Hey Everybody,

Have you ever noticed yourself pulling away from something beautiful because a part of you is already afraid of losing it?

I’ve been sitting with that question. Actually...I’ve been sitting with a lot of things.

I didn’t think I was going to write to you this week. Like, I really didn’t think I could bring myself to do it.

My heart is heavy…..My mind is tired…….My emotions seem to have decided they would all like to speak at the same time, which is incredibly inconsiderate of them. 😂

And my focus? Baby...let me tell you focus has apparently taken some much needed PTO, lol.

Still, somewhere between cleaning out old totes, watching DVDs I probably haven’t touched in twenty plus years, praying for people I love, grieving people and relationships that are changing, and trying to make sense of everything floating around inside me…...

I realized maybe I didn’t need to have something profound to say this week.

Maybe I simply needed to tell you the truth….like the unveiled truth…..

My heart hurts. Whew…There I said it……

That’s the letter. Lol …..Okay...not quite.

You guys know me better than that.

But that is where we’re starting.

This has been one of those weeks where several things that might have felt manageable individually decided to arrive at the same emotional address.

I lost a good friend. Even typing that sentence feels strange. There are some realities the mouth can say before the heart completely understands them. For me death is like that.

You can know someone is gone and still have your mind quietly rejecting the information.

You remember a conversation, a laugh, Something ridiculous they said, a small moment or place. And for half a second your brain forgets. Then it remembers again and that’s grief.

A few days later, another small community of people I’ve grown close to over the last year made the decision to disband our regular gatherings. Life, Schedules and responsibilities happened.

People have families, careers, commitments, travel, transitions and all the other things adulthood seems determined to put on the calendar. Getting everybody together had become increasingly difficult. It made sense and it still made me sad.

That’s something I’ve been thinking about. Something can make sense and still hurt.

We don’t say that enough. There doesn’t have to be betrayal for there to be grief.

There doesn’t have to be conflict for something ending to feel heavy.

Nobody has to become the villain. Sometimes people simply reach the end of a period of life they shared and the heart still has to adjust.

Meanwhile, people I love are carrying their own heavy things. I’m praying alongside two close friends whose beloved family members are navigating new medical reports and tests.

My own mother is preparing for a dental procedure that may technically be called “minor,” but sounds intensive enough that I have personally rejected the adjective. 😂 And I’m heading into another week that already has hard conversations waiting for me.

You know the type of week I’m talking about? Sunday evening arrives and instead of feeling restored you’re already looking at Monday like...

Sir. I don’t believe I ordered all of this for my life today. lol

Normally, this is around the time of year when I would be preparing to take a sabbatical.

My rhythm has taught me that I need seasons when I become quieter, less output, less public pouring and more reflection, restoration and listening to God intensely…

This year? Life apparently did not consult my sabbatical schedule. Life has a way of life-ing.

And still...God knows exactly what He’s doing even when I don’t. I believe that.

Some days I believe it loudly and other days I whisper it.

This week I’ve mostly whispered it.

I have been fervently cleaning. Closets, totes, trunks.

Things I’ve apparently been moving from one storage location to another for years because clearly somewhere in my mind at different stages of my life that qualified as organization.

And then I found the DVDs…Yes. I said DVDs.

Some of you younger readers may need to Google that. Please don’t message me afterward. I am already emotionally fragile. 😂 College stepshows, My wedding, Poetry shows. Old gatherings.

People. Voices. Places ………..Versions of me.

And because I was already in there...of course I found my Cosby Show collection.

So naturally I had to watch a few episodes. For historical research….obviously.

What started as cleaning became something else entirely.

I sat there watching this younger version of myself moving across the screen.

Laughing. Dancing, Talking, Celebrating…..Surrounded by my people. Some are still deeply present in my life… While others are distant. Some relationships changed. Some people are gone all together….

And some of those younger versions of me are gone too.

That surprised me because sometimes nostalgia isn’t simply missing people.

Sometimes you’re missing yourself. The woman who hadn’t experienced certain losses yet.

The girl who didn’t know some endings were coming. The version of you who trusted differently because life hadn’t given her certain evidence yet.

I watched my wedding….College memories….Poetry nights.

Ordinary moments that nobody standing there could have known would eventually become precious.

And I found myself thinking...

We rarely know we’re living inside a memory while we’re making it.

We just call it Tuesday. Driving down the street we complain about the traffic.

We’re worried about our hair….Somebody is late….We’re scrolling on our phones.

Meanwhile...life is quietly recording something we’ll one day give anything to experience again.

That thought has stayed with me.

I’ve written and taught a lot about grief…..I’ve walked alongside people through it. I’ve studied it……I’ve developed language around it…..I’ve written about the many faces of it and grief still manages to surprise me.

Primarily because grief doesn’t only live at funerals….Sometimes grief lives inside a group text that isn’t active anymore.

Grief can be an empty chair….Sometimes it’s the title you no longer carry….The friendship that changed or the church you don’t attend anymore.

The child who grew older but still holds the scars…the house somebody else lives in now or the tradition everybody became too busy to continue.

Sometimes grief is watching an old DVD and hearing the voice of someone you didn’t realize you missed that much. Sometimes grief is simply recognizing as I have heard by so many different people this week:

That season is over.

Grief counselor, David Kessler’s work has helped give language to something I deeply believe: meaning does not require us to bypass pain. Meaning can emerge through grief without erasing what was lost.

I appreciate that because I have no interest in rushing myself toward a silver lining.

So yes, sometimes there is deeper meaning…..and sometimes...

I simply miss my friend. Period…….I don’t need to make that inspirational today.

I loved somebody….They mattered to me…. and their absence hurts.

All of this made me start thinking about what I do when I’m sad. I mean really, really sad.

Heartbroken…..Afraid…and I noticed something I’m not particularly proud of, but HOME isn’t where we come to perform, so here we are.

I isolate.

Not completely….I’m not disappearing into the wilderness with no phone and a supply of snacks.

Although depending on the week...like this one I will keep that option available. 😂

Seriously though, ,my isolation is quieter. I still show up…still answer calls…still work.

