All of a sudden, she sped up quickly, threw her car into reverse, and PLOWED into this other guy’s car. Right in front of me.

It was traumatic to witness; I called 911. I was shaken. I was going to play that night and wasn’t sure if I could sit through it because my nervous system was a mess. It was wild. It was terrifying.

And so, before I say what I am about to say, let me remind you that I am a highly responsible mom, wife, pastor, adult, etc.

I totally get it.

There is this part of me that wants to know what it would feel like to just ram into another car with rage.

We saw the new Spider-Man movie recently, and the Hulk was in it - I totally relate to the Hulk. I am this mild-mannered Bruce Banner, but underneath I have a low-level anger, and I think it would feel so good to just HULK SMASH STUFF. PUMMEL IT TO THE GROUND.

You might not be as insane as me, but...if you’re being honest with your own interior examination, there’s a quiet anger just under the surface, isn’t there?

There while you scroll.

There when you read about a powerful person walking away from something that destroyed someone vulnerable.

There when you watch the news.

There when you hear about corruption, abuse of power, violence against the vulnerable.

There in a workplace or school situation where the wrong person got blamed.

There in a disappointing relationship.

There because you witnessed something you can’t unsee, and nobody seems to be taking it seriously.

Of course, most of us don’t say any of this out loud. But we feel it — This is not right. Someone should answer for this.

A lot of us are carrying something like that right now — something that makes us wonder whether anyone with actual power, anyone who can actually do something, is paying attention – or even cares.

So what do we do with this kind of anger?

1) We can suppress it — smile, slap a Bible verse over it, and move on.

2) We can ruminate — rebuild the case, rehearse our witty comebacks at 2 am (I am so good at this.)

3) We can let it out sideways — post about it, vent it out into our relationships, ram into cars in parking garages - let it leak into everything around us.

Most of us oscillate somewhere among those three.

But what if there’s another way?

If you aren’t familiar, allow me to introduce you to the Imprecatory Lament Psalms.

The word Imprecation means “curse.” These psalm-prayers call on God to bring a curse down…to bring justice against evil. They are bold. They are specific and shocking. And they are deeply faithful. They assume evil is real. They assume injustice matters to God and that God alone can set things right.

Let’s take a quick look at some of Psalm 94:

“The Lord is a God who avenges. O God who avenges, shine forth…pay back to the proud what they deserve. …God will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the lord our God will destroy them.”

Umm…not the sweetest of prayers.

Pastor and author of The Message Bible, Eugene Peterson, described the imprecatory psalms as teaching us “how to cuss without cussing.” (Now, some of us like to cuss with cussing, but the point is the same.) When a situation is egregious, it calls for language that matches the emotion — prayer language that is raw, unfiltered, and refuses to pretend everything is fine.

Imprecatory Psalms are rage-prayers.

The imprecatory psalms give full emotional force to the worst thing you want to say.

When was the last time you prayed honestly? When was the last time you rage-prayed? Not the “acceptable” version of the prayer. The real one — the HULK SMASH one.

• Maybe it’s time to get real in prayer about that person who wronged you and never apologized — you’ve been praying the appropriate version for months while the real version is eating away at you.

• Maybe it’s a situation where you watched someone who didn’t deserve it get rewarded, and your prayers about it have been so sanitized they don’t even sound like you.

• Maybe someone cut you off in a metaphorical parking garage, and you’ve been praying, “Lord, help me love them,” but the honest prayer is, “Lord, I want to throw it in reverse!”

• Maybe you stopped praying altogether about something because you didn’t trust that the angry version was allowed.

If you find yourself suppressing, ruminating, or letting your anger out sideways – pick up the imprecatory psalms. Pray them aloud. Journal through them. Make these words your own.

They’ve been written for you by God as a healthy way to voice your anger. And they remind us that someone does see. You do not have to carry this alone. You can be real and raw with the God who loves every part of you - even the Hulk-ish parts.

God sees. God cares. God will act. One day, God will make all wrongs right. His perfect justice will prevail. In the meantime? He will comfort you with His presence as you pour out your anger to him.

“When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your unfailing love, LORD, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.” - Psalm 94:18-19

(For more on Psalm 94 and rage-praying, you can watch my sermon on the imprecatory psalms here.)

A few years ago, Kevin started buying these really good sponges, Scrub Daddy and Scrub Mommy. (Thank you, Shark Tank!) Sponges—even good ones—weren’t designed to hold water forever. A sponge that’s never wrung out becomes heavy. It smells funky. It loses its purpose. It can’t absorb anything new.

It’s not a perfect metaphor, but perhaps you find yourself holding the weight of something that was never yours to carry. No one asked if you had the strength to hold it. You never even thought to ask yourself.

Here’s my guess…you carried it well, didn’t you?

That’s the thing about absorbers - we are so dang good at the job.

We stay when others leave. We show up to hard conversations. We do others’ emotional work for them. We absorb shrapnel. We hold it in our bodies. And we start to believe that’s good, godly even. We start to believe that love requires this of us. We start to believe we were designed and destined to be sponges.

Can I just say? It’s okay if you need to wring some stuff out.

You needing a break from all you’ve been carrying; you pausing a moment to breathe or differentiate, or release it all — this does not imply that you’ve failed at compassion or empathy or leadership or parenting or your calling. Do you know what it means?

It means you’re human and you’ve held more than you are meant to.

So, blessed are you, sponge-hearted one. You have retained what others could not. Now, may you wring out all you’ve been absorbing, especially what is not yours to carry, to the One who has the unending capacity to hold it.

"Pile your troubles on God’s shoulders—he’ll carry your load, he’ll help you out. He’ll never let good people topple into ruin." -Psalm 55:22 (MSG)

If you are holding more than you can name - for yourself or for the small people in your life- I wrote What We Find in the Dark and Big Feelings Days for you- for the grief we absorb and the feelings that need somewhere to go. Find them wherever books are sold, borrowed, or listened to (or hover over the titles and click the links).

P.S: Check out my Instagram - @aubsamp - for a blessing for all you’ve absorbed.

I have been calling these “the wobbly days”.

They’re not dark nights of the soul — they don’t carry that particular weight or that particular absence. Nothing has collapsed. There’s no acute crisis to name or navigate. It’s subtler than that. It’s the days when you feel less sure of yourself than you’d like, less steady than you expected to, less certain that you’re doing any of this — the work, the relationships, the leadership, the faith, the ordinary demands of a life — with anything close to the competence you’re supposed to have by now. The days when functioning feels like more of an effort than it should.

The wobbly days are usually trying to tell us something. They are not necessarily a signal that everything needs to change. But they are an invitation — if you can slow down long enough to receive it — to ask what’s actually happening underneath the surface. What are you carrying that you haven’t yet named? What shifted recently that you haven’t had the space to grieve? What are you holding together with sheer will that might need to be surrendered to God?

In our wobbly seasons, Jesus is never put off by unsteadiness.

