As a woman in a male-dominated industry, I’ve sat on teams that felt less like a team and more like a cage match. And lately I keep coming back to the same question: why do women in business, in nonprofits, in ministry, anywhere so often lean toward competing with each other instead of encouraging each other?

Somehow we’ve come to believe that if we elevate someone else, we diminish ourselves. That celebrating another woman’s win means missing out on an opportunity we wanted, or think we’re owed. That her success is somehow a referendum on ours.

Why do we choose competition over community? Why do we tear another woman’s success down instead of being the loudest voice in the room cheering her on?

Here’s where I’ve landed. I don’t think it’s the whole answer, but I believe it’s part of it: this is learned, generational behavior.

Somewhere along the way, women in the workplace, especially in male-dominated spaces, internalized the idea that we have to earn our spot at the table. That belief does something subtle and corrosive: it convinces us that cheering someone else on, supporting her instead of competing with her, means we’ll lose our own place.

THAT IS FALSE.

More than ever, we need each other. We need to stop trying to prove we belong and start walking in the authenticity of who we are. We need to build communities of strong, intelligent women who celebrate each other, challenge each other to grow, and recognize that the only person we hurt by competing is ourselves.

In my work, I meet incredible women constantly… some doing exactly what I do, some in completely different industries, some thirty years into their careers, some three months in. And here’s the thing I keep relearning: I can learn something from every single one of them, if I just take the time to listen, to observe, to share a coffee or a meal, or even just to follow their work.

And I don’t think this is just something I feel… I think it’s something I’m watching happen. I see this idea of community evolving everywhere right now, in rooms and networks and friendships that are choosing a different way. And when I look at the spaces I’m actually drawn to, the ones I keep coming back to, they’re never the ones built on scarcity or comparison. They’re the ones that elevate community over competition. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a pull toward what we were made for.

I felt it firsthand. When I moved into the engineering world two and a half years ago, I was nervous, excited, and if I’m honest, terrified I was going to fall on my face. Then a Business Development Director at another firm reached out, welcomed me, and bought me coffee. In that one conversation, she encouraged me, answered my silly questions, and shared more wisdom than she probably realized. What stood out wasn’t just her advice — it was that she was genuinely rooting for my success, not sizing me up. Her investment in me that day has impacted me more than she may ever know. And it proved something I haven’t forgotten since: community is always the best option.

You don’t have to look far to see the other version too just open Instagram, turn on the news, it’s right there, community fractured into comparison and outrage. So what if we chose the version that’s already starting to take root? What if we built more of the communities of women who support each other, help each other, cheer for each other, and send each other business?

We were made for community. We need it not as a nice idea, but as something we actively choose, every day, especially with the women who could just as easily be our competition.

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Over the last several years, I have watched many people I know and love go through what they called “deconstruction.” While these people were genuinely searching for truth… questioning whether the faith traditions they’d grown up in were real and worth holding onto… I often watched them slowly drift away from any faith at all, and from their relationship with the Lord. Very few ever made it to the other side. Very few ever reconstructed.

So when I began tearing apart everything I believed, I wasn’t sure what to call it. Because my goal was never to walk away. My goal was to strip back everything I had been told to believe, or thought I had to believe to be a “good Christian,” and find what Scripture actually says — who God truly is, and what it really means to be a Daughter of God.

It hit me earlier this week: I wasn’t deconstructing. I was remodeling.

When you remodel a home, sometimes you tear everything back to the studs. You open up the walls, check the attic, pull up the floors. That’s exactly what this season has looked like for me. I have torn down walls, thrown out rotting wood, and in some cases demolished everything I thought I knew about a specific topic because the Holy Spirit showed me I was missing the very heart of God.

The process isn’t over. But I’m starting to see things take shape.