I still laugh….still love people….still lead…. still pray.

I simply become more careful about how much of me I allow anyone to reach.

That’s different and I realized that sometimes I have mistaken that for wisdom.

Maybe even boundaries….It isn’t always either….Sometimes it’s fear because losing people hurts me deeply.

Redefining relationships is hard for me. Watching closeness change is hard. Saying goodbye is EVEN harder.

Having someone become part of the architecture of my world and then having to figure out what life looks like when they occupy a different space in it...

That’s really hard for me.

So somewhere along the way I developed a quiet strategy.

Don’t give everybody all of your heart.

Meter it…Protect it……..Keep enough of yourself somewhere unreachable so that if somebody leaves, changes, moves, dies, disconnects, disappoints, or simply belongs to a season that ends...maybe it won’t hurt as badly.

Sounds reasonable….Except...I’m beginning to realize that’s not how love works.

You can’t selectively numb vulnerability and somehow keep intimacy fully alive.

Brené Brown’s work has repeatedly explored this tension between armor and vulnerability. She describes vulnerability as the path toward courage, trust, intimacy, love and joy, while acknowledging why armor can feel so attractive when we’ve been hurt.

I understand that…Deeper than I would like to admit...Armor works.

That’s why we wear it….The problem is that armor doesn’t only keep pain from getting in.

It can keep love from getting all the way in too.

Whew………I didn’t enjoy writing that sentence.

But, that’s the thought that got me.

What if some of what I’ve called protection has actually been rationing?

A little love here….A little vulnerability there…..Enough connection to experience relationship.

Never quite enough exposure to completely devastate me if it changes.

Except...that’s not really living and it certainly isn’t loving.

Jesus didn’t say, “Love one another carefully enough that nobody can hurt you.”

Wouldn’t that have been convenient? Instead, we are repeatedly invited toward love.

Toward community, bearing one another’s burdens, rejoicing together, crying together.

Towards being seen and more importantly being known.

I love the Passion Translation of the Bible and in the book of Psalm 147:3 it describes the beautiful image of God healing broken hearts and tending their wounds. I love the tenderness of that picture because scripture doesn’t pretend hearts won’t break.

God doesn’t shame the wound. He tends it and that’s important for me right now.

Mainly beecause maybe the goal isn’t building a heart nobody can break.

Maybe the goal is trusting God enough to keep having a heart worth breaking.

I know….I know….I’d prefer another option too ya’ll. 😂

Yet EVERYTHING COMES WITH A RISK

Love comes with risk. …Friendship comes with risk….Marriage comes with risk….Leadership comes with risk…..Community comes with risk…..Mentoring someone sometimes comes with risk…..Allowing people to matter comes with risk.

Brené Brown once said that vulnerability involves uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.

There it is… flashing lights and airhorns….

Emotional exposure……Love exposes us and when you’ve experienced enough loss, exposure can start feeling irresponsible.

Your nervous system remembers the panic… your heart remembers the pain...Your body remembers the fatigue.

So when a new friendship begins becoming meaningful, part of you whispers in your heart:

Be Careful.

When a community begins feeling like a safe space:

You hear speak slowly… Be Careful.

When you begin depending on the consistency of someone’s presence:

The whisper says, Don’t get to use to them being there… Be Careful.

When someone begins seeing the softer parts of you:

You hear pull back, don’t emote to much, they may think it’s weird….. Be Careful.

Because somewhere inside you there is a historian keeping records of every person you loved who isn’t here in the same way anymore. I’ve been listening to that historian.

Maybe a little too much.

One of the ideas I appreciate from people who have studied this topic deeply is the practice of having a strong back and a soft front that language feels especially relevant right now because I’ve become very good at the strong back.

Resilience? Got it. Leadership? No problem….Handle the crisis? With my eyes closed.

Show up when it’s hard? That’s practically muscle memory….Make the phone calls nobody wants to make? I’ll do it…..Sit beside someone in pain?..Without hesitation.

But the soft front?

That’s harder for me…..The part that says: I miss you….I’m scared.

Or this hurt….Please stay. Don’t leave…I need you….I don’t want this to change.

I don’t know how to carry this today.

Well that’s vulnerability and vulnerability is considerably less glamorous than resilience.

Nobody writes “ I cried in the car and called my friend because I couldn’t hold it together today” in they’re professional bio…. And maybe we should.

It would make networking events considerably more interesting but here’s the leadership lesson I’m sitting with:

Armor doesn’t only affect our personal relationships. It eventually affects how we lead.

Leaders who are afraid of loss can become controlling…..Leaders who fear disappointment can stop trusting.

Leaders who haven’t grieved can become emotionally unavailable…..Leaders who are always protecting themselves can unintentionally build cultures where everyone else learns to protect themselves too.

We reproduce what we normalize……So my healing isn’t merely personal…..It affects my marriage….. friendships…..my leadership….my ministry.,,, my business.. even my mentoring.

Every room I enter gets some version of whatever work I have or haven’t done inside myself.

That’s humbling and sobering thought.

I’ve been returning to the shortest bible verse many of us learned as children.

In John 11:35…. Jesus wept….Two simple words yet an entire sermon.

Jesus knew resurrection was coming and He still cried.

Think about that..He knew Lazarus would live again so He knew the ending.

He had divine perspective and power over death.

And still... He wept.

That tells me something.

Knowing God is working doesn’t cancel the legitimacy of grief.

Faith and sadness can occupy the same body. I can trust God and still say:

This hurts.

I can believe Romans 8:28 and still cry. I can know heaven is real and still miss somebody here.

I can understand why a community needed to change and still wish we were getting together next week. I can know medical professionals are doing their jobs and still pray nervously for the people I love.

I can trust God with my mother and still want to call and check on her twelve times…maybe thirteen. Lol…Whatever don’t judge me…She’s my mama. Mind your business. 😂

Faith doesn’t require emotional dishonesty…I think mature faith actually gives us more language for truth.

The Psalms certainly do…Joy, Anger, Confusion, Praise, Fear, Hope.

Sometimes all within a few verses.

Apparently God has never been intimidated by complicated emotions.