He didn’t require his disciples to have their footing steady before he showed up. He walked toward them in the middle of storms — not after the storms had passed. He entered locked rooms where they had hidden themselves in fear — not after they worked up the courage to open the door. He made breakfast on the beach for Peter, the one who had denied him three times, and he didn’t lead with correction or disappointment; he led with bread and fish and a fire and a restorative question so gentle it could only have come from Love.

I think about that a lot. The way Jesus consistently moved toward people in their most undone moments — not as a strategy, not to make a point, but because that is simply who he is.

His invitation has never been come to me once you’ve steadied yourself. It has always been simply, come. In the middle of it. With the wobble. With the uncertainty. With the parts of you that haven’t caught up yet. There is room here for all of it.

We were not meant to find sure footing on our own. Our roots going deep isn’t about achieving perfect balance — it’s about being anchored to Jesus, whose steadiness becomes, over time, the ground beneath our feet.

And maybe? This wobbly season is calling something forth in you that steadier ground never could.

A Blessing for the Wobbly Ones

May you stop waiting to feel steady before you take the next step. Steadiness is not always a prerequisite. Sometimes it is the reward.

May you find that wobbling is not weakness — it’s what it looks like to be honest about the weight you’re actually carrying instead of pretending it isn’t there.

May you resist the comparison to everyone around you who looks sure of themselves. They are also wobbling. They are just quieter about it.

May someone see your unsteadiness today and not think less of you — but recognize themselves, exhale a little, and feel less alone.

May you be patient with the parts of you that haven’t caught up yet — the parts that are still processing, still adjusting, still finding their footing in ground that shifted without warning.

May you discover that you don’t have to perform certainty to lead, to parent, to love, to show up. You are allowed to be mid-wobble and still be present.

May the ground beneath your feet — even the ground that feels unsteady — be more solid than you think. The One is holding you be stronger than your fear that nothing is.

May you bring your wobble to Jesus, who is not surprised by it, not disappointed by it, not waiting for you to steady yourself before drawing close. You are carried here. Exactly as you are.

And may you be gentle with yourself in this unsteady season — trusting that something is being formed in you that steadiness alone could never produce. This season is not wasted. It is calling something forth. It is an invitation to become.

I’ve been in it. More than once. And the thing no one told me — the thing I had to learn the hard way — is that the dark night is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is often a sign that something is going deeper.

That doesn’t make it easier. But it changed how I held it.

What I’ve found is that the dark night is not a place God abandons us to. It’s a place God meets us in — but differently than we’re used to. Not with the lights on. Not with the answers lined up. Just with presence. Just with holding. Just with the strange, stubborn fact that we are not as alone as we feel.

I wrote What We Find in the Dark for the people in the middle of it. For the ones who are too tired to pretend they’re fine, too honest to reach for easy comfort, too far in to find their way back to who they were before. If that’s you, I hope it finds you.

A Blessing for the Ones in the Dark…

May you resist the pressure to perform your way out of this. Not every darkness is a problem to be solved. Some of it is a place to be inhabited.

May you stop apologizing for how long this is taking. The night has its own timeline, and it has never once consulted your recovery schedule.

May you find, in the place where certainty has left you, that something older and truer is still holding on — not to your explanations, but to you.

May the silence that used to frighten you begin to feel, even slightly, like a kind of company. You are not alone in the not-knowing. You never were.

May the dark not be a sign of absence but of depth — the kind that only comes when the noise finally stops and the questions get honest.

May someone around you have the courage to sit with you here instead of handing you answers you didn’t ask for. And may you find, in their presence, an echo of the One who has never once left the dark to wait for you somewhere brighter.

May you find that the faith you thought you were losing was only being stripped of its performance — and that what remains is more real than what was there before.

May you be gentle with yourself in the not-yet. In the waiting. In the middle.

You are not lost. You are being found in a different way than you expected — and that is allowed to be hard and holy at the same time.

What We Find in the Dark is available wherever books are sold, borrowed, or listened to. If you’re in a season like this, I wrote it for you. Order yours here.

The slower pace. The unscheduled afternoon. The book open on the porch with nowhere to be. I’ve been looking at my calendar like it will give me permission — like if the margin is justified enough, the rest becomes legitimate.

Which tells me something…

Somewhere along the way, I absorbed the idea that rest is earned. That delight is what happens after the work is done. That an exhale is something you get, not something you take. I’ve organized a lot of my life around trying to deserve the good things rather than receive them.

But that’s not how gifts work.

There’s a moment in the Psalms (127) where the writer describes God giving sleep to the beloved — not to the productive, not to the ones who cleared their inbox first, not to the ones who checked off every item on the to-do list. To the beloved. Sleep, rest, the ceasing of striving — these are given by God, not unlocked by our effort. They don’t arrive after sufficient output. They’re woven into the fabric of what it means to be loved.

Which means that rest isn’t something we work toward. It’s a reality we exist inside of.

This is harder than it sounds. The discomfort of slowing is real. When the pace drops, things come up — feelings that were moving too fast for you to catch, questions you didn’t have space to ask, grief you’d been outrunning.

Stillness is not automatically peaceful. Sometimes it’s an ambush.

But that’s part of what summer offers, if we let it. Not escape from our lives, but a slower encounter with them. A chance to actually feel what we’ve been carrying. To let something put us back in our bodies — a slow evening, a good meal, the particular quality of light at 8pm in June.

These are not frivolous things. They are the means by which we stay human, and the means by which we connect, intimately, with Jesus.

I wrote a blessing this year for summer — for the ones who, like me, needed someone to say it plainly: you are allowed to have this. Not because you finished everything. Not because you figured it all out. But because you are a human being (not a human doing) and beloved beings need rest, and delight, and unhurried hours.

I hope it finds you wherever you are in this season.

A Blessing for Summer

For the ones who need permission to exhale

May this season hold you differently than the ones before it.

May you put something down — not because you’ve earned the rest, but because rest was always yours to take.

May you find something that makes you slow: a porch, a page, a conversation that has nowhere to be.

May you release the performance of productivity and sit in the ordinary holiness of an evening that asks nothing of you.

May summer teach you again what your body already knows — that you are not just a function. That you were made for pleasure, too. For light. For warmth. For unhurried hours.

May you let yourself be delighted. May something catch you off guard with beauty. May you laugh at something foolish and feel, for a moment, free.

And when fall returns with its demands — may you carry a little of this with you: the memory of your own exhale, proof that you were here, unhurried, alive.

You are allowed to have a summer.

So go — soak up the goodness, drink it all in.

Amen.

Most women are. We dress it up as faithfulness — as servanthood, surrender, laying down our lives. And some of it was/is. But some of it was/is just fear.

Fear that our wanting is too much, too loud, too inconvenient for the spaces we are trying to fit into. So we get quiet about it. We learn to want on behalf of other people and call that enough.

I am starting to wonder if that isn’t holiness. Maybe? It is a slow disappearing act.

So…what do you want?

Not what do you need to get done. Not what does your family need, or your church, or your organization. Not what are you supposed to want, or what is the appropriately humble, appropriately selfless, appropriately acceptable thing to want. What do YOU want?