As I’ve reflected on what has made this possible what has allowed me to walk through this and still experience God’s presence in every moment, I kept coming back to three things:

• Community. I have been surrounded by people who created space for me to ask hard questions, wrestle out loud, and search the Scriptures when I didn’t know where to land. They held me close no matter what. That kind of community is irreplaceable.

• Counseling. So many of my misconceptions about God and about who He says I am were rooted in my own past trauma, experiences, and family story. Meeting regularly with my counselor has been the game changer. She challenges me, tells me the truth, and helps me discern truth from lies, fear from faith, and trauma from healing. I am confident I would not be where I am today without her.

• Consistency. Like a bad penny, I just kept showing up. On mornings when I didn’t want to read or pray, I did it anyway. On days when I wanted to quit, I had people holding me accountable. Even when I was frustrated, hurting, discouraged, and broken, I kept showing up to church, to my quiet time, to Bible study, to neighborhood group, to wherever I could serve with whatever I had left. Consistency, even imperfect and reluctant consistency, matters.

The house has undergone a significant remodel. It looks different than it did. Some rooms are unrecognizable. But it is more mine than it has ever been and ultimately more His.

So if you’re in that place right now, I want to encourage you: you don’t have to deconstruct. Maybe what you need is to remodel.

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me to “just focus” over the last 37 years, I could retire today.

Two words. And yet, for me, they have never been a helpful nudge… they have ALWAYS been a full stop. A wall. A reminder that my brain works differently than the world expects it to, and that somehow, that difference makes me less.

I was first diagnosed with ADHD around age 5. But this was an era when many parents were hesitant to medicate their children, and the prevailing narrative sounded something like: “She’ll grow out of it.” “She just needs to learn to sit still.” “All kids are fidgety when they’re bored.”

Science doesn’t support that. And as someone who has lived every single day of her life with ADHD, I can tell you firsthand it simply isn’t true.

Here’s what I need you to understand: no one on this earth wants me to focus more than I do. Every missed detail, every moment I lose the thread of a conversation, every time I have to ask someone to repeat themselves in a quiet room, it doesn’t feel like a minor inconvenience to me. It feels like failure. It feels like evidence. Evidence that I’m broken, that I’m incapable, that no matter how hard I try, I will never quite get it right. And once that thought takes root, it doesn’t just sit there quietly. It spirals… fast… into a shame so heavy that no amount of well-meaning encouragement can lift it.

That is what “just focus” has always cost me. Not a gentle reminder. A spiral.

Because the truth is, I wasn’t choosing not to focus. I was trying every single day, with everything I had and still coming up short in ways I couldn’t explain or control. Telling someone with ADHD to just focus is a little like telling someone with a broken leg to just walk it off. The desire is there. The effort is there. What’s missing is the support.

Two years ago, I had a conversation that changed everything.

I was sitting on the back deck with a friend when she asked me a simple question: “What would you tell me if I wasn’t treating my medical condition?”

I didn’t have to think long about my answer. And in the silence and tears that followed, I realized that’s exactly what I was doing. ADHD isn’t a character flaw or a lack of discipline. It is a medical condition. My brain doesn’t produce enough dopamine, or in some cases doesn’t know what to do with the dopamine it does produce and dopamine is the very chemical responsible for attention, motivation, and the ability to regulate focus. I wasn’t failing to focus because I didn’t care enough. I was failing to focus because my brain was literally working without the chemistry it needed to do so.

That conversation cracked something open in me. I decided to stop hiding.

For most of my life, I had been quietly white-knuckling my way through a world not designed for my brain… masking, compensating, exhausting myself trying to appear “normal” (whatever that means). But two years ago, I made a different choice. I decided to stop surviving and start actually figuring out how to thrive.

That started with owning two things: it was okay to ask for help, and it was okay to do things differently than I had always been told I should. I began working with a clinic that specializes in ADHD and everything that travels with it because let’s be honest it rarely travels alone. I started unpacking years of harmful thought patterns that had been shaped by a lifetime of being told that if I really wanted to focus, I could. That the problem was willpower. That the problem was me.