That’s good news because I’m currently bringing Him several.

This is what I’m wrestling with most. My instinct when my heart hurts is to protect what remains.

Pull people a little farther away. Reduce emotional risk. Stay connected enough to avoid loneliness while remaining guarded enough to avoid devastation. That sounds strategic.

It is also exhausting and I’m beginning to believe healing may ask something different of me.

Not indiscriminate vulnerability, because everybody doesn’t deserve access to everything.

Boundaries, Discernment and Safety matters. Vulnerability without boundaries isn’t health but neither is allowing fear to build boundaries God never asked for.

There is a difference between discernment and defense. I’m trying to learn it.

Some doors need locks and others simply need hinges.

That’s a word for somebody….Maybe me….Probably me.

Yeah, Im somebody….that word is for me

As I wrestled with this word those old videos keep coming back to me.

The people, all those versions of life, all those moments.

Some relationships lasted and others changed. Some ended….Some people died.

Other people surprised me…..Some disappointed me.

Some loved me far better than I knew how to receive at the time.

And still... when I watched those videos, I wasn’t thinking:

I wish I had loved less…Isn’t that interesting?

I wasn’t wishing I had laughed less. Connected less.. Celebrated less…Trusted less.

Shown up less…..I wasn’t wishing the wedding had been smaller emotionally.

I wasn’t wishing college had mattered less….I wasn’t wishing those friendships had been shallower so their changes wouldn’t hurt.

I was grateful that I had lived it.

Maybe that’s the revelation hiding somewhere inside this heart-heavy week.

The pain of losing something doesn’t mean loving it was a mistake.

Sometimes grief is simply the receipt love leaves behind.

It says:

This mattered….They mattered…. What we had mattered and maybe the answer to loss isn’t loving less next time.

Maybe it’s learning how to grieve without allowing grief to make all of our future decisions.

I don’t have six steps for you or eight leadership strategies.

Honestly, that would feel dishonest this week.

I have four questions. Four questions I’m sitting with right now.. and I want to welcome you all to sit with me.

1. What am I calling a boundary that might actually be fear?

This one requires honesty. Where am I creating healthy protection? and where am I simply avoiding the possibility of being hurt again?

What relationship have I kept at arm’s length because somebody else once left? What new community am I afraid to trust because an old one changed? Am I asking today’s people to pay emotional debts they never created?

I’m sitting with that.

2. What deserves to be grieved instead of explained?

I am a meaning maker. I naturally want to understand. Why did this happen? What am I supposed to learn? How does this connect to purpose? What’s next?

Sometimes the answer is:

Cry.

Kessler’s work reminds me that meaning isn’t a shortcut around grief maybe everything doesn’t need interpretation immediately. Some things need tears first.

3. Who am I allowing to help carry me?

This connects directly to what we’ve been talking about in HOME lately.

Who helps the helper? Who checks on the person checking on everybody else?

Who gets the unedited version? Who knows when “I’m okay” actually means “I don’t have language for this yet”?

We all need for at least one small safe space where we can work through our fears and falls.

I know I need that…..You do too…..Strength was never supposed to mean solitude.

4. Can I keep my heart soft even when life gives me reasons to harden it?

This may be my prayer for the week. Not that nothing else changes.

I can’t control that….Not that nobody else leaves….I can’t promise that either.

Not that every medical report will say exactly what we’re praying it says….I wish I could guarantee that.

My prayer is simpler.

God, keep my heart soft…..Give me a strong back….Grant me wisdom….Define my boundaries….Give me discernment…Emdow me with an extra dose of courage.

And please...

don’t let what I’ve lost make me unavailable for what I still have left to love.

I didn’t think I had a letter in me this week, and maybe I didn’t.

Maybe this wasn’t a letter. Maybe you just sat beside me for a little while.

Maybe we opened an old tote….Put in a DVD…..Laughed at younger versions of ourselves.

Watched a little Cosby Show…..Cried unexpectedly…..Prayed for some people…..Missed some others and admitted that sometimes being human is incredibly beautiful and incredibly painful at exactly the same time.

I’m learning to let both be true.

This week I’m grieving, concerned. I’m tired, yet hopeful, I’m praying, remembering, laughing.

I’m missing people and I’m trusting God.

All of those sentences are true.

And maybe our spiritually maturity selves won’t force us to choose one. It’s learning how to carry the tension without losing our tenderness.

So as I walk into this next week of conversations, prayers, medical procedures, people I love, work that matters, memories that surprise me, and whatever else life decides to life...

I’m asking God for enough grace for today. Not next month or next year.

Today.

And I’m reminding myself: I don’t have to ration my heart to survive.

I can love with wisdom. I can grieve honestly. I can protect myself without disappearing.

I can remember without living backward. I can let people help me.

And I can trust the God who has carried every version of me I’ve watched on those old DVDs... to carry this version too.

The one whose heart is a little heavier tonight.

Who doesn’t have all the answers and still believes.

The one who is learning that having a soft heart in a world where people leave isn’t weakness.

Maybe it’s one of the bravest ways we can live.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

Have you ever sat somewhere you once loved and quietly realized this fact...

“I don’t fit here anymore?”

In the same building, with the same people serving or working in the same role.

Same organization…Same ministry….Maybe even the same relationships.

Nothing dramatic happened. Nobody necessarily did anything wrong.

Yet, something still feels different. You keep squirming in your seat emotionally, spiritually, professionally, relationally...trying to figure out why something that once felt like safe, normal or familiar likeHOME suddenly feels a little tight.

I’ve been thinking about that lately. Thinking about the heaviness of outgrowing things……And ya’ll, outgrowing can be heavy.

Because sometimes leaving something painful makes sense. Leaving something you love?……. Something that helped form you?…..Something you once begged God for….. Something filled with people you genuinely care about?

Yeah, that can get complicated.

Sometimes the shoe is still beautiful. it just doesn’t fit.

Think about a pair of shoes you absolutely loved as a child.

You wore them everywhere…….Eventually your foot grew.

Nothing became wrong with the shoe….the shoe didn’t betray you.

You didn’t suddenly become ungrateful for the shoe.