If you are like me - either you immediately pivot to someone else’s needs (well, I want my kids to be happy, I want our team to thrive), or you go very quiet because you have learned, somewhere along the way, that wanting is dangerous.

Maybe it was overt — someone in authority told you directly that your desires were secondary, selfish, or suspect. Maybe it was subtle — a lifetime of having your ideas talked over, your leadership questioned, your instincts second-guessed, until you stopped trusting what you felt pulling at your soul. Maybe it was theological — a distorted version of servanthood that taught you to disappear into everyone else’s flourishing while your own dried up.

However it happened, the result is the same: your dreamer went underground.

In John 1, it’s the very first thing Jesus says in the entire gospel. Two disciples start following him, and he turns around and asks: “What do you want?” No introduction. No credentials. Just — what do you want? It’s the opening question of his whole ministry.

Then there’s Bartimaeus — blind, roadside, getting shushed by the crowd for making a scene. Jesus stops walking. Calls him over. And asks: “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus already knows. He doesn’t need the information. He’s asking Bartimaeus to name it out loud, in his own voice — as an act of dignity, as an act of agency, as if Jesus cares what Bartimaeus wants, as if the wanting itself matters.

Which perhaps means the problem isn’t that we want too much. Perhaps the problem is that we’ve been taught to go quiet about it — to manage our desires into something smaller and more acceptable — and we’ve called that faithfulness. Jesus, apparently, wants something different — Jesus wants us to bring our wants, dreams, longings to him — so that he can carry, shape, and transform them into what he wants for us.

So here’s what I want to ask you:

What would the girl you used to be want for the woman you’ve become? She didn’t know yet that wanting was dangerous. She hadn’t learned to make herself small. What was she reaching for?

What have you been settling for — and what does that tell you about what you actually long for? We often can’t name the dream. But we can name the deflation. That slow, quiet ache. That thing you avoid thinking about too hard. That ache is a map. Where does it point?

I’m writing a book about women, leadership, agency, and authority (to release in 2027). About what it looks like to stop waiting for permission you were never required to ask for in the first place. About recovering the self that got quieted — not in a #girlboss, hustle-your-way-to-the-top way, but in the deeper, slower, more theologically honest way. The way of women who lead not to prove something, but because they are called to something.

And I keep coming back to this: before a woman can recover her agency, she has to be able to name what she wants. Before she can lead from her calling, she has to believe her calling is real — that her desire is not a distraction from faithfulness, but often the very shape of it.

The permission problem isn’t just institutional. It’s internal. It lives in the nervous system, in the voice that edits every longing before it reaches the surface.

So this is your invitation — and your dare.

Name it. Right now. Don’t edit. Don’t qualify. Don’t explain.

One sentence. No but I know it’s selfish or it’s probably not realistic. Just the raw, unpolished, first-draft version of what you want.

What is it?

I’d love to hear your answer — drop it in the comments, or just sit with it. Either way, I wonder if God is less afraid of your wanting than you’ve been taught to believe.

That’s easy to gloss over. Many of us know the story well, so we miss the ache embedded in it. God told David plainly: this isn’t yours to finish. The vision was his. The longing was his. He gathered the materials, drew up the plans, built the teams, dreamed the dream in extraordinary detail. But the temple itself? That would belong to his son.

Near the end of his life, David called Solomon close and handed him something unfinished, speaking this over him:

“Take charge! Take heart! Don’t be anxious or get discouraged. God, my God, is with you in this. He won’t walk off and leave you in a lurch.” (1 Chronicles 28:20, MSG)

I’ve been sitting with this passage lately, trying to read it slowly, and imagine it — a leader handing over the blueprints to another leader — for something neither of them fully understood yet. There’s grief in it. There’s also a kind of fierce, clear-eyed hope and love. David didn’t pretend it would be easy. He didn’t minimize the weight of what Solomon was about to carry. He simply stated: you are not alone in this. God goes with you into the unfinished.

Most of us are holding something unfinished right now.

A relationship that hasn’t resolved. A calling that hasn’t clarified. A prayer that hasn’t been answered. A community, a project, a dream — something we’ve poured ourselves into that remains stubbornly incomplete. And in that in-between space, the temptation is to either force an ending or let go entirely. To manufacture resolution or walk away from the weight.

But Scripture points to a third way: stay.

Take heart. Not because the outcome is certain, but because God’s Presence is.

He won’t walk off and leave you in a lurch.

That line undoes me because it uncovers what fear of the unresolved actually feels like — we are worried that God will grow tired of our unfinished places, our slow progress, our inability to just get there already. Worried that God will abandon us.

Yet into that fear, the promise lands as a quiet, steady word to us — directly from the heart of God: I’m not going anywhere.

Friend, you don’t have to have it figured out. You don’t have to see the finished temple to keep laying the stones.

And yet something is gone.

Maybe it’s a friendship that has quietly shifted into something unrecognizable. A role you’re still showing up for but have already begun to lose. A community that meant everything to you, changed into something you no longer know how to inhabit. A version of yourself you are slowly, reluctantly releasing.

Whatever it is — you are grieving. Even if you can’t say it out loud yet. Even if the thing you’re grieving is still technically present, still breathing in the next room.

There’s a term for this. Psychologists call it disenfranchised grief — grief that doesn’t get socially recognized or validated. Grief without a ritual. Loss without a name. It is the kind of sorrow that leaves you feeling not just sad, but strangely invisible — because the people around you don’t know to ask, don’t know to show up, may not even know something has happened at all.

And that invisibility is its own kind of loss.

Many of us are living in this particular grief right now. Maybe you’ve been carrying it for months without quite knowing what to call it. What I want to say to you is this: unnamed grief is still real grief. The absence of language doesn’t mean the absence of loss. As the absence of a casserole doesn’t mean the absence of God.

Which is the thing I keep coming back to.

The wilderness in scripture is not a metaphor for failure. It is actual terrain — disorienting, yes, but not abandoned. Not outside of God’s story. The Israelites didn’t wander the wilderness because God had forgotten them. They wandered it because there was no other way to get where they were going, no other way to be formed into a faithful people. The wilderness was the route.

Some grief is like that. Not a detour. But the actual path we must walk.

And the God of the in-between is not waiting for you at the other side of this. God is already here, in the middle of it, before you have words for it, before anyone else knows to ask.

So I wrote a blessing for the grief we can’t explain yet. For the loss that has no date, no announcement, no flowers on the doorstep. For the in-between that is harder than anyone around you knows.

A Blessing for the Loss You Cannot Name

Blessed are you who are grieving something you cannot yet explain — whose loss has no date, no announcement, no casserole on the doorstep. No one has brought flowers. No one knows to. You are mourning something that is still technically here, still breathing in the next room, and yet. And yet.

Blessed are you in the in-between, in the space that is no longer what it was and not yet what it will become. Something is ending that has not ended yet. Something is gone that has not left. You have not arrived at the other side of this. You are still in it, still waking up to it, still catching yourself mid-sentence before remembering.

