You have been here through it, and that matters more than you probably know. One faithful reader is still a whole community. Thank you for trusting this little corner of the internet with your time and your heart.

A few honest details. Your paid subscription is paused and you will not be charged going forward. Everything you’ve already received is still yours to keep and revisit whenever you want. This isn’t a closed door, just a quiet one for now.

Soft, structured, steady. That’s still true, even in a pause.

With love,
Ronnie

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (ESV)
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."

So for now, I'll say see you in the next season, not goodbye. Tap below anytime you want to reach me.

Every post pairs a Bible study with a drink recipe. Make the drink, open the Word, take your time. New studies drop the first Sunday of every month 4pm EST.

White Chocolate Cherry Mocha 🍒

Ingredients: You will need 2 shots of espresso, 2 tablespoons of white chocolate powder, 2 pumps of cherry syrup (or 1 tablespoon), and your milk of choice. For the cherry cold foam, you will need 3 tablespoons of heavy whipping cream, 2 tablespoons of milk, 1 tablespoon of cherry syrup, and crushed freeze dried cherries for topping.

Method: Start by pulling your 2 shots of espresso, then stir in the white chocolate powder and cherry syrup until fully dissolved. Fill your cup with ice and pour in your milk of choice, then add the espresso mixture on top. To make the cold foam, combine the heavy whipping cream, milk, and cherry syrup in a separate cup and froth until thick and creamy. Spoon the cold foam generously over the top of your drink and finish with crushed freeze dried cherries. Serve immediately and enjoy.

Before You Dive In

The Word Café drops once a month. Not because we ran out of things to say, but because this is not meant to be consumed quickly and moved on from.

Make your favorite drink, or try the one above.

Grab your Bible, your journal, and your favorite pen. If you’re anything like me, get the highlighters out too.

Read it once just to receive it. Then go back slowly. Work through the journal prompts. Sit with the Scriptures. Let it ask something of you.

This could take you the whole month, and that is exactly the point.

Knowing the Word and understanding the Word are not the same thing. Understanding opens the door to wisdom, and wisdom is what happens when God’s truth begins shaping the way you live.

That is always the goal here.

Not just to know it.

To live it.

Take your time.

You have it.

The Opposite of Chaos Isn’t Peace. It’s Order.

On living accidentally in a world God made on purpose.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” — Genesis 1:1, ESV

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Before you study this verse, just receive it. Not as a fact you already know. Not as the opening line you skip to get to the story. Read it as a declaration. Because everything we are about to talk about lives inside of it.

The Word Itself

The very first word of Genesis 1:1 in the Hebrew is Bereshit, which means “in the beginning.” But what is significant is not just what it says. It is what it assumes. The Hebrew construction here implies a starting point that was deliberate. Not accidental. Not spontaneous. There was a beginning because someone decided there would be one.

The primary verb in Genesis 1:1 is bara. It is the Hebrew word translated as “created.” And bara is not an ordinary word for making something.

In the entire Old Testament, bara is used exclusively for God. Never for humans. Never for any other being. Humans build. Humans form. Humans craft and construct and manufacture. But only God bara. Because bara does not just mean to make something out of existing material. It means to bring something into existence from nothing, with intention, for a specific purpose.

God did not rearrange what was already there. He bara. He called into being what did not exist, shaped it with precision, assigned it function, and set it in order.

Now look at Genesis 1:2. Before God begins the work of creation, the earth is described as tohu wabohu. Two Hebrew words sitting side by side. Tohu means formless, empty, desolate. Wabohu intensifies it, meaning void, without purpose, without function. Together they describe a state of complete disorder. No structure. No boundary. No reason for anything.

That is the Hebrew word for chaos.

Tohu wabohu.

Formless. Purposeless. Empty.

And what does God do when He encounters it?

He does not leave it there. He does not step around it. He moves over it, He speaks into it, and He brings order.

That matters more than we realize. Because the same God who looked at tohu wabohu and refused to leave it in that condition is the same God who is looking at whatever formless, purposeless, chaotic space exists in your life right now.

He has never left chaos alone. It is not in His nature to.

Now look at 1 Corinthians 14:33. Paul writes plainly: “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” The Greek word translated confusion here is akatastasia. It means instability, disorder, turbulence, things that are unsettled and without proper function. It is the New Testament equivalent of tohu. The Greek version of formlessness.

And Paul is saying clearly: that is not who God is. That is not the environment He creates. That is not the atmosphere He inhabits.

Which means if akatastasia is not God’s nature, and you are made in the image of God, then akatastasia is not your nature either.

It might be your current condition. But it is not your design.

✎ Journal Prompt: Where in your life right now is there tohu? Not just external busyness but real formlessness. Places where things exist without purpose, without direction, without clear function. Name them without judgment.

What Genesis 1 Actually Shows Us

Most of us read Genesis 1 as a creation story. It is. But it is also a theology of intentionality. It is God showing us, before He shows us anything else, how He operates.

Look at the sequence.