Your foot simply required more room. Yet somehow when this happens in our regular life, we start assigning blame.

Who changed? Who messed this up? Why doesn’t this feel the same?

What happened to us? One day I realized that maybe nothing happened.

Maybe I simply grew.

That’s one of the hardest possibilities to accept because growth sounds beautiful when we’re talking about it from a stage or abstractly in a presentation…

Everybody wants growth…..we pray for growth. we attend annual conventions and conferences about growth.

We buy books about growth…..Create strategic plans for growth.

Then growth actually arrives and starts rearranging things.

Welp...

Nobody put ALL THAT NEWNESS in the GROWTH brochure, lol. I have come to realize that Growth changes appetite… it changes capacity….Growth changes questions. and boundaries.

Growth changes what you can tolerates and sometimes changes where you belong.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:11:

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

I’ve always read that particular scripture as speaking to maturity.

Lately I hear the movement in it too.

There are things appropriate for one stage of development that simply cannot accompany us into another…….and putting something away doesn’t mean it had no value.

Sometimes it means its value has been fulfilled.

That’s different.

If you know me , you know that I love illustrations of complex thoughts using practical images…. so here’s an image I’ve been carrying.

Imagine buying a beautiful little plant. You put it in a small pot.

You water it. Give it light. You even talk to it occasionally because apparently according to my Mama some of us believe plants need encouragement too.

And so it grows………Eventually the roots begin circling the pot. The plant starts struggling. Leaves change. Water moves through differently.

Growth slows…… the plant isn’t failing.

It’s root bound.

The very container that protected its beginning can restrict its future.

I’m gonna let that sit for a minute…….

Because some of us are angry with ourselves for struggling in environments that simply no longer have enough room for who we’ve become.

The organization may still be good…….The ministry may still matter…….The role may still be important……..The group may still contain wonderful people.

And you may still be root bound.

A bigger pot doesn’t make the smaller pot evil.

It only means growth requires room.

But there is pain that nobody talks about in all of this growth season.

I’ve watched people wrestle with this in leadership, business, ministry, friendships and life.

I’ve experienced pieces of it myself and there are certain questions that seem to appear almost every time.

Am I being ungrateful?

What will they think about me?

Who am I without this title?

What happens to these relationships if I leave?

What if God hasn’t told me to move and I’m simply uncomfortable?

What if I stay too long?

What if I leave too early?

Will people think I’ve become arrogant?

What happens when the people who knew the old version of me struggle with the person I’ve become?

Can I love people deeply and still need something different?

Am I abandoning them?

What happens to everything I helped build?

Who will I be on the other side?

Those are real questions and underneath many of them is this large little word called “grief”

Outgrowing is a form of grief , although we usually associate grief with death.

Grief is much wider than that. Grief can accompany any meaningful change involving identity, attachment, belonging, expectation or loss.

That’s why changing roles can hurt……..Leaving organizations can hurt.

Retiring can hurt……..Graduating can hurt……….Changing churches can hurt……..Friendships changing can hurt……Selling a business can hurt……..Children growing up can hurt…..even success can carry grief because sometimes achieving what you prayed for requires releasing the identity that got you there.

Psychologists sometimes describe transitions through the idea of liminality, the experience of being between identities or stages.

The old thing no longer fully fits……the new thing hasn’t completely formed……that middle space can feel incredibly disorienting.

I call it the hallway…..You’ve closed one door…….You haven’t reached the next room….and nobody decorates hallways for us to live in the hall, lol.

They are designed for passage. ….still, sometimes God allows us to stay there long enough to discover who we are without the room.

That’s uncomfortable…especially for leaders because leaders like clarity.

We like plans, outcomes…we like knowing what we’re building.

Meanwhile God occasionally says,

“Walk.”and we’re asking,

“Wonderful. Could I have the strategic plan, timeline, budget, measurable outcomes and preferably a color coded spreadsheet if you are my homegirl Tami (lol)?”

And heaven gets quiet. I’ve had enough seasons with God to know He doesn’t always provide details at the speed my nervous system prefers.

I recently studied Genesis 12 again and it has been sitting differently with me .

God tells Abram:

“Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.”

Notice the order that God gave….Leave…….Then I’ll show you.

I would personally prefer: Show me….Let me visit……Allow me to review the accommodations.

I’ll pray about it…….Then maybe I’ll leave.

Abram received enough information for obedience and very little information for comfort.

Sometimes growth looks like that.

There are seasons when God gives us clarity about what has ended before He gives us clarity about what begins next. That doesn’t make the transition easy.

It makes trust necessary.

Sometimes loyalty keeps us somewhere longer than life really wants us to stay there.

This thought is tender for me because I value loyalty… like deeply….I believe in showing up… I believe in covenant… I believe in staying through hard conversations. because I believe relationships deserve effort.

I believe institutions deserve people willing to build rather than constantly abandon them…..

Yet I’ve also learned that loyalty can become unhealthy when we confuse faithfulness with permanence……..Everything isn’t forever.

Some assignments do have completion dates.

Jesus Himself moved.

He loved people deeply and still left towns.

He served crowds and still withdrew.. there we times He poured into thousands while giving different levels of access to different people.

Jesus understood the assignment.

Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us,

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

Every season that includes endings.

I’ve had to learn that something ending doesn’t automatically mean something failed.

Read that again.

Completion and failure are not synonyms.

Some things end because they worked…You learned to listen to serve.

You contributed, you grew, you helped build.

And now something else is calling.

You all know that I love leadership and when it comes to this topic leaders carry another layer.

We don’t only ask: “What happens to me?”

We ask: “What happens to everybody else?”

Who will take over? Will they be okay? What happens to the team? What happens to the program? What happens to the people I’ve mentored? Will the organization survive? Will someone misunderstand my departure? Will people feel abandoned?

That sense of responsibility can keep leaders in expired assignments for years.

I have had to remind myself of something that sounds obvious and still requires practice:

I am responsible for my stewardship. I am not responsible for being everybody’s permanent solution.

That’s God’s territory.

Healthy leadership should eventually make room for succession.

I learned that healthy mentoring should prepare people to function without constant access to the mentor.