May you be released from the pressure to name it before it is ready to be named. May you be released from the expectation that your grief should look a certain way, resolve on a certain timeline, make sense to the people around you. The people closest to you may not even know you are grieving.

You are not lost. You are in the wilderness — and the wilderness, however unwelcoming, is still held ground. The God of the in-between is not absent. The God of not-yet, of slow-dawning, of presence-before-resolution is here. God has been here before you. And knows the way through even when you cannot see it.

So grieve what is grieving. Let it be unfinished. Let it be unnamed. You do not have to perform okayness. You do not have to arrive before you arrive.

Know that you are seen — fully, tenderly — in the middle of it, not just on the other side.

They didn’t have a liturgical calendar on the wall. No one handed them a bulletin that said this is Holy Saturday, hold on. There was no pastor hyping them up with a shout of, “Sunday’s comin’!”

They just had the unmitigated weight of Friday, and the muteness—the vague void—of the Saturday that followed.

They didn’t know it was the day between crucifixion and resurrection. To them, it was just the day after the most soul-crushing day they had ever known.

We tend to move pretty quickly from the grief of Good Friday to the triumph of Easter Sunday, which I understand — Sunday is glorious! Sunday is the whole point! — but I wonder if we rush past Saturday a little too fast. I wonder if we skip the part of the story where the tomb is still sealed, where hope feels naive, where the people who loved Jesus most are simply trying to survive the hours.

Because some of us are in a long season of Saturdays.

Some of us are in the middle of something that has ended but not yet resolved. The marriage that fell apart. The diagnosis that rearranged everything. The calling that seemed so clear until it didn’t. The community that broke. The dream that died and hasn’t shown any signs of waking up.

We’re in that liminal, aching space — after the loss but before whatever comes next — and we’re doing what the disciples did: trying to hold ourselves together, trying to breathe, trying to remember who we were before everything changed.

And we are doing it without knowing how the story ends.

I find this strangely comforting: The disciples weren’t pretending. They weren’t performing faith they didn’t feel. They weren’t rushing to a theological framework that would make it all make sense. They were just — in it. Just there. Grieving. Confused. Afraid. Sitting with a loss so large they couldn’t feel their way to the edges of it.

And Jesus didn’t fault them for it.

Jesus came to them anyway. Through locked doors and sealed logic, Jesus showed up in the middle of their grief. And Sunday broke open right there in the room with them (John 20).

If you’re there now, friend— if the tomb in your story is still sealed, if hope feels like a language you used to speak but can’t quite access right now — I want to say this gently, without rushing you toward a resolution:

You don’t have to know it’s Holy Saturday to be living in it.

The disciples didn’t know. And the story was still moving. Sunday was still coming.

The God who brings dead things to life, who overcomes the grave, who abolishes darkness, who exchanges ashes for abundance, that God is at work in your Saturday—in the silence, in the sealed places, in the rooms where people have given up.

Even if you can’t see it, feel it, or believe it yet, you are living inside a story that has a Sunday.

(This is the second in a two-part series of reflections on some of the unrecorded hours of Jesus surrounding Holy Week. Read last week’s here.)

We know he was in Bethany — John places him there, six days before Passover, at a table with Lazarus and Martha and Mary. We know Mary anointed him, poured something costly over his feet, and the room filled with the scent of it. We know Judas objected. We know a crowd had gathered outside because word had spread about Lazarus, and the chief priests were already plotting — not just against Jesus, but against Lazarus too, because his being alive was bad for their narrative.

We know all of that. And then the next thing we know, Jesus comes to Jerusalem on a donkey. The crowd is waving branches and shouting Hosanna and the whole city is in an uproar.

But the many hours in between?

They went unrecorded.

I’ve been sitting with these unrecorded hours.

The orders were already out — John tells us the chief priests and Pharisees had instructed that anyone who knew where Jesus was should report it (John 11:57). The city was watching. The week ahead was already, in some sense, written. Jesus was moving through a world that was methodically closing in on him — and yet he was doing some seemingly ordinary things. Eating. Resting. Being with people he loved. Letting a woman anoint him before anyone understood why it mattered.

Jesus didn’t spend that time strategizing, managing, over-functioning, defending himself, or trying to control the narrative. He was just — present. Unhurried. At a table in Bethany, inside a story that was about to cost him everything.

Maybe nobody wrote down all of the details because they didn’t look like anything.

Some of us know that kind of day — the ordinary ones inside an extraordinarily painful season. The ones where you’re still showing up, still at the table, still trying to be present and faithful though you are barely hanging on.

Jesus inhabited ordinary hours that nobody wrote down, nobody saw, nobody remarked on - which means he also inhabits yours. And because he does, that means your quiet faithfulness counts. Your staying at the table counts. Your showing up to something “normal” inside of something grievous - well, that counts too.

None of it is lost. None of it goes unwitnessed by God.

And, friend, you are not responsible to make these hours mean something.

Because Jesus is already there, making them holy.

(This is the first in a two-part series of reflections on some of the unrecorded hours of Holy Week. Next: the Saturday after the cross — and what it means to grieve without knowing you’re inside a resurrection story.)

That’s the realization that hit me a few months ago, sitting in yet another meeting where I’d talked myself out of saying what I actually thought. Where I’d defaulted to the safe response instead of the honest one. Where I’d chosen self-protection over courage.

The barrier wasn’t the people in the room. It wasn’t the circumstances. It wasn’t even unclear direction from God.

It was me.

And that’s the hardest barrier to face—because you can’t escape yourself. You can’t leave the room when you’re the problem. You can’t wait for circumstances to change when the real obstacle is internal.

Self-sabotage is sneaky. It doesn’t announce itself.

We tell ourselves we’re “waiting for clarity” when really we’re avoiding risk. We say we’re “being realistic” when really we’re protecting ourselves from disappointment. We claim we’re “not ready yet” when really we’re afraid of what happens if we try and fail.

We overthink until we’re paralyzed. We second-guess every instinct. We talk ourselves out of what we know is true because listening would require us to change.

And the cruelest part? We do this while genuinely believing we want to grow, want to lead well, want to become who God is calling us to be.

But wanting isn’t the same as allowing.

Internal Narratives that Hold Us Back

I’ve been paying attention to the stories I tell myself. The ones that run on repeat in the background of my mind:

“You’re not qualified enough for this.”

“If they really knew you, they’d see you’re a fraud.”

“You’re too much.”

These aren’t just passing thoughts. They’re narratives that shape what I attempt, what I believe is possible, what I think I deserve.

And? Some of these stories have roots in real experiences. Real wounds. Real failures. They’re not completely made up.

But they’re also not the whole truth. And when we let them become the dominant voice, they become the barrier.

So why do we do this? Why do we get in our own way?

Maybe because it feels safer. If I never really try, I never really fail. If I keep my dreams small, I can’t be devastated when they don’t come true. If I stay hidden, I can’t be rejected.