It wasn’t me. It was never me.

Now, with the right combination of medication, support, and genuinely healthier ways of thinking about myself, something has shifted. I can focus at a capacity I never experienced before. I can follow a conversation in a loud room without feeling like I want to disappear. Not because I’m white-knuckling harder than before but because I finally have what I always needed: the right support structure for the way God wired my brain.

And that has changed everything.

Because this isn’t just about productivity or performance. The ability to focus — real focus, supported focus — is making me a better friend. A better partner. A better fiancée. A better employee. It’s allowing me to show up to the people and the work I love with presence and intention rather than just guilt and exhaustion. It’s making me more authentic, more passionate, and more me than I have ever been.

So if you know someone with ADHD, I want to ask you to please retire “just focus” from your vocabulary. Not because we don’t want to hear that you care, but because those two words, however well-intentioned, have never once helped us focus. What helps is curiosity. What helps is patience. What helps is walking alongside us while we learn to harness the way our minds work because when we do, it isn’t a limitation.

It’s a superpower!

Over the last several years, I’ve felt my view of work slowly shifting. Changing. Deepening.

For a long time, I believed that to truly be who God created me to be, I needed to be in full-time vocational ministry. And there have been seasons of that — beautiful, stretching, sacred seasons.

But now?

Now I find myself in a different season. I work as a Marketing and Business Development Director in an engineering firm. (And no… I didn’t go to school for this.)

If you had told my younger self this is where I would land, I would have been very confused. Maybe even resistant.

And yet somewhere along the way, I realized something that has completely transformed how I show up every day:

For those of us called to the “corporate world” — to the workplace, the office, the public square — our work is an act of worship.

I had a conversation this week with a colleague whose son recently found his faith. Now he’s wrestling with what to do with his life. And it made me pause and wonder…

Why do we so often assume that a “normal” job is somehow less sacred than working at a church?

Why do we subtly elevate vocational ministry while quietly diminishing the call to business, education, government, engineering, or finance?

The more I’ve reflected on this, the more I’ve realized that in some Christian circles, we’ve unintentionally created a hierarchy of callings. If you’re not in full-time ministry, your work can feel secondary. “Secular.” As if it matters less to the Kingdom.

But that makes no sense.

Scripture is filled with people who worked ordinary jobs. The Old Testament talks of shepherds and artisans and farmers. Paul was a tentmaker. Peter was a fisherman. Joseph was a carpenter in Nazareth. Work has always been woven into the fabric of faithful lives.

I’m coming to believe that what our world desperately needs isn’t just more people striving for full-time ministry roles. It needs believers called to the public square.

We need men and women of integrity, courage, and deep faith in politics, in companies, in banks, in classrooms, on construction sites, and in boardrooms. For years, many Christians retreated from these spaces in an effort not to be “of the world.” But in a world that feels a little darker every day…

Those of us who carry the Light were never meant to hide it.

We were meant to bring it everywhere — even into office buildings and Zoom calls.

Maybe part of our responsibility is shifting how we mentor the next generation. Instead of only asking college students if they’re called to vocational ministry, what if we empowered them to see that whatever profession they pursue — whatever they are passionate about — can be Kingdom work?

As I recently stood in the South Carolina Statehouse, I was reminded of something profound: God places us in specific rooms for a reason.

Sometimes we may be the only expression of Jesus someone encounters. Other times, we may have access to influence decisions and conversations in ways others never could. That isn’t accidental. That’s assignment.

Which means it matters how I carry myself.

It matters that I lead with integrity. That I operate with grace. That I extend mercy. That I listen for the Spirit’s prompting on when to speak, when to stay silent, when to stand firm, when to lean in with compassion.

I’m realizing that those of us working in banks, politics, engineering, construction, tourism, healthcare, and every field in between have an extraordinary opportunity. We get to bring light into dark spaces. Hope into places of despair. We may, at times, be the only reflection of Jesus someone ever sees.