Healthy organizations should survive leadership transitions and healthy ministries should belong to God more than they belong to any personality.

Truly healthy leaders eventually have to ask:

Am I staying because God still has me here, or because people needing me makes leaving feel impossible?

That’s a different question.

Sometimes the hardest part is who you were there when you are moving in this capacity

The different roles can carry identity for many of us.

You weren’t simply part of the organization.

You were the director.

You weren’t simply attending the ministry.

You were the leader.

You weren’t simply working there.

You were the person everybody called.

You weren’t simply part of the friend group.

You were the glue.

So when the season changes, a deeper question emerges:

Who am I without being that person here?

That can shake you.

I’ve learned that sometimes God changes our assignment because our identity has become too intertwined with it.

Titles are useful……Assignments matter.

Purpose matters deeply to me.

Still...

I am a person before I am a position…and so are you.

Your identity has to be strong enough to survive a title change.

Your worth has to survive leaving the room where everybody knows your name.

Your purpose has to be larger than the platform currently expressing it.

Because purpose travels.

I can hear come of you saying that’s all good and fine Lakweshia but “What about the People?” I work hard for my people…I love my people…

This may be the hardest part.

Sometimes you’re ready to leave the role. You’re simply struggling to leave the people.

I understand that. Trust Me.. I understand more than you know.

Relationships matter to me…..I don’t move through people casually.

So transitions involving people carry weight.

Will we still talk?

Will they understand?

Will the relationship survive outside this shared environment?

Were we actually friends or were we connected because proximity made friendship convenient?

Those questions can hurt.

And sometimes we discover that certain relationships were connected primarily to the season. That doesn’t make them fake.

Seasonal doesn’t mean insignificant. Some people are bridges and others are anchors.

Some are companions, teachers and mirrors. While other people can become like family.

Wisdom learns to appreciate the role without demanding permanence from everyone who ever mattered.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:6,

“I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.”

I love this passage. Different people, roles or seasons.

BUT the same God.

We have to stop expecting every person who planted something in us to remain responsible for watering it forever.

And we have to release ourselves from believing we must remain in everyone else’s garden forever too.

Here are Six Things I’m Learning About Outgrowing

1. Name what feels tight before you make it wrong.

Everything uncomfortable isn’t toxic. Everything you’ve outgrown isn’t terrible.

Ask yourself what has actually changed.

Your capacity? Values? Vision? Calling? Needs? Skills? Boundaries?

Naming the shift keeps you from manufacturing villains simply because a season is changing.

2. Grieve before you rush toward what’s next.

Give yourself permission to miss it. Miss the people. Miss the rhythm. Miss the version of yourself who existed there.

Gratitude and grief often sit at the same table.

Let them. You don’t have to disrespect the past to embrace the future.

3. Separate identity from assignment.

Write down who you are without using a job title, ministry role, organization, relationship status or accomplishment.

That exercise may reveal more than you expect.

Ask yourself:

Who remains when the title leaves?

Spend some time there. Let it sit for a minute, you might be surprised what you come up with

4. Discern discomfort from completion.

Every difficult season isn’t an instruction to leave.

Sometimes growth requires staying and developing new skills. Sometimes conflict requires repair. Discomfort is the classroom.

Pray. Seek wise counsel. Look for patterns. Pay attention to peace.

Ask whether the environment is stretching your growth or consistently restricting it.

There’s wisdom in knowing the difference.

5. Leave with as much love as the situation allows.

Every departure won’t be beautiful.\ Some environments require firm boundaries.

Still, where health and safety allow, honor what helped shape you. Say thank you.

Document what needs to be transferred. Bless the people.

Celebrate what was built.

Leave the room without needing to burn it down simply to prove you were right to leave.

Maturity doesn’t require destroying yesterday to justify tomorrow.

6. Make room before you know exactly what fills it.

This one requires faith.

Sometimes the next thing cannot fully enter because our hands are still gripping the previous thing.

Release creates capacity. That doesn’t guarantee immediate clarity. It creates room.

Isaiah 43:19 says,

“Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?”

Maybe the invitation isn’t to know everything.

Maybe it’s to become available for what is springing forth.

Another thing that I’m pondering this week.

Where in my life have I confused familiarity with assignment?

What am I trying to make fit because it once fit beautifully?

Where has loyalty become fear wearing respectable clothes?

What role have I carried so long that I’m afraid I won’t recognize myself without it?

Who am I afraid of disappointing?

What would I grieve if this season ended?

What would I gain room to become?

And perhaps the hardest one...

What do I already know that I keep asking God to explain again because obedience would require change?

OUCH!! Yeah that one hurt me too…..

One last thought before I go……………………………

Outgrowing something doesn’t make you disloyal. Outgrowing something doesn’t automatically make the thing unhealthy.

Sometimes growth simply announces that a season has done its work.

You can honor the room that taught you while recognizing you can no longer live there.

You can love people and release proximity. You can appreciate an assignment and complete it.

You can treasure your history without moving back into it. You can cry while leaving. You can be uncertain and still move. You can miss what was and remain curious about what will be.

And friend...

You don’t have to make your old pot smaller in your memory to justify needing more room now.

Thank that old pot.

Grieve it.

Learn from it.

Bless what deserves blessing.

Take the wisdom.

Carry the love.

Then ask God for courage for whatever comes next.

Because sometimes the heaviness you’re feeling isn’t evidence that you’re lost.

Sometimes... it’s the weight of becoming too large for the version of life that once held you.

For those navigating a leadership transition, changing role, evolving organization, shifting relationships, purpose questions, or the complicated space between what was and what comes next, this is exactly the kind of work I help individuals and organizations explore through Unlearn Everything and Live.

Visit Unlearn Everything and Live to learn more about coaching, leadership development, organizational support and facilitated experiences.

You don’t have to navigate the hallway seasons alone. Take your time. Listen carefully.

Give thanks for the rooms behind you and trust God with the doors ahead.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what actually makes someone a friend?

I’ve been sitting with that question since writing our last letter.

Maybe it was the birthday brunch.

Maybe it was a phone call had a had with a girlfriend recently.