But the cost is enormous. We play small to avoid pain, and we end up living half-lives. We protect ourselves from failure, but we also protect ourselves from the fullness of what God wants to give us.

Think about Moses at the burning bush. God called him. Clearly. Undeniably.

And Moses’ response? A litany of self-barriers.

“Who am I to go?” (I’m not qualified.) “What if they don’t believe me?” (I’m afraid of rejection.) “I’m not eloquent. I’m slow of speech.” (I’m not capable enough.)

Moses got in his own way. His self-doubt, his fear, his focus on his limitations—all barriers to the calling right in front of him.

God’s response is telling: He didn’t fix Moses’ limitations. He didn’t make him suddenly eloquent or erase his fears. He just said, “I will be with you.”

The barrier wasn’t Moses’ actual limitations. It was his belief that those limitations disqualified him.

So how do we stop being our own barrier? I am not entirely sure; this is a lifelong work. But here are a few thoughts:

1. Name the narratives. You can’t dismantle what you won’t acknowledge. What stories are you telling yourself? Write them down. Say them out loud. Examine them in the light.

2. Distinguish between truth and fear. Some of our self-doubt is rooted in reality—we do have limitations. But limitations aren’t disqualifications. Fear will always magnify what we lack and minimize what God provides.

3. Practice self-compassion. When we’re harsh with ourselves, we stay stuck. Shame doesn’t produce growth—it produces hiding. What would it look like to speak to yourself the way you’d speak to someone you love?

4. Take the next step anyway. You don’t have to silence all the doubts before you move. You just have to move despite them. Courage isn’t the absence of fear—it’s obedience in the presence of it.

5. Let others see us. Isolation amplifies our negative self-narratives. When we let trusted people speak truth to us, they can help us see what we can’t see on our own.

Here’s what I’m learning: Getting out of your own way doesn’t mean you suddenly become confident, fearless, and free of doubt.

It means you hear the voice of fear and move forward anyway. You acknowledge your limitations and trust God with them anyway. You feel inadequate and show up anyway.

Because the barrier isn’t your humanity. It’s your belief that your humanity disqualifies you.

The Gentle Questions

So here’s what I want to ask you:

What story are you telling yourself that’s keeping you stuck?

What risk are you avoiding because you’re afraid of what it might reveal about you?

What calling are you talking yourself out of because you can’t see what God sees?

What would it look like to get out of your own way? To trust that God knows what he’s doing—even when you don’t feel qualified, ready, or capable?

As you know well, grief doesn't need to be rushed, fixed, or hidden. It needs a room full of people who understand — and this May, that room exists. If you've been carrying your loss quietly, wondering if there's a place for the weight of it — there is. Come exhale.

I will be speaking at the Grief Grows Here Summit, a space for women navigating grief, to be seen, supported, and restored. This summit is designed to help you find encouragement, connection, and practical tools for your grief journey.

What you’ll gain:

• Insights from 10 incredible speakers

• Faith-rooted encouragement for navigating loss

• A safe space to feel and exhale

• VIP brunch opportunity for deeper connection

The summit takes place in Raleigh NC this May, and VIP access closes March 16.

Save Your Seat: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/grief-grows-here-summit-2026-tickets-1612415751919?aff=oddtdtcreator

I hope to see you there!
Aubrey

I’ve felt that weight more times than I can count. Sitting in meetings where decisions need to be made. Standing in front of a congregation that’s looking for answers. Lying awake at night running through everything that could fall apart if I’m not holding it together.

That sense of weight feels like responsibility. Like faithfulness. Like what good stewardship is supposed to feel like.

But what if it’s something else entirely? What if it’s exceptionalism—the belief that to be a good leader, I have to be exceptional. Extraordinary. Operating at a level above everyone else.

We’ve created a culture that worships this. Leadership conferences celebrate the outliers. Books profile the pastors with explosive growth. Social media amplifies the exceptional stories while the ordinary ones scroll by unnoticed.

And somewhere along the way, we absorbed the message: If you’re not exceptional, you’re not enough.

But what if that’s the real barrier? What if our pursuit of exceptionalism is actually keeping us from the kind of faithful, sustainable leadership God is calling us to?

The Tyranny of the Exceptional

Exceptionalism tells us we need to be more. Do more. Achieve more.

Sacrifice more than is healthy. Over-function so nothing gets dropped. Push past normal human limits—because that’s what great leaders do.

It sounds like devotion. It looks like commitment. But underneath, it’s a lie: Ordinary faithfulness isn’t enough.

So we keep raising the bar. Keep proving ourselves. Keep striving for the exceptional ministry, the exceptional sermon, the exceptional impact—because anything less feels like failure.

And we miss what’s right in front of us: the beauty and power of ordinary faithfulness.

This trap is especially dangerous for leaders because we’re visible. Our work gets measured, compared, evaluated.

And in a world that celebrates the exceptional, it’s easy to believe that’s what we’re supposed to be.

The pastor who planted a church that grew to thousands. The leader who turned around a dying organization. The writer whose book became a bestseller.

Those stories are inspiring. But they’re also the exception, not the rule. And when we make them the standard, we create an impossible metric for faithfulness.

Most of us won’t plant megachurches. Most of us won’t have viral moments or national platforms. Most of us will lead in ordinary ways, in ordinary places, with ordinary resources.

That’s not a consolation prize; that’s the call.

Even Jesus—Jesus(!)—valued the ordinary.

He chose ordinary fishermen, not exceptional scholars. He noticed the widow’s two small coins, not the wealthy donor’s grand gesture. He washed feet—the most ordinary, unglamorous act of service imaginable.

And when he taught about faithfulness, he told stories about farmers planting seeds, women mixing yeast into flour, shepherds tending sheep. Ordinary work. Ordinary rhythms. Ordinary faithfulness over time.

The kingdom doesn’t advance through exceptionalism. It advances through ordinary people doing ordinary things with extraordinary love.

Consider the Apostle Paul’s words: “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Jars of clay. Ordinary. Breakable. Unremarkable.

That’s the point. God’s power shows up most clearly not in our exceptionalism, but in our God-ordained gorgeous-ordinariness.

The Cost of Chasing Exceptional

The pursuit of exceptionalism costs us.

It costs us rest—because exceptional leaders don’t need it (or so we tell ourselves).

It costs us boundaries—because exceptional impact requires exceptional availability.

It costs us community—because we’re too busy being exceptional to be present.

It costs us our humanity—because exceptional feels incompatible with limitation.

And ironically, it often costs us the very thing we’re trying to achieve. Because sustainable, long-term faithfulness doesn’t come from bursts of exceptional effort. It comes from ordinary rhythms practiced over decades.

So, what if ordinary faithfulness is enough?

What if showing up week after week, doing the small things well, loving the people in front of you—what if that matters more than exceptional outcomes?

What if the most powerful leadership isn’t the spectacular kind, but the steady kind? The kind that weathers seasons. The kind that doesn’t burn out. The kind that models health instead of heroics.

What if God is more interested in ordinary obedience than exceptional achievement?

