the sword. I called myself a dead dog because that is exactly how the world, and my own terror, had defined me.

But the sword never came.

Instead, a voice broke through the suffocating silence. “Do not fear,” King David said, “for I will surely show you kindness…”

The King didn’t look at my useless feet; he looked at his covenant with my father, Jonathan.

He didn’t rewrite my past, but he structurally altered my present.

David pulled me out of the suffocating dirt of Lo-debar and gave me a permanent seat at his royal table, treating me like one of his own sons.

He answered my terror with an unyielding, stubborn covenant loyalty—one that looks at a broken, hiding rival and decides to cradle them instead of crushing them.

Long before the Apostle Paul penned his famous letter to the Galatians, this was the historical landscape of Kindness.

When Paul lists kindness (chrēstotēs) as a fruit of the Spirit, his mind is anchored deep in the Hebrew word David was practicing that afternoon in the palace: Chesed.

It is a kindness that does not wait for someone to earn it.

It is a kindness that actively softens a harsh environment so the broken can breathe.

For years in my own life, I lived in my own version of Lo-debar.

When the foundation of my marriage gave way, and I suffered an emotional break, I found myself buried in the dark soil of trauma and anger.

Like Mephibosheth hyper-focusing on the threat of the king, I spent months hyper-focusing on my husband’s flaws and missteps. I had packed the soil around my heart so tightly with bitterness that I was suffocating. I wanted out of the marriage. I wanted to run, but like that fallen prince, I was paralyzed by my own damage.

I thought God brought me into the dark room of counsel to execute judgment on the excuses I used to prove my case.

I expected the sword.

But Kindness is the Holy Spirit entering our dark, compacted soil and gently aerating the ground around us. When I prayed, “God, please don’t let me go,” the Holy Spirit didn’t join me in pointing fingers at my husband’s flaws. Instead, the Spirit did something far more devastating and beautiful:

He turned the mirror toward me.

Slowly, silently, the light of His truth illuminated the hard, unrenewed, angry shell of my own heart. And in a beautiful, painful twist of grace, seeing my own brokenness didn’t crush me. It leveled the ground.

I realized my husband and I weren’t a victim and a villain; we were just two flawed people, two Mephibosheths, buried in the same dirt, both desperately trying to reach the sun.

When the Holy Spirit cradled my angry soul with His Chesed, the ground softened. And for the first time in years, I could breathe enough to pull up a chair at the table and offer my husband the exact same grace, the same Chesed, I had just been given.

A Moment for the Soil

True kindness (chrēstotēs) isn’t a superficial smile; it is the Holy Spirit gently loosening the heavy, packed clay of our self-defense so that grace can take root. If you find yourself hidden in a dark season today, take a moment to look at the ground around you.

• Where are you hyper-focusing on the “soil”? Are you so consumed by the flaws, missteps, or offenses of the person across from you that you’ve forgotten to look at the condition of your own heart?
• What would it look like to drop your excuses? If you stopped using your pain to prove your case, what hidden spaces in your soul is the Holy Spirit trying to aerate and soften?
• Who needs your Chesed today? Is there a “Mephibosheth” in your life—someone flawed, broken, or defensive—who needs you to pull up a chair for them at the table, offering the same unearned loyalty God has offered you?

Leave a comment below. Let’s process the hidden work of the dirt together.

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JN Fenwick (©2026) | mothjournal14 | Laura Lynch (©2026) | Beneath the Surface | All rights reserved. | I DO NOT WALK THIS RECOVERY JOURNEY ALONE.

Laura Lynch is the author of the forthcoming book, When the Son Breaks Through. You can visit her on Substack, where she shares her journey of healing and grace through the Light of Christ.