Maybe it was sitting between one of my oldest friends and one of my newest friends later that evening.

Maybe 47 has me doing what birthdays tend to make us do...taking inventory.

People inventory included.

Who knows me? Who loves me? Who has access to me? Who gets a vote? Who gets a voice in my life? Who gets information?

And let me tell you something ya’ll, those are very different categories.

Dr. Dharius Daniels has spoken about friendship through the lens of covenant rather than merely casual connection, and that language stayed with me.

Covenant,because everybody we enjoy isn’t necessarily called to journey closely with us.

Some people are acquaintances, others are associates.

Some folks are colleagues while others are beautiful seasonal connections.

Some people are assigned to a specific chapter while other people will become like family.

Wisdom is learning to appreciate each relationship for what it is without forcing it to become something it was never designed to be.

I’ve had people from my past who helped build pieces of me they may never get to see fully developed.

People in my present who are helping me carry life right now.

And newer relationships that seem connected to parts of my future I haven’t even met yet.

I honor all three.

History deserves gratitude. Presence deserves attention. The future deserves room.

And covenant friendship requires something from us too.

It asks us to become people capable of being good friends.

That’s the part I’ve been pondering because we spend a lot of time asking whether we have good friends.

Maybe the more revealing question is:

Am I one? AM I A GOOD FRIEND?

Here are a few reflective thoughts and insights that I had regarding this question:

1. Healthy friendship has truth in it.

I don’t need friends who agree with everything I say. My Lord!!, Can you imagine several versions of me sitting around agreeing with each other all day?

Absolutely not. I don’t want that in my life at all, lol

I need women who love me enough to say, “Kweshia, I understand what you’re saying…...and you’re still wrong.”

Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”

Healthy friendship has enough love to risk an uncomfortable conversation.

That matters in leadership too. Leaders surrounded exclusively by agreement eventually lose perspective.

A good friend reminds you that your title didn’t make you omniscient, so get a grip girlfriend.

They knew you before the applause. They aren’t particularly impressed by the bio.

And I thank God for them.

A friend who can lovingly correct you may protect you from becoming a version of yourself your success would have allowed.

2. Healthy friendship creates safety for vulnerability.

I’ve said before:

If you’ve never seen the soft side of me, perhaps I’ve never experienced the safe side of you.

Vulnerability requires safety. I need relationships where I can say:

“I’m scared.” “I don’t know.”

“That hurt me.” “I think I messed this up.”

“I need help.” “I’m tired.”

And occasionally...

“I need you to listen because I am about to say something completely irrational and I already know it’s irrational and I need you to tell me that I’m talking crazy”

No leadership strategy can replace having somewhere to be human.

A leader who has safe relationships doesn’t have to use the workplace to process every insecurity.

A spouse with healthy friendships doesn’t require their partner to fulfill every relational need.

A ministry leader with trusted community has somewhere to remove the cape of trying to rescue everyone.

James 5:16 speaks of confessing to one another and praying for one another.

That level of sharing requires safe people.

3. Healthy friendship protects trust.

Access to someone’s heart is sacred. Period.

What someone tells me while crying should never become entertainment when I’m laughing with someone else.

Their vulnerable moment isn’t my content. Their struggle isn’t my conversation starter. Their secret isn’t social currency.

Proverbs 11:13 says, “A talebearer revealeth secrets: but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.”

I’ve learned to pay attention to how people handle information about others.

Because eventually... you become the “other.”

Trust takes time to build and seconds to fracture.

Covenant friendship treats another person’s vulnerability like something precious.

4. Healthy friendship leaves room for identity.

I don’t want friends who need me to shrink so they can remain comfortable.

And I never want someone I love to believe they must become smaller to stay connected to me.

Healthy friendship says: Become better friend. Grow without bounds Sis.

Try,, and try again babe.

Change.

Heal.

Learn.

Go get it.

I’ll adjust my understanding of you as you discover more about yourself.

That’s love.

Sometimes friendships become strained because someone changed.

I’ve started asking a different question.

Did they change...or did they finally become brave enough to become themselves?

There’s a difference. Healthy relationships make room for becoming.

5. Healthy friendship understands seasons.

This one has taken me some time.

I love deeply.

So when I love you, I naturally want you somewhere in the story forever.

Life has taught me that relationships have rhythms.

Some friendships walk beside us for decades.

Others carry us across one difficult bridge. Some people belong deeply to our past.

Their absence from our present doesn’t erase their contribution.

I can bless what was without demanding that it still be.

Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us that life moves through seasons.

Maturity allows us to recognize when a relationship’s role changes without rewriting its entire history as a failure.

That’s important. Every relationship that changes didn’t go wrong.

Sometimes its assignment simply changed.

6. Healthy friendship celebrates without competition.

This one matters.

Can I tell you good news without first making it smaller?

Can you celebrate my promotion without immediately discussing yours?

Can I applaud your marriage while I’m waiting for mine?

Can you celebrate my opportunity when you wanted one too?

Romans 12:15 says, “Rejoice with them that do rejoice.”

That’s spiritual maturity.

Jealousy occasionally whispers in human relationships.

We’re human.

The question is what we do with it.

Love refuses to turn another person’s blessing into evidence of our own lack.

I want friends who can clap loudly for me.

And I want to be the friend whose hands hurt from clapping for them.

7. Healthy friendship allows reciprocity without keeping score.

Friendship isn’t always 50/50.

Sometimes I’m carrying 80 because you’ve only got 20.

Another season, you’re carrying me.

Covenant understands seasons of capacity.

What becomes unhealthy is when one person is perpetually the giver, listener, rescuer, planner, caller, forgiver, encourager and emotional first responder.

Eventually love begins feeling like labor.

Galatians 6:2 tells us to “Bear ye one another’s burdens.”

One another. Those words matter.

I am learning to notice whether my relationships allow care to travel in both directions.

Can I receive from the people I pour into?

Can I ask? Can I need? Can I allow somebody else to show up?

Those questions have changed me.

8. Healthy friendship makes you more yourself.

This may be my favorite.

The healthiest relationships in my life haven’t made me dependent on them.