So while I no longer work in vocational ministry every single day…

Every meeting.
Every event.
Every Teams call.
Every time I step into the office or a meeting with colleagues.

It’s all worship.

So on this journey towards wholeness, I’m realizing it isn’t about separating the sacred from the secular.

But that there was never meant to be a divide to begin with.

All of it is sacred. All of it matters. And in the midst of every day tasks, who I am matters most.

I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like it was wrong or at least inappropriate to question my faith, my circumstances, and honestly… God. Somewhere along the way I absorbed the idea that asking hard questions made me less faithful, less trusting, or somehow a “bad Christian.”

But over time, I’ve discovered that not only is that untrue… it’s actually the opposite of what Scripture shows us.

I became a Christian as a senior in high school, after years of being in and around church culture. I grew up hearing all the familiar Christian sayings:
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“God is in control.”
“Just trust the Lord—it’ll all work out.”

And maybe those words bring comfort to some people. But for me, they often felt like they glossed over real pain, real fear, and real questions. If I struggled to accept those phrases, I assumed I must be the problem…that because I had questions or doubts I wasn’t spiritual enough, trusting enough, or strong enough.

But a couple years ago, when I started taking my faith apart piece by piece and examining what I actually believed, I realized something life‑changing:

Questioning God isn’t a sign of weak faith.
It’s an invitation from God Himself to come closer.

Scripture is full of people who didn’t just question God… they wrestled with Him.

Sure, many of us know Jacob literally wrestled with God in Genesis. But he isn’t alone.

• Job asked where God was in the middle of his pain and grief.

• David cried out to God from caves, wondering why God felt so far away.

• The disciples questioned Jesus when He told them something they couldn’t understand or accept.

And the list could go on and on.

So why do we think it’s somehow unspiritual to ask questions?
To wonder what God is doing?
To tell Him honestly how we feel?

What I’ve come to realize in this season is that God isn’t irritated, disappointed, or threatened by my questions. He isn’t rolling His eyes when I struggle. In fact, He gently and patiently invites me to bring every one of those questions to Him.

These days, instead of stuffing my feelings down and telling myself to “just trust,” I sit with them. I journal about them. I bring them to God just as they are, which is often messy, unfiltered and raw.

Because God isn’t afraid of my questions. He isn’t disappointed by my doubts.
And He never asks me to grit my teeth and pretend I’m fine.

What I’ve realized is that the best part is…
When I lean into the wrestling, when I bring God the doubts, the confusion, and the ache, He doesn’t pull away…

But…

He comes close.
He meets me with grace.
He sits with me in the very places I used to hide.
He comforts me with His Presence.

So…

Let’s keep asking.
Let’s keep wrestling.
Let’s keep remembering that God doesn’t shame us for questioning…

He invites us into it.

As we step into a new year and I begin a new season, I’ve decided to take a step of faith and start sharing my heart with anyone who wants to read. Even if this simply becomes a way to challenge myself to write and reflect, I believe it’s time.

Over the past two years, I’ve stripped down everything I thought I believed and rebuilt it on what is true—what Scripture says and what the Lord declares. In that process, I’ve begun walking toward the wholeness God promises in His Word.

In April 2024, my life took an unexpected turn. It was hard—messy and painful—but God has used it to lead me on a journey that is both challenging and beautiful. Through it, I’m learning who I am, who I’m becoming, and what it means to live fully surrendered.

Here, you’ll find writings that range from work and leadership to what I’m learning about Jesus—and everything in between. My hope is to create a space filled with authenticity, where we can learn and grow together. A space that reminds us life is most beautiful when we admit we don’t have it all together and allow the Lord to shape us day by day into the people He created for His purposes—in work, life, and every space in which we show up.

Thank you for being here. Welcome to my Journey to Wholeness.