Day one: light. Not plants, not animals, not people. Light first. Because nothing else can exist without it. God creates the conditions before He creates the things that need those conditions to survive.

Day two: sky and water separated. Boundaries established. Not because God is controlling, but because without boundaries nothing can function. The ocean needs a shoreline. The atmosphere needs definition. Even created things need to know where they end.

Day three: land and sea separated, then vegetation. Order before growth. Foundation before fruit.

Day four: sun, moon, and stars. Not decoration. These are God’s timekeeping system. He is establishing rhythm, season, and cycle before He introduces anything that needs to live within those rhythms.

Day five: sea creatures and birds.

Day six: land animals, then humanity.

He does not introduce anything until the conditions for it to thrive already exist.

Read that again.

God does not introduce anything until the conditions for it to thrive already exist.

He is not improvising. He is not creating and hoping it works out. He is building a world where every single thing has a condition, a purpose, and a place. And the order of creation is not random. It is the architecture of intentionality itself.

This is the character of God on full display before anything else is revealed about Him. Before we see His mercy or His justice or His love expressed in relationship, we see this:

He creates with intention. He builds with sequence. He does not do chaos.

And then, at the end of all of it, He creates you.

Not in the chaos. After the order was established.

✎ Journal Prompt: God created the conditions before He introduced the thing that needed those conditions. What conditions do you think He might be establishing in your life right now, in the waiting, in the slow season, before He brings what you’ve been asking for? What might you be resisting about that process?

Your Body Is the Evidence

If you want to understand how serious God is about intentional design, you don’t have to go far. You are wearing the argument.

Read more

John 15:4-5, ESV

Every post pairs a Bible study with a drink recipe. Make the drink, open the Word, take your time.

New studies drop the first Sunday of every month, unless the Lord puts something on my heart for more.

Peach Cobbler Chai Latte

Ingredients: 6 oz store bought chai concentrate 3 tbsp peach cobbler syrup 4 oz oat milk Handful of ice Whipped cream Ground cinnamon or nutmeg for topping

Method: Fill your prettiest glass with ice. Pour in your chai concentrate, then the peach cobbler syrup, then the oat milk. Give it one slow stir and watch the colors come together. Top with whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon or nutmeg.

Sit down before your first sip. This one is meant to be savored.

Stay on the Vine

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:4-5, ESV

Most people read John 15:4–5 and think they understand it.

Abide. Remain. Stay connected.

Simple, right?

Until you actually try to live it and realize how quickly your mind drifts, your body tenses, and your day pulls you everywhere except the place you said you wanted to stay.

So this month, we’re slowing down and looking at what Jesus was actually saying. We’re going to break down the word abide in the Greek, look at how a grapevine really works, and get honest about why your nervous system keeps pulling you out of connection even when your heart wants God.

And we’re going to draw a line between visiting God and actually living from Him.

Because this isn’t about understanding a concept.

It’s about learning how to stay.

Subscribe now

Pause, before we go any further,

If you have not yet read the first Word Café article, There Remains A Rest rooted in Hebrews 4:9, I want to genuinely encourage you to go there first Link here. These two articles belong together. They are two parts of the same conversation God has been trying to have with us. Take your time with both. There is no rush here.

That is actually the whole point 🌷

Before you continue, open your Bible and read John 15:1-11 in full. Read the whole passage before you come back here. Let it sit in you before we begin to pull it apart.

Now let’s go deeper.

The Word Itself

The word translated abide in John 15:4 is the Greek word menó.

It means to stay, to remain, to not depart, to continue to be present.

It carries the weight of permanence. Not a visit. Not a check in. A settled, ongoing, continuous remaining in one place.

What is significant about menó is how often Jesus uses it in this passage. The word or better yet a variation of it appears ten times in John 15:1-11. Ten times in eleven verses. That kind of repetition isn’t accidental. Jesus isn’t adding layers, He’s pressing one point over and over so it can’t be missed.

The second word I want you to look at is the word translated fruit, from the Greek karpos. In the ancient world, karpos referred to the natural result of something’s nature. Not manufactured produce. Not the outcome of effort and strain. The natural overflow of a living thing that is connected to its source. A branch does not strain to produce fruit. Fruit is simply what happens when the branch stays on the vine long enough.

Put those two words together and what Jesus is saying becomes something entirely different from what we often make it. He is not giving you a productivity strategy. He is describing a biological reality.

A branch that remains in the vine will produce fruit.

Not because it worked hard enough. Because it stayed. This changes everything about how we read the invitation.

Read more

Hebrews 4:9 ESV

Every post pairs a Bible study with a drink recipe. Make the drink, open the Word, take your time.

New studies drop the first Sunday of every month, unless the Lord puts something on my heart for more.

☕️ Chamomile Honey Latte

Ingredients 1 cup whole milk (or oat milk) 1 chamomile tea bag 1 tsp raw honey ½ tsp vanilla extract Pinch of sea salt Dash of cinnamon on top (optional)

Method Warm the milk on the stove slowly, don’t boil it, just let it steam. Drop in the chamomile tea bag and let it steep for 5 minutes. Remove the bag, stir in the honey, vanilla, and a tiny pinch of salt. Pour into your prettiest mug, dust with cinnamon if you want. Sit down before your first sip.