This Week’s Gentle Question

So here’s what I want to ask you: Where are you still chasing exceptionalism?

Where are you measuring your faithfulness by outcomes that require you to be more than human?

Where are you dismissing the ordinary work you’re doing because it doesn’t feel exceptional enough?

You don’t have to be exceptional to be faithful. You don’t have to be extraordinary to partner with God. You don’t have to operate above normal human limits to matter.

The world celebrates the exceptional. But God values the ordinary—a posture and a way—that is faithful, sustainable, and motivated by love.

What would it look like to embrace that?

Marriage has taught me more about myself—and about God—than almost anything else. So here are 25 things I’ve learned along the way:

1. Marriage doesn’t erase your loneliness—it teaches you that being known is better than never feeling alone. There’s a difference between constant company and true companionship.

2. The person you married is not the person you’re married to now. And that’s the point. You grow up together, or you grow apart.

3. “I’m sorry” without changed behavior is just noise. Real apologies include repair.

4. You can’t build a life together if you’re keeping score. Grace isn’t about fairness—it’s about love that doesn’t measure.

5. Shared ministry amplifies everything—the joys and the tensions. Working together means you need even clearer boundaries and better communication.

6. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is tell the truth, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

7. Friendship matters more than romance. Romance is fun. But it comes and goes. Friendship sustains.

8. You will hurt each other. Not because you’re bad at marriage, but because you’re human. The question is whether you’ll do the work to heal.

9. Laughter is underrated. Someone who makes you laugh, even in the hard seasons, is a gift.

10. Your marriage can’t bear the weight of being your everything. You need friends, community, purpose beyond each other.

11. Conflict isn’t the enemy—avoiding conflict is. Learn to fight well - fight for each other, not against.

12. There will be seasons where you’re just surviving, not thriving. That’s okay. Survival is also faithfulness.

13. You can’t “fix” your spouse. But you can create space for them to grow. There’s a difference.

14. Co-laboring in ministry requires being on the same page about sabbath and rest. Otherwise, you’ll both burn out trying to keep up.

15. Date nights (any quality times together) aren’t a luxury—they’re maintenance. You wouldn’t skip oil changes and expect your car to run forever.

16. Sometimes love looks like letting them be sad without trying to fix it. Presence matters more than solutions.

17. Your kids need to see you prioritize each other. It teaches them what healthy love looks like.

18. Forgiveness is a practice, not a moment. Some wounds require you to choose forgiveness over and over again. Rely on Jesus’s unending forgiveness to fill you.

19. Couples therapy is a gift from God. Do not avoid this. Therapy saves marriages.

20. Gratitude is a discipline. It’s easy to focus on what’s frustrating. Choose, contend, fight to notice what’s good.

21. Intimacy matters, even when life is exhausting. It’s connection, not just another task on the list.

22. You won’t always like each other, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love each other. Commitment carries you through the seasons when feelings fail. And loving feelings always return as you continue to choose fidelity.

23. Shared grief either bonds you or breaks you. Choose to grieve together, not alone in the same house.

24. Celebrate the small things. Twenty-five years is made up of ten thousand ordinary days chosen well. They are worth celebrating!

25. Marriage is sanctification in real time. It reveals who you are and invites you to become who God wants you to be—together.

I’m grateful for every year—the beautiful ones and the hard ones. Marriage isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Here’s to twenty-five more years of growing up together.

Maybe you made it a month before the old patterns crept back in. Maybe you didn’t even make it that long. Maybe you’re looking at the gap between who you want to be and who you actually are, and it feels insurmountable.

I know this feeling. The exhaustion of starting over. The shame that whispers: If you really wanted to change, you would have by now.

But what if the barrier isn’t our lack of willpower or commitment? What if the real obstacle is something deeper—something we can’t bootstrap our way past?

Somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed the idea that transformation should be linear. That if we’re truly surrendered to God, change should feel clean and straightforward. One decision, one prayer, one moment of conviction—and we’re different.

But transformation doesn’t work that way. Not in Scripture, and not in our lives.

Think about the Israelites circling in the wilderness. Think about Peter denying Jesus three times, then being invited three times to affirm his love. Think about Paul’s thorn in the flesh, the thing that wouldn’t go away no matter how much he prayed.

The biblical story is full of people who had to begin again. And again. And yet we shame ourselves for needing the same grace.

The Barrier of Shame

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been writing about barriers to leadership and thriving…and today we’re addressing the barrier of shame.

Shame tells us that needing to start over means we’ve failed. That our repeated struggles reveal something fundamentally broken in us that God can’t—or won’t—redeem.

This is a lie, but it’s a powerful one. And it keeps us trapped.

Because when we believe transformation should be easy for “real” Christians, every stumble becomes evidence that we’re not enough. Not faithful enough. Not surrendered enough. Not loved by God enough.

So we either try harder (until we burn out) or give up entirely (convincing ourselves we’re beyond help). Neither response opens us to the slow, patient work God actually wants to do.

Sometimes God allows us to circle back to the same place not because we failed, but because there’s something there we couldn’t see the first time. Or the second. Or the tenth.

Each time we return, we’re different. We know more. We’ve been humbled in new ways. We’re learning what doesn’t work. We’re discovering barriers we didn’t even know were there.

The Israelites weren’t just wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. They were learning to trust a God who provided daily bread instead of stored abundance. They were unlearning Egypt. They were discovering who they were as God’s people.

It took forty years — because some transformations can’t be rushed.

So what does it look like to start over without shame?

It starts with telling the truth. Not the shame-soaked version where we rehearse all our failures as evidence of our unworthiness. But the honest version: This is hard. I keep stumbling here. I need help.

It means asking different, gentler, questions (something I am trying to focus on this year). Not “Why can’t I get this right?” but “What barrier am I actually facing? What am I afraid of? What old story am I believing about myself or God?”

It means remembering that God isn’t surprised by our struggles. He’s not standing over us with arms crossed, waiting for us to finally get it together. He’s present in the pattern, inviting us deeper.

What if there’s another way? What if God meets us in the mess, in the pattern, in the repeated attempts? What if beginning again isn’t defeat—it’s faithfulness?

Maybe you’re already feeling behind. Maybe you’re already carrying shame about how this year has started.

Can I invite you to begin again? Not with renewed determination to try harder, but with curiosity about what barrier you’re actually facing. Not with promises to finally get it right, but with honesty about where you need help.

God isn’t finished with you. The pattern isn’t proof of failure—it is the very place where real, deep, holy transformation begins.

And I felt it: that crushing weight of trying to be everything to everyone.

I drove home that night and said to God, “I don’t think I can keep doing this.”

Not ministry. But this version of ministry—where I measured my faithfulness by how many expectations I could meet. Where saying no felt like failure. Where disappointing people felt like disobedience.

If we aren’t careful, other people’s expectations can become a more powerful force in our leadership than God’s calling.

We start making decisions based not on what God is asking, but on what will keep people happy. What will avoid conflict. What will prove we’re good enough, capable enough, committed enough.