They’ve helped me become clearer about me.

Good friendship strengthens identity.

It doesn’t consume it.

Your friend isn’t your Holy Spirit.

Your spouse isn’t your Savior.

Your mentor isn’t your God.

Your pastor isn’t responsible for every decision.

People can offer wisdom, perspective, love and support while God remains God.

I’ve had to learn how to love people deeply without assigning them roles they were never created to carry.

That’s freedom.

Love people for who they are instead of punishing them for everything they cannot be.

LAWD, lol.

Sit with that one.

Because some relational disappointment comes from expecting one person to occupy ten positions.

Best friend, Therapist, Mentor.

Spiritual advisor, Business consultant, Accountability partner.

Travel buddy, Emergency contact, Personal cheerleader.

No human being can carry all of that.

Healthy community distributes relational weight.

Jesus had the twelve.

Within the twelve, He had Peter, James and John.

He loved crowds. He served thousands. Jesus gave different people different levels of access. There is wisdom there.

One of my most vulnerable truths is that friendship has made me a better leader

The older I get, the more I realize my friendships have shaped my leadership.

They’ve made me softer. More honest, more accountable, more aware of my blind spots.

They’ve taught me to apologize, to listen, to receive correction, to give people room.

To understand that closeness doesn’t equal ownership, to recognize when someone needs advice and when they simply need my presence.

Those lessons travel with me into my marriage, ministry, business, mentoring, leadership and every room where another human being trusts me with some part of themselves.

Maybe friendship is one of God’s classrooms for love.

John 15:13 says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

We often hear that verse and think about dying.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the smaller ways we lay ourselves down while we’re living.

Laying down ego long enough to apologize.

Putting down all the competition long enough to celebrate.

Casting aside assumptions long enough to listen.

Laying down our need to be right long enough to understand.

Taking the time to forego our convenience long enough to show up.

Laying down our armor long enough to be known.

That’s covenant.

So here’s what I’m pondering tonight...

Who knows the real you?

Who can correct you?

Who celebrates you without competing?

Who has permission to ask the hard question?

Whose vulnerability are you trusted to protect?

Who has changed over the years and needs you to meet them again?

Who are you holding too tightly because you’re afraid of what a changing season might mean?

And perhaps the biggest question...

What kind of friend are people experiencing when they experience you?

I don’t want to spend my life collecting connections. I want covenant.

A few safe people. A few truth tellers.

Some sisters who can pray, laugh, correct, celebrate, cry, eat, travel, disagree, forgive, grow and still find their way back to the table.

People who know where I’ve been. People who understand where I am.

People willing to make room for wherever God takes me next.

And I want to be that kind of friend too.

Because maybe the real measure of friendship isn’t how many years we’ve known each other.

Maybe it’s how faithfully we’ve handled one another’s hearts while we’ve had the privilege of holding them.

Take good care of your friendships.

Take even better care of the people inside them.

And when God gives you someone who can love the truth of who you are while making room for who you’re becoming...

Don’t treat covenant like a casual connection.

Friendship is SACRED STUFF folks.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Have you ever wondered what the people who love you say about you when you aren’t in the room?

And here is an even harder question...

Could you actually receive those words if they said them while you were sitting there?

I’ve been thinking about that since my birthday.

A week or so ago, I gave myself permission to celebrate.

And I mean really celebrate.

Multiple events. Multiple outfits. Multiple opportunities to eat out, because apparently year 47 required a small festival of celebratory moments, lol.

I had fun, laughed, took pictures, received gifts, ate good food and spent time with people I love.

Yet one particular gathering has stayed with me since that weekend.

My birthday brunch.

I had been very thoughtful about the women I invited one reason was because I could according to restaurant rules I could only have 17 guest plus myself lol, but also because I wanted the table to somehow represent the story of my life.

There were lifelong friends who crossed the line from friendship into family a long time ago.

Women I met as a young adult who knew versions of me that some people at the table had never met.

Friends who I become advisors. Mentee friends. New friends. Emerging friends.

Associates whose relationships with me are still becoming whatever God intends for them to become.

Different seasons, stories and ways of knowing me.

All sitting around the same table.

At some point during brunch, someone had the bright idea to began talking about how each person had come to know me and what our relationship had meant to them.

And listen ya’ll...

I was CLEARLY NOT READY…….

There is something incredibly awkward about sitting at a table while people tell you how wonderful they think you are.

I remember thinking,

Is this my birthday brunch or did somebody forget to tell me I died?

Because why am I sitting here listening to my own flowers while I’m still alive?

It really did feel a little like I had somehow been allowed to attend my own funeral.

Except everybody looked fabulous, the food was good, and thankfully I was able to participate in the conversation.

At first, I did what many of us do when love starts getting a little too close.

I smiled and joked and tried to redirect.

You know the routine.

“Oh girl stop..” “Y’all are doing too much...”

Anything to keep from having to sit completely still and receive what was being said.

Then somewhere in the middle of those words...

I stopped fighting the love internally.

I stopped deflecting and minimizing.

Stopped trying to make everybody else comfortable with the moment.

And I simply sat there and listened.

And ya’ll...

I just let them love me.

I took the armor off, which may sound like a small thing.

For me, it wasn’t because I have spent a significant part of my life learning how to give love. I know how to celebrate people. I know how to encourage.

I know how to see potential in someone before they can see it themselves.

I know how to show up. I know how to send the text or make the call.

Buy the gift, pray the prayer, drive the miles or sit in the hospital to show up.

I know how to as the church says “Stand in the gap” for people.

I know exactly how to remind somebody who they are when life has made them forget.

However, receiving that same kind of love can feel different.

Sometimes receiving requires a vulnerability that giving just doesn’t.

If I were really being honest with myself I would admit that giving lets me remain active.

While receiving asks me to BE STILL .

Giving allows me to DO something and receiving asks me to BELIEVE something.

Receiving asks me to believe that I am worthy of the love being offered without performing for it.

That’ll preach all by itself, lol.

Anyway back to the brunch, ya’ll I sat there and I listened.

I listened to women tell stories about versions of me I had almost forgotten.