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There Remains a Rest

“So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” — Hebrews 4:9 ESV

Before we go anywhere, I need you to read that one more time.

Not to study it yet. Just to receive it.

There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

Say it out loud if you can.

Because notice what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say rest will come. It doesn’t say rest is waiting on the other side of your breakthrough.

It says rest remains. Present tense. Right now. Already in place. Still yours.

So the question isn’t whether rest exists for you.

The question is why you’re not living in it.

I’m not asking that from a place of judgment. I had to ask it of myself, on my birthday, in the quiet before my house woke up, carrying grief I still don’t have clean words for. God met me in Hebrews 4:9 that morning and didn’t give me a motivational word.

He corrected my posture.

I think He might be doing the same for you.

The Word Itself

Open your Bible to Hebrews 4. Read verses 1–11 before you go any further. Don’t skim. Read it like someone wrote it for you.

Now here’s what I want you to see first.

The word translated “Sabbath rest” in verse nine is a Greek word that appears exactly once in the entire New Testament. Sabbatismos. Just here. The writer didn’t use the regular word for rest, anapausis, which shows up elsewhere. They reached for something weighted. Something that carries the full meaning of the Hebrew Shabbat.

And Shabbat goes all the way back to Genesis 2.

God rested. Not because He was tired. He rested because the work was complete. His rest was a declaration, It is finished. It is good.

And the writer of Hebrews is saying: that rest. The rest God Himself lives in. That’s what remains for you.

Now look at the second word. Remains. The Greek is apoleipetai, something left behind. Something that persists after everything else has shifted. This rest wasn’t revoked when Israel wandered. It didn’t expire with the old covenant. It isn’t conditional on your consistency, your performance, or how well you’ve been holding everything together lately.

It. Remains.

Which means the reason you’re not living in rest is not because it’s unavailable. Something is keeping you from entering what’s already there.

That’s not a guilt trip. That’s actually the most hopeful thing I could say. Because a door that remains open can still be walked through.

✎ Journal Prompt: When you hear the word “rest,” what’s your honest first reaction? Relief? Guilt? Skepticism? Write the first thing that comes up without editing it.

The Context

The people of Israel had just witnessed the most dramatic rescue in human history. God split the sea. He swallowed their enemies. He showed up as fire by night and cloud by day. He fed them bread from the sky every morning.

And they were still braced.

Still complaining. Still calculating. Still convinced that what was ahead was more than God could handle. Hebrews 3:19 tells us plainly: “They were unable to enter because of unbelief.”

But here’s what I don’t want you to miss, that unbelief wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. It was functional. The quiet kind that lives in your hands and your habits even while your mouth is still saying I trust Him.

They believed He brought them out. They just couldn’t trust He’d take them through. So they stayed in survival. In the middle of provision. In the presence of God. Still scanning for threats. Still living like Egypt was right behind them, even though the sea had already closed.

How much of that sounds like your life right now?

✎ Journal Prompt: Where in your life are you still living like Egypt is behind you—still braced, still holding tight, even though God has already made a way? Be specific.

This is the pattern Hebrews 4 is addressing. And the writer isn’t writing to people who don’t love God, they’re writing to people who do. Who know the promises. Who are trying. And still missing rest.

Because knowing the promise and living from the promise are two completely different things.

Positional Truth vs. Practiced Truth

Positional truth is what God has declared over you. You are free. You are provided for. The work is finished. Rest remains.

Practiced truth is what you actually live from on a hard Tuesday when the kids are loud and the money feels tight and three things need to be handled and nobody’s helping and you haven’t slept and it’s only 8am.

Most of us have more positional truth than practiced truth.

We know God is our provider. We still quietly panic about finances. We know rest is available. We still live like if we stop moving, something will fall apart. And we’ve named it something better. Called it discipline. Called it diligence. Called it being responsible.

Hebrews 4 is God reaching into that gap and saying: this isn’t what I asked of you.

✎ Journal Prompt: What’s one area of your life where you believe God in principle but live as if He isn’t enough in practice? Just name it.

The Science

Stay with me here! because Scripture and science aren’t competing. They’re confirming each other.

Dr. Stephen Porges developed Polyvagal Theory, a framework for understanding how the autonomic nervous system responds to safety and threat. At its core, it describes three states:

Ventral Vagal — Safe and Connected. This is regulation.

Your thinking is clear, your prefrontal cortex is fully online, you can connect, create, and make wise decisions. This is the state God designed as your baseline.

Sympathetic — Fight or Flight. This is survival.

Your nervous system has detected a threat, real or perceived, and mobilized every resource toward handling it. This state isn’t bad. It exists to protect you. The problem is when it becomes your default. When you are always braced, always scanning, always waiting for something to go wrong, even in moments of actual peace.

Dorsal Vagal — Shutdown.

What happens when the threat has been too much for too long. The nervous system collapses inward. Numbness. The kind of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix.