And before we know it, we’re living someone else’s vision for our life—and calling it faithfulness.

I think this trap is especially insidious for women in leadership. We’re taught to be caretakers, peacemakers, the ones who hold everything together. We feel the weight of others’ needs acutely. And the idea of disappointing people—of not meeting their expectations—can feel unbearable.

But here’s the truth: You cannot lead faithfully and meet everyone’s expectations. It’s impossible.

When Pleasing People Becomes Idolatry

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10).

That’s strong language. But Paul knew something we often forget: The need for human approval can quietly replace our obedience to God.

It’s not that we stop caring about people. It’s that we start caring more about what they think of us than what God is asking of us.

We make decisions to avoid disappointment rather than pursue calling. We say yes when we should say no. We spread ourselves so thin trying to be everything that we become nothing to anyone—including ourselves.

Jesus faced this constantly. People had expectations about what the Messiah should be, what he should do, how he should lead.

They wanted a political liberator. He offered that but so much more - spiritual liberation. They wanted him to stay in Capernaum where ministry was thriving. He said, “I must preach the good news in other towns also. That is why I was sent” (Luke 4:43). They wanted him to avoid the cross. He set his face toward Jerusalem.

Again and again, Jesus chose obedience to the Father over meeting people’s expectations. And people were disappointed. Confused. Even angry.

But he was faithful.

The Courage to Disappoint

After that meeting a few years ago, I started making different choices. I started saying no—not out of self-protection, but out of obedience.

No to programs that weren’t aligned with my actual calling. No to expectations that would require me to be someone I’m not. No to the “do whatever it takes” mentality that was burning me out.

And yes—people were disappointed. Some didn’t understand. Some pushed back.

But something shifted in me. I started leading from calling instead of anxiety. From clarity instead of guilt. From faithfulness instead of fear. (By the way, I am still learning this.)

Here’s what I want you to hear: The people around you have opinions about what you should do, how you should lead, what your priorities should be.

Some of those opinions are helpful. Some come from genuine care and wisdom.

But at the end of the day, you answer to God—not to their expectations.

You were not called to meet every need, solve every problem, or be everything to everyone. You were called to a specific assignment, in a specific context, with specific gifts and limitations.

And the more you try to live into someone else’s vision for your life, the less faithful you are to what God is actually asking.

I’ve been asking myself a series of gentle questions this year. Right now, I’m learning to ask: Is this what God is calling me to, or is this what people expect from me?

Sometimes the answer is both. But often, it’s not.

And when it’s not, I’m learning that disappointing people for the sake of obedience isn’t failure—it’s courage.

It’s the courage to lead faithfully rather than successfully. To steward your calling rather than manage everyone’s opinions. To trust that God’s approval is enough—even when others don’t understand.

What expectation are you carrying that isn’t actually yours? What would it look like to set it down?

Just one more day, God. Just a little more clarity.

But the clarity doesn’t come. And I’m starting to wonder if my need to know is actually the barrier.

Leaders are supposed to have answers, right? We’re supposed to cast vision, make decisions, know where we’re going.

So when we don’t know—when the path forward is foggy and the outcomes are unclear—it can feel like failure. Like we’re not hearing from God. Like we’re not faithful enough to discern his will.

And so we wait. We pray. We ask for signs. We analyze every angle, hoping that if we just think hard enough or pray long enough, the certainty will come.

But what if certainty isn’t actually what God is offering?

Control Disguised as Wisdom

Here’s the uncomfortable truth I’m learning: Sometimes my need to know isn’t about discernment. It’s about control.

I want guarantees. I want to know that if I make this decision, it will work out the way I hope. I want to eliminate risk, avoid failure, ensure success.

But that’s not faith—it’s control wearing the costume of wisdom.

Faith is different. Faith takes the next step without knowing how the whole staircase looks. Faith trusts that God is good even when the outcome is uncertain. Faith moves forward with what we do know, even when we don’t know everything.

Think about Abraham. God called him to leave everything and go to “a land I will show you.” Not a land with a map. Not a land with a plan. A land God would show him along the way.

Abraham had to move before he could see.

Or Moses at the Red Sea. No blueprint for parting water. No guarantee it would work. Just an invitation to lift his staff and trust.

Or the disciples leaving their nets to follow Jesus. They had no idea where it would lead. No roadmap. No clarity about what “fishers of men” would actually mean.

They just knew enough to take the next step.

Faithful Next Steps

There’s a difference between seeking clarity and demanding certainty.

Clarity asks: “What is the faithful next step?”

Certainty demands: “Show me the whole path before I’ll move.”

God rarely gives us the whole path. He gives us enough light for the next step. And he asks us to trust him with the rest.

This is hard for me. I feel the weight of responsibility. I know my decisions affect others. I want to get it right.

But what if God is less concerned with us making the “perfect” decision and more concerned with us trusting him in the uncertainty?

What if the barrier to becoming the leader God wants us to be isn’t our lack of knowledge—but our unwillingness to move without it?

I don’t know what decision you’re facing right now. But if you’re waiting for absolute certainty before you move, may I gently suggest: You might be waiting forever.

Maybe it’s time to take the next faithful step—even if you can’t see the whole staircase.

Why isn’t our church like that? What am I doing wrong?

Comparison is one of the most insidious barriers to becoming the leader God wants us to be. Because it doesn’t feel like a barrier—it feels like information. Like motivation. Like helpful data for improving.

But comparison doesn’t actually help us grow. It just makes us want to be someone else.

You may have heard some version of this before, but here’s what comparison does to leaders: It takes our eyes off our actual calling and fixes them on someone else’s highlight reel.

We stop asking “What is God inviting me to do here?” and start asking “Why don’t I have what they have?”

We measure our effectiveness by metrics that may have nothing to do with faithfulness in our context. We feel shame about gifts we don’t possess instead of stewarding the ones we do.

And worst of all, we start imitating instead of innovating. We try to copy what worked in their setting, with their people, in their moment—and wonder why it falls flat in ours.

But…what if God called you to your context precisely because of who you are—not in spite of it?

Think about the disciples. Twelve very different men with wildly different gifts and temperaments. Peter wasn’t John. James wasn’t Andrew. And Jesus didn’t try to make them all the same.

He called each one specifically. For a purpose only they could fulfill.

And consider Mary Magdalene—the first person Jesus appeared to after his resurrection. Not Peter, the rock. Not John, the beloved disciple. Mary. A woman whose testimony wouldn’t even be considered valid in a court of law in that culture.

Jesus didn’t choose her in spite of her limitations—he chose her because of who she was. Her devotion. Her presence at the cross when others fled. Her willingness to show up in the darkness of early morning. She became the apostle to the apostles not by comparing herself to the men around her, but by being fully herself in her love for Jesus.

Or consider Paul’s words: “We will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the sphere of service God himself has assigned to us” (2 Corinthians 10:13).

Paul knew his lane. His context. His calling. And he refused to measure himself by someone else’s assignment.