Here’s what I need you to sit with: you cannot clearly hear a calm God from a chronically activated nervous system.

When you’re running in sympathetic survival mode, the prefrontal cortex goes quiet. The ancient, reactive, threat-scanning part of your brain gets loud. And God speaks in a still small voice. He corrects gently. He invites, He doesn’t shout over the noise.

If your internal environment is running on urgency, on the constant low hum of handle it, stay on top, don’t fall behind, you will miss Him.

Not because He stopped speaking.

Because you’re not in a state to receive what He’s saying.

✎ Journal Prompt: Which nervous system state do you spend most of your time in? What does it feel like in your body?

Here’s what hit me when I put these two things together.

Sabbatismos, from a neuroscience lens, is a return to ventral vagal regulation. The state your body was designed to live from as its baseline.

Not as a reward. Not as a recovery tool you reach for when you’ve finally burned out. As a home.

And God built Sabbath into the rhythm of life not as a religious rule, but as a weekly, practiced, embodied signal to your nervous system: You are not a slave. Enough has been done. You can come down now.

Your nervous system needs that signal. Regularly. Consistently. Not just once, because the brain doesn’t change through intention. It changes through repetition.

You don’t think your way out of chronic survival. You practice your way out.

The Doctrine

I want to be careful here, because I’m not talking about doubt in the dramatic sense. I’m talking about the functional unbelief that lives quietly inside deeply faithful women.

Hebrews 4:6 says some did not enter rest because of disobedience, and the root of that disobedience is unbelief. Not rejection of God. Not rebellion. A practical failure to live as though the promise is actually true.

Here’s what that looks like in my life:

I pray, and then stay up mentally running through every scenario, “what if God doesn’t come through in time”. I declare, and then quietly pick the weight back up because putting it down doesn’t feel safe. I say I trust you, Lord, and then spend enormous energy managing outcomes because trust has a ceiling I haven’t named yet.

I believe the Word. And live from the wound.

✎ Journal Prompt: Where have you been saying “I trust God” while your hands are still full? What are you holding that you haven’t actually released? What would releasing it require you to believe?

And here’s the theological point I don’t want you to leave without: God is not standing at the door of rest with His arms crossed, waiting for you to finally get it right enough to enter.

He is saying: there remains a rest. Still. For you. Come in.

The invitation isn’t contingent on your performance. It’s contingent on His faithfulness. And that, unlike your nervous system, your habits, your patterns, your history never changes.

Why You’re Tired

Sometimes it’s not fear keeping you out of rest. Sometimes it’s not anxiety in the clinical sense. Sometimes it’s just a nervous system that never learned what it felt like to be safe enough to stop.

A body trained by circumstance, by necessity, by survival to stay on. To stay ready. To never fully exhale.

When that’s your history, rest doesn’t feel like relief. It feels like danger. Because if you stop holding everything, who will? If you put it down and something falls apart, wasn’t that your fault for putting it down?

That’s not a faith problem. That’s a formation problem.

And the beautiful, complicated, deeply merciful thing about God is that He knows the difference. He doesn’t look at your survival patterns and see disobedience. He sees a woman who learned to carry because carrying kept her safe.

And He’s saying: you don’t have to carry like that anymore.

✎ Journal Prompt: When did you first learn that you had to hold everything together? Write about where your survival patterns came from, without judgment. Just with honesty.

How to Actually Live From Rest

This is not a 10-step plan you complete and then you’re done. This is a practice. A way of living you choose and return to, over and over, until it becomes more natural than survival. It will feel wrong at first. That’s not a red flag. That’s transition.

In Your Body

1. Name your state before you react.

Every morning, before you pick up your phone, put your hand on your chest and ask: where am I right now? Not emotionally, physically. Is your jaw tight? Chest shallow? Stomach knotted? Just name it. Naming it is the first act of not being run by it.

2. Slow your mornings.

Not as a luxury, as a declaration. Give yourself even ten minutes where you exist before you perform. Before you’re a mother, a wife, a builder, anyone anyone needs anything from. You are declaring with your body: I am not a slave to urgency. I belong to God.

3. Use your breath as a regulation tool.

The physiological sigh, a double inhale through the nose, followed by a long slow exhale through the mouth, is the fastest known way to shift your nervous system toward regulation. God built this into you. When you feel the tightness rising, try this three times before you respond to anything.

4. Stop treating tension as background noise.

Chronic tightness in your chest, shoulders, gut, that’s information. Ask: what is my body telling me right now that my mind is trying to override?

In Your Mind

1. Catch thoughts that agree with urgency, and question them.

   When the thought shows up that says you have to handle this right now or something will fall apart, pause.

Ask: is this wisdom or is this anxiety? Wisdom produces peace even in uncertainty. Anxiety produces more urgency.

2. Know the difference between discipline and survival.

Discipline says: I’m stewarding this because God entrusted it to me.

Survival says: I have to stay on top of everything or it will all fall apart and that will be my fault.

They can feel almost identical from the inside. The difference is what’s driving you, faith or fear. Ask yourself regularly: what is actually motivating this right now?