Learning Without Losing Yourself

This doesn’t mean we can’t learn from other leaders. Of course we can. Should, even.

But there’s a difference between learning and comparison.

Learning asks: “What can I glean from their experience that might help me serve my people better?”

Comparison asks: “Why don’t I have what they have?”

One posture opens us to growth. The other closes us in shame.

God didn’t call me to lead someone else’s church, in someone else’s neighborhood, with someone else’s gifts.

He called me here. To Renewal. To West Chicago. To this multiethnic, beautifully complicated, occasionally frustrating, deeply-loved, beloved community.

And the more I try to make myself look like some other pastor or make our community like some other church, the less faithful I am to what God is actually doing here.

Your context is not a mistake. Your limitations are not disqualifications. Your assignment is not less-than because it doesn’t look like theirs.

Here’s what I am learning to ask myself (maybe you want to ask yourself something similar) - what if the barrier isn’t my lack of their gifts—but my refusal to fully embrace my own?

I wasn’t quite ready to kick things off (and hadn’t planned to start with this particular barrier). But the news about author Philip Yancey’s longtime affair has left many of us sitting with a familiar, uncomfortable feeling. It’s the particular kind of grief that comes when someone whose words helped us make sense of our pain turns out to have been causing pain of their own. When the person who taught us it was okay to ask hard questions becomes the hard question we’re asking.

I keep thinking about his wife. While we’re processing our disappointment in an author, she’s living the devastation. Our disillusionment is real, but it’s not the same as her reality. It’s important we don’t make this story primarily about us and our feelings about Christian celebrity when there’s a woman whose entire life has been rewritten by this truth.

Still, here’s the barrier I’m naming today: cynicism. That slow calcification of the heart that happens when enough heroes fall. The voice that whispers, “See? They’re all like this. Don’t trust anyone. Definitely don’t admire anyone. Keep your distance.”

On one hand, cynicism feels like wisdom. It protects us from future disappointment. It gives us the smug satisfaction of never being surprised. But on the other, cynicism is wisdom’s angry, exhausted cousin. It’s what happens when we’ve been hurt enough times that we decide the safest thing is to expect nothing good from anyone.

I understand the impulse. The pattern is so predictable it’s almost boring: celebrated Christian leader, secret life, public revelation, collective shock that somehow isn’t shock at all. We’ve all heard this song. We’ve seen this movie. We’ve read this script so many times we could recite it. To be honest, my first reaction when I read the article about Yancey was “Eyeroll. Eyeroll. Here we go again.”

Yet, even though it’s understandable, cynicism doesn’t actually protect us; it prevents connection. It doesn’t make us sharper; it makes us harder.

So what do we do with this news and news like it? I don’t have answers, but here are some of questions I’m sitting with:

• How do we hold space for Janet Yancey’s pain and the pain of others harmed, without making this primarily about our own disillusionment?

• What does it mean that God used Yancey’s words to bring comfort and hope to thousands of people even while he was actively breaking trust? Can we receive the good those books did without minimizing the harm done? (It’s the old “Can we separate the art from the artist?” debate. For your reading pleasure, google “the Donatist Controversy and how Augustine resolved this issue”.)

• How do we grieve this well—neither rushing to “grace covers all” nor retreating to “never trust anyone again”?

• What would it look like to dismantle the celebrity systems in our faith communities instead of just cycling through the next person who will inevitably disappoint us?

• How do we hold our leaders accountable while also creating space for them to be honest about their struggles before those struggles become catastrophic secrets?

I don’t think we need to answer all these questions right now. Maybe it’s enough to let them sit with us for a while.

The Longer, Slower Trust

Here’s what I know: We don’t avoid cynicism by pretending people are better than they are. We avoid it by placing our hope more carefully.

The louder song here isn’t choosing between grief or hope. It’s holding both. It’s mourning the betrayal while refusing to let one person’s failure steal our belief that transformation is real. That faithfulness is possible. That some people actually do live with integrity even when no one’s watching.

Cynicism wants us to believe that because some heroes fall, all heroes will fall. That because trust has been broken, trust should never be given. But that’s not wisdom—that’s just exhaustion pretending to be discernment.

The alternative isn’t naivety. It’s not putting people back on pedestals or pretending this didn’t happen. It’s something slower and harder: learning to receive good wherever we find it without canonizing the person who delivered it.

It’s holding people’s humanity alongside their gifts. Building communities where we don’t need heroes because we’re all just fellow travelers trying to follow Jesus.

And it’s looking to Jesus, who will never fail us.

It’s trusting God more than we trust people. Not in a way that excuses people’s behavior, but in a way that anchors our hope somewhere deeper than human performance.

It’s choosing, again and again, not to let someone else’s failure harden our hearts. Why? Because we refuse to let cynicism win.

That’s the work. Not pretending we’re not disappointed. Not minimizing the harm. But grieving what needs grieving and then, slowly, carefully, keeping our hearts soft enough to still believe in goodness. To still believe in faithfulness. To still believe transformation in Jesus is possible for us all—even knowing, especially knowing, how often we (and our heroes) fail.

What are you sitting with today? Where do you feel cynicism creeping in—not just about this situation, but in your own life? I’d love to hear what questions you’re holding.

New year, new you. Fresh start. Clean slate. Leave it all behind.

But what if you can’t?

What if the grief you carried through December is still here in January? What if the loss that marked your autumn is woven into the fabric of who you are becoming? What if there is no “leaving it behind” because what you’ve lost—or what you’ve survived—has changed you?

The cultural script of January is relentless: optimize, refresh, reinvent. It promises that if you just try hard enough, you can become someone unburdened. Someone light. Someone new.

Scripture makes a startling claim about our newness: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Cor 5:17). So, you are new - full stop.

But what if you do not feel brand new at that magical stroke of midnight?

Perhaps it’s because you are also continuous.

Perhaps newness looks like a process of deepening and transforming, rather than a bright flare that quickly dims.

You are the person who loved and lost, who led through impossibility, who kept showing up even when everything in you wanted to quit. And that person—this person—is who you bring into this year.

So here is a different prayer for January:

God, You make me new, and for that, I say thank you.

But I am also scarred and stretched and somehow still standing. I have led from depletion. I have made decisions I second-guess. I have carried others while carrying too much myself.

This year, I do not ask for a clean slate. I ask for integration. Help me bring all of who I am—the grieving parts, the weary parts, the parts that know too much about loss—into the work you’ve given me to do.

I do not ask to be transformed into someone unrecognizable. I ask to be faithful. To lead from honesty instead of performance. To stop apologizing for not being further along.

Give me the courage to resist the pressure to be “over it.” To name what is still hard. To refuse the toxic optimism that mistakes silence for strength.

And when others look to me for guidance, let me offer them the same gift: permission to be continuous. Permission to grieve and lead. To doubt and believe. To be exhausted and still show up.

Make me a leader, a friend, a neighbor who doesn’t require people to hide their humanity.

This year, help me steward what I’ve survived instead of pretending it didn’t cost me anything.

Amen.