3. Treat renewing your mind as a daily return, not a one time event.

Romans 12:2, the Greek word anakainosis describes a continuous, ongoing process. Not a moment. A practice. Every day you return to what’s true. Every day you let the Word set the frame before the world does.

In Your Spirit

1. Enter prayer, don’t perform it.

There is a version of prayer that is still survival dressed up in spiritual language. You bring God a list, manage the conversation, make sure you’ve covered everything. And then there’s entering. Showing up and letting Him be God. Letting silence be okay. Try this: before you say anything tomorrow morning, sit quietly for two minutes. Just arrive. Let God meet you there.

2. Practice Sabbath as an act of trust.

One day a week choose not to produce. Not to catch up. Not to be useful to anyone. This is not legalism. It’s a practiced, embodied, weekly declaration: God is God. I am not. The world will not fall apart if I rest. Your nervous system needs this signal on repeat before it starts to believe it.

3. Let the Word correct your posture before your circumstances do.

Don’t wait until you’re desperate. Come first. Come before the noise does.

In Your Relationships and Work

1. Say no without the five paragraph explanation.

Over explaining, over apologizing, over justifying your limits, that’s a survival pattern. It means you don’t feel safe enough to just have limits without someone approving them first. Practice saying no simply. Sit with the discomfort until it starts to feel less like danger.

2. Let things be someone else’s to carry.

Not everything that lands near you was handed to you by God. Some of it you picked up out of habit. Out of the story that says if you don’t do it, it won’t get done. Discern the difference between a burden God gave you and one you assumed because carrying is what you know.

3. Build your life from rest, not toward it.

This is the most countercultural thing in this entire study. Most of us are building toward rest. Toward the place where we’ve finally done enough, earned enough, that we can exhale. But that place doesn’t exist. The invitation in Hebrews 4 is to build from rest. To let regulation be your starting place. To let peace be your operating system, not your destination.

Before you close the tab…

I want to come back to where I started.

My birthday morning. The quiet. The grief sitting heavy in my chest. God, say something I haven’t already tried to figure out myself.

And Hebrews 4:9 showing up like He’d been waiting for me to ask.

He wasn’t giving me a motivational word. He was correcting my posture. Gently. Specifically. Like only He can.

I’m still learning what that means in the actual, ordinary, Tuesday morning moments of my life. I’m not all the way there.

But I know this: God is not holding rest out like a reward for the strongest, most put-together version of you. He built it. He entered it. He kept it in place through every covenant, every wandering, every season where His people forgot it was there.

And it remains.

Not later. Not when life slows down. Not when you finally figure out the right system. Now. In the middle of this. As you are. Right where you are.

The door is open. You don’t earn your way in. You don’t perform your way in.

You just stop agreeing with everything that’s been keeping you out. And you walk through.

There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God 🌷

It was always for you. It still is.

Enter it.

Selah. 🤎

If this study met you somewhere real, share it with a woman who needs it. And if you’re not yet a subscriber, this is what we do inside Sunday Silk. We go all the way in. Scripture, science, real life. Nothing surface. Nothing performative.

Welcome home.

— Ronnie xoxo

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One more thing before you go.

This is the first and only Word Café that’s free. Starting next month, this column moves to paid subscribers only, drink recipe, Hebrew and Greek breakdowns, nervous system science, doctrine, journal prompts, practical steps, all of it and more.

If this study met you somewhere real, that’s what you get every single month inside Sunday Silk.

→ Become a paid subscriber here.

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I have a question for you.

If something in this met you… don’t rush past it.

Sit with it. Notice what came up.

If you have a question coming out of this, something you want me to expand on, clarify, or speak into further, you can send it here.

I read every submission. At the end of each month, I answer selected questions in a Q&A, and some may shape future posts when it aligns.

Ask me here → [ASK RONNIE FORM]

No noise.
No requests.
No one needing anything.

I didn’t have to put on a brave face and pretend I was happy yet.

Just a small window where I existed before I had to be anything.

So I stayed there.

And the first thing that met me on my 37th birthday was sadness.

Heavy.
Honest.
Still carrying the shape of grief.

It’s the second birthday I’m supposed to celebrate without my mom.

I didn’t rush past it.
I didn’t try to fix it.
I let it sit where it actually lives
in my heart.

And then… I just thanked God.

I whispered…

“Thank you for keeping me”
”Thank you for letting me see this year”

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I’ve been trying my hardest to live in my truth. No pretending i’m ok when i’m not and no humbling myself when all I want todo is celebrate me.

But this year, this birthday, had me stop and think what I have done with my life?

My brain started quietly asking questions i didn’t plan to answer like,

• What actually changed this year?

• What are you still carrying that you thought you’d be free from by now?

• What’s next?

And if I’m being honest…

the last 2 years have asked more of me than I ever planned for.

I had a baby.

I buried my mother.

I buried my 8 year old niece on her 8th birthday.

I carried grief I didn’t know how to name, let alone put down.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that…

I was still trying to hold everything together like I always do.

So when I said,

“Lord, whatever the scripture of the day is… let it be for me,”

I meant it.

Because I needed Him to say something I hadn’t already tried to figure out myself.

And this is what came up.

Not increase.
Not clarity.
Not direction.

Rest.

And I just laid there like…

of course that’s what You would say.

Because if there’s anything I’ve struggled with my whole life…

it’s that.

I used to think rest meant taking a break.

Like… a day off, scrolling on my phone, maybe watching something if I had time. But even then?

I felt like I should be doing something.

I’ve never been the woman who just… sits.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I didn’t know how.

I was raised in survival.

I became good at it.

Thinking ahead.
Handling things early.
Being the one nobody has to worry about.

And that kind of strength?

People praise it.

But your body tells the truth.

Because you can love God…

and still live like everything depends on you.

Not because you don’t trust Him.

Because you’re used to carrying.

Hebrews doesn’t talk about rest like a break.

It talks about it like something you enter.

Which means it’s available…

and still missed.

God brought His people out of Egypt.

They were free.

But they were still living like they weren’t.

Same urgency.
Same pressure.
Same internal weight.

So even with freedom in front of them…

they stayed in survival.

And that part?

That’s what caught me.

Because I’ve done the same thing.

Prayed… but still held everything tight.
Believed God… but still tried to figure it out first.
Trusted Him… but only after I exhausted myself.

And at some point you have to ask yourself, is this discipline…

or is this survival dressed up?

The hardest part for me to admit?

It’s not always fear.

Sometimes it’s just a nervous system that never learned how to come down.

And nobody talks about that.

Especially not for women like us.

We’re strong.

We keep going.
We push through.
We figure it out.

And somewhere along the way…

we never learn how to stop.

Not really.

Not without guilt.
Not without feeling like something’s about to fall apart.

So laying there that morning, it hit me.

God wasn’t giving me a birthday message.

He was correcting my posture.

There is still rest available to you.

You just haven’t been living like it.

And that changes the question.

Not
“What do I need to do this year?”

But

“What do I need to stop carrying?”

So now?

I’ve started paying attention.

Not to my goals first.

To my patterns.

When my mind jumps ten steps ahead, I catch it.
When my body tightens for no reason, I listen.
When I feel that quiet pressure to stay on top of everything, I question it.

Because God never asked me to carry my life like that.

Rest, the way scripture is talking about it, isn’t passive.

It’s practiced.

It’s choosing not to agree with urgency.
It’s choosing not to let pressure make your decisions.
It’s choosing to trust God before anything changes.

What I’m Learning About Rest (in real life)

Not perfectly. Just honestly.

• I’m learning that rest is not something I schedule
  it’s something I have to choose…
  especially when everything in me wants to rush

  So I’ve stopped worshipping urgency in the morning
  even when my life is loud and waiting on me

• I’m learning to pay attention to my body
  because it tells the truth faster than my thoughts do

  Tight chest
  shallow breath
  that quiet irritation I try to push past

  That’s not something to ignore
  that’s something to respond to

• I’m learning that not everything God gave me
  is meant to be carried all at once

  Some things can sit
  some things can wait
  and some things were never mine to pick up in the first place

• I’m learning that survival is loud
  it rushes, it pressures, it performs

  But rest is quieter
  and if I’m honest, sometimes it feels unfamiliar

• I’m learning to pause before I call something discipline
  because a lot of what I called discipline…
  was just me not knowing how to stop

• And I’m learning that God is not standing over me
  waiting for me to hold everything together

  He’s inviting me into something I don’t fully know how to live in yet

A rest that still remains.

Even now
Even here
Even for me

TAKE NOTE…

If you’ve been strong for a long time…

this will feel unfamiliar.

That’s not a red flag.

That’s transition.

There is still rest for you.

Not later.
Not when life slows down.

Now.

If this is the kind of life you’re learning to live, then sis you’ve officially found your community, and I for one, am honored to be apart of it.

You don’t need to be perfect, just no longer carried by pressure.

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I went all the way into Hebrews 4:9 for you.

The original language. The history. The nervous system science. The doctrine. The reason why women who genuinely love God still can’t seem to stop carrying everything.

And I didn’t just leave it there, I built out the full practical guide. Step by step. What entering rest actually looks like in your body, your mind, your spirit, your everyday life. Journal prompts to help you go deeper than you’ve gone before. Real and applicable.

It’s waiting for you inside as a paid subscriber.

If you’re ready to stop living like everything depends on you, and actually start building your life from the rest God says still remains.

Subscribe below and click to read the full study “There Remains a Rest” ↓

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THERE REMAINS A REST

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Wife, girl mom, faith writer, and trauma informed nervous system coach in training.
Sunday Silk is a faith rooted publication at the intersection of Scripture, body science, and identity for the woman who’s done surviving and ready to feel safe in her own life.

Welcome to CONSIDER THIS.

I came to Substack to slow things down… and to actually connect.

Not perform. Not keep up.
Just real conversation.

So every now and then inside Sunday Silk, I’m going to bring a thought to the table.

Nothing heavy.
Nothing polished.

Just something that’s been sitting with me… and I want to know if it’s been sitting with you too.

This week, I can’t stop thinking about the “strong woman.”

The way she’s praised… expected… almost required.

And the question I keep coming back to is this:

Was strength ever meant to be the destination…
or was it just what we developed to survive?

I recorded this one because I want you to hear it, like we’re actually talking.

So press play when you’re ready… sit with it for a moment…

and then come back and tell me what it stirred up for you.

I’m really here for the conversation. What do you think?

Leave a comment

If you ever want to share something privately, a thought, a question, something you’re sitting with, you can do that here too. (You can stay anonymous if you want.)

Click Here to fill out the form.

Before the poem.
Before the analysis.
Before the classroom discussions.

We already knew.

Maya said the caged bird sings.

And every Black girl who has ever read that poem nods like she already knows.

Not because she studied it.

Because she lived it.

Because somewhere in her body, long before she had the language, before theology, before she had anything except instinct and the women who raised her, she already understood something sacred and quiet.

Sometimes the song is not joy. Sometimes the song is the only free thing left.

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I was born into a song already in progress.

By the time I arrived, the babygirl, the last one of 6 born to my mother Bobbie Jean, the period at the end of a sentence my mother had been writing for years.

The women in my family already knew how to sing in the dark. They had been doing it long before me.

My mother had already chosen us over the thing that could have taken her.
Already buried daughters.
Already learned how to carry a broken heart so quietly you would never know it was broken unless you looked closely at the way she held herself when she thought nobody was watching.

She was strong in a way I didn’t have language for as a child.

I just knew that whatever she was made of, I wanted to be made of it too.

So I watched.

And I learned.

And without either of us realizing it, she handed me the song.

🎶 Be strong
🎶 Keep going.
🎶 Hold it together.
🎶 God will make a way.

And I sang it.

Lord, I sang it.

I sang it through things that should have stopped me. I sang it through loss after loss after loss. My sisters gone before I was old enough to understand what gone meant. My father gone when I was fourteen. The kind of absence that reshapes the architecture of who you thought you were going to become.

I sang it beautifully.

The way my mother taught me.

The way her mother taught her.

But here is what nobody tells you about survival songs.

They work.

That is the first thing.

They genuinely, powerfully, miraculously work.

The song kept my people alive. The song kept the lights on. The song kept the faith intact and the family moving forward through conditions that had no business producing the women it produced.

I will never stand in front of that legacy and call it damage.

What my mother did with what she had was nothing short of the grace of God made visible in human form.

But the song has a cost.

And the cost is this.

When you sing long enough inside a cage, you stop noticing the cage.

The bars become wallpaper.
The confinement becomes personality.
Survival becomes identity.

And one day, if you are lucky enough, curious enough, if God loves you enough to let something break open inside you, you realize something unsettling.

You have been performing strength for an audience that left a long time ago.

The threat that built the cage is gone.

But you are still in it.

Still singing.

Researchers call this epigenetic inheritance.

Dr. Rachel Yehuda has spent her career documenting what our grandmothers already knew in their bones: trauma does not only live in memory. It lives in the body. It travels through bloodlines the way eye color does. The way the shape of a nose does. Quietly. Without announcement.

Which means you can inherit the vigilance of a woman whose world genuinely required it.

You can carry the nervous system of your grandmother’s grief in your own chest without ever knowing that’s what it is.

Your body learns the rules:

• Stay ready.

• Don’t soften.

• Don’t need too much.

• Don’t stop.

And then it teaches your children the same thing.

Not out of cruelty.

Out of love.

Out of the deepest biological instinct to protect the ones who come after you from the thing that almost broke you.

What happens when you are ready, always ready, bracing, always bracing, for a war that ended before you were born?

Dr. Stephen Porges, who developed Polyvagal Theory, would say that a nervous system trained for threat does not simply relax when the threat disappears. It must be taught safety.

Slowly.

Intentionally.

In the body, not just the mind.

Because the body does not speak theology.

The body speaks experience.

And if its experience has always been hold on, stay strong, keep moving, then that is the only language it knows.

You can confess peace with your mouth and still be living in fight mode in your body.

You can quote Philippians 4:7 and still have a nervous system that has never actually felt the peace it describes.

This is not a contradiction of your faith.

It is simply a body that needs a different kind of tending.

I discovered my cage wasn’t locked the hard way.

My mother died in 2024, just four months after my youngest of three daughters was born.

Then six months later, my eight year old niece was gone too.

And my body, this body that had been singing, carrying, holding, functioning at a level people admired, simply stopped.

It shut down.

Collapsed in a way I had no framework for because falling apart was not part of the song I had been taught.

Strong women don’t fall apart.

Strong women hold it together.

Strong women press through.

That is what I watched.

That is what I learned.

That is what I had been for so long that I did not know who I was without it.

And right there, in the falling apart, in the place where the song finally ran out, God met me.

Not with a lecture.

Not with a list of things I needed to fix.

In the rubble of everything I had been holding together, He was already there.

Had always been there.

Waiting for me to stop performing long enough to actually feel Him.

And something inside me got curious.

Curious enough.

Fed up enough.

Brave enough, against everything I had been taught about what keeps women alive, to walk over to the door of everything I had inherited and just check it.

It wasn’t locked.

It had never been locked.

I want to be careful here.

Because I know what it feels like to read something like this and feel like someone is calling your mother’s strength a mistake.

That is not what I am saying.

What our mothers built was holy.

What they survived was real.

The cage was real once.

Socially.

Economically.

Generationally.

In every way that matters.

The song was not weakness.

The song was genius.

It was the most sophisticated survival technology ever developed by women who had every reason to stop and choose, over and over again, not to.

But I believe something with my whole heart.

They did not sing so that we would sing forever.

They sang so we would live long enough to find the door.

Freedom did not arrive for me when I stepped outside the cage.

It arrived when I gave my life completely to God.

When He took the shame.

When He took the guilt.

When He looked at everything I had done, everything that had been done to me, everything I had inherited, everything I had built on top of that inheritance, and He forgave it.

Covered it.

Called it finished.

Paul was speaking about the law.

But I believe he was also speaking about every inherited yoke that was never yours to carry.

Every survival pattern that kept your people alive but was never meant to be permanent.

Every cage built by circumstance, maintained by love, and passed down through generations of women who were simply doing the best they knew how.

Christ already handled the lock.

He handled it before you were born.

Before your mother was born.

Before her mother stood still for that photograph with her eyes looking just past the camera at something only she could see.

Her wings clipped and feet tied…

The door has been open the whole time.

So this is what I want to leave you with.

You come from women who sang in impossible places.

Women who chose their families when they could have chosen something easier.

Women who buried children and kept going.

Women who carried broken hearts so quietly the world never noticed.

Women who were strong in ways that should have been impossible and yet were not, because God was in it.

In all of it.

Even the parts that hurt.

You inherited their song.

And their song saved you.

But now, right here in this moment, in this season where something inside you is stirring, curious, fed up, brave enough to wonder if there might be more than this, God is not asking you to forget the song.

He is asking you to learn a new one.

A song that does not come from confinement.

A song that does not require armor.

A song that rises not because the walls are closing in but because the sky is open, your wings work, and you were always meant to fly.

The cage door is open, sis.

It always was.

Fly.

→ If you have never read or heard the poem that first gave language to this song, Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is waiting for you here.

→ And if her words move you the way they have moved generations of women, you can also find her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings here.

→ Affiliate Note: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase through them. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, and it helps support the work here at Sunday Silk.

Sunday Silk is a faith rooted editorial at the intersection of Scripture and nervous system science. Written by Ronnie. Daughter. Mother. Woman rebuilt more than once.

New publications every week.

For our grandmothers.

For their mothers.

For us.

Survival built families, carried prayers through hardship, kept lights on and faith intact. But survival was never meant to become a personality. And yet, here we are. Praying.

Serving.

Leading.

Holding everything together.

Exhausted.

Hey I’m Ronnie, the voice behind “SUNDAY SILK”. A mother of three beautful girls. A woman rebuilt more than once. A student of Scripture and a student of the nervous system.

I didn’t set out to create a publication. I set out to understand why so many women who love God deeply still live as if they are bracing for something, including me. Somewhere between responsibility and resilience, we learned to function at high capacity while quietly disconnected from peace.

So I began studying. The body. Trauma. Regulation. The way Scripture speaks to fear, to rest, to renewal, not as metaphor, but as instruction. I am currently training in trauma informed and nervous system regulation, exploring how neuroscience and faith intersect in the rebuilding of a regulated life. Not to create noise. To create clarity.

This year, I turn 37. The second birthday I have lived without my mother here in the physical. Grief has a way of revealing what strength actually is, and what it is not. It teaches you that resilience can be inherited, but so can survival patterns. It teaches you that being strong and being hardened are not the same thing.

SUNDAY SILK is a faith rooted editorial on identity in Christ, inherited resilience, and the art of living beyond survival. Not louder faith.

Not aesthetic devotion.

Embodied peace.

Regulated presence.

A woman aligned with Heaven and her own body.

Because strength without softness becomes armor. And armor, worn too long, becomes a cage.

This is where Scripture meets science. Where theology sits at the same table as the nervous system. Where inherited patterns are examined, not romanticized. Resilience is beautiful. But unexamined resilience can quietly keep you in fight mode, even while quoting Proverbs 31.

Soft, not fragile. Structured, not rigid. Sovereign, not self made.

We are not unraveling. We are refining.

Each issue will move like a conversation, faith, identity, womanhood, rest, work, motherhood, stewardship, presence and so much more.

Not all at once.

Not in chaos.

In rhythm.

This is not content. It is cultivation. A space for women who love God and are ready to stop bracing for impact.

If you have been surviving beautifully but you are ready to live deliberately, welcome.

This is Sunday Silk.

Ronnie