They talked about moments I remembered differently.

Things I had said that I didn’t realize stayed with them.

Ways I had shown up that felt ordinary to me and significant to them.

Some remembered me from seasons when I was still figuring myself out.

Others met me after life had knocked some edges off. Some knew the dreamer.

Some knew the builder. Some knew the woman before certain heartbreaks.

Others met the woman those heartbreaks helped shape.

And somehow all of them knew me.

Different pieces of the same woman.

Sitting there listening, I thought about Proverbs 17:17:

“A friend loveth at all times.”

That phrase “At all times” hit differently for me …..

That’s different from loving every version of every decision.

Real friendship has enough room for truth, correction and growth.

It has enough room for seasons where one person has more to give.

Yet there is enough room for disappointment and repair.

Real friendship has enough room for laughter so ridiculous that explaining the joke to anyone outside the friendship would require a 20 minute PowerPoint presentation and historical footnotes.

That’s the kind of friendship I’m talking about.

And as I looked around that table, I realized I wasn’t simply looking at people who attended my birthday brunch.

I was looking at evidence that God had been kind to me through people.

I’ve spent years talking about purpose, leadership, relationships and community.

Still, there are moments when theology becomes incredibly simple.

Sometimes God’s provision for us simply looks like a person who shows up and walks through life with you.

Ruth said to Naomi in Ruth 1:16, “Whither thou goest, I will go.”

We usually read that passage through the lens of loyalty, and rightly so. Lately I’ve been hearing something else in that verse though.

I hear “presence”. I’ll go with you. I’ll walk beside you.

I’ll enter the next chapter even though neither of us completely understands what waits there.

There are people in my life who have done that for me.

They have walked beside versions of me they couldn’t fix.

They’ve celebrated doors they didn’t open. They’ve prayed over things they couldn’t change.

They’ve watched me evolve without requiring me to remain who I was when we met.

And that’s a gift.

Because healthy friendship gives people room to become and becoming can be messy.

Growing people change their minds and discover new boundaries.

They ask harder questions.

They become clearer about what they need.

People who are growing heal, grieve, evolve and sometimes they get quiet.

Sometimes they come roaring back.

Sometimes they need more.

Sometimes they have less to give.

A healthy sisterhood has enough elasticity to hold this “becoming”.

That birthday table reminded me of that.

Some women knew where I started.

Some know where I am.

A few are meeting the woman I’m becoming almost in real time.

And somehow there was room for all of us.

The evening after the brunch ended in a way that still makes me smile.

I had a mini sleepover at a beautiful hotel with two women. Yes, I had a sleepover at my big age, lol

One of the women is my oldest, closest friend.

The other is my newest, closest friend.

Let me tell you something.

These two women could hardly be more different.

Different personalities, experiences, ways of seeing the world, relationships with me.

Different everything, LOL

Watching them together was hilarious at moments and strangely sacred at others.

Because somewhere during that night, it hit me.

They represented something.

One carries so much of my history.

She knows the stories before they became stories.

She remembers people whose names rarely come up anymore.

She knew me before some of the titles and accomplishments.

And before some of the scars.

There are things I can say around her without explaining the first six chapters because she was there.

That’s priceless and I love her always for being this constant in my world.

Then beside her sat someone who entered my life much later, like way later.

She met a different Lakweshia.

A woman with more experiences.

More clarity and questions.

More healing.

More scars too.

She knows dreams that hadn’t even been conceived during some of those earlier years.

One friend carries memories of where I’ve been.

The other has a front row seat to where I may be going.

And there I was...

Sitting between them both.

Past.

Present.

Future.

I felt something catch in my throat.

Because sometimes we become so focused on where we’re going that we forget to honor the people who helped us survive where we’ve been.

And sometimes we become so loyal to our history that we leave little room for God to introduce people who belong in our future.

That night reminded me there is room for both.

There is room for the sister who remembers you at 12.

There is room for the woman who just met you at 46.

There is room for friendships that have survived decades.

There is room for relationships that somehow became deep surprisingly fast.

Length tells you how long someone has been present.

Love tells you what happened while they were there.

Ecclesiastes 4 says,

“Two are better than one... For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.”

I’ve lived long enough to know how precious that lifting is.

Sometimes your sister lifts you with prayer.

Sometimes with wisdom or correction.

Sometimes it is with a meal or a phone call.

Sometimes she just lets you cry.

Sometimes she reminds you that you are doing entirely too much and need to sit yourself down somewhere and float in a pool.

And occasionally the Lord’s provision looks like a girlfriend saying, “Girl, absolutely not,” with enough conviction that it qualifies as prophecy in your life, LOL.

Thank God for sisters who can discern which ministry is required.

Gratitude has a way of opening other rooms in your heart.

While I celebrated the women sitting with me, I found myself thinking about relationships that belonged to other seasons too.

Some people leave. Some relationships change. Some connections become quieter.

Distance happens. Life happens. Loss happens.

There are people who helped shape me who will never sit at another birthday table with me.

Their contribution still matters.

I think maturity allows us to honor what a relationship gave us without requiring every relationship to last forever in the same form.

That’s taken me some time to learn.

Because I love deeply. When I connect, I connect. When you are MY PEOPLE, you are MY PEOPLE

I have realized that separation has become particularly tender for me after experiencing significant loss over the years.

So there was something healing about looking around that table and allowing myself to appreciate who was there.

Full without mentally rehearsing who might leave someday.

Without grieving tomorrow while sitting inside today’s gift.

That’s one of the lessons I’m trying to learn: stop making today’s love pay for yesterday’s loss.

Whew.

Even writing that one touches my soul deeply.

Fear will have you standing in a room full of people who love you while emotionally preparing for the day they might leave.

Gratitude brings you back into the room. Back to the table and the laughter.

Back to the friend sitting beside you right now.

Psalm 118:24 says,

“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

This day.

This friendship.

This conversation.

This season.

This table.

This moment.

There will be time to navigate tomorrow when tomorrow arrives.

I don’t want anxiety about future change to rob me of present love.

That brunch also challenged me in another way.

Why do we wait so long to tell people what they mean to us?

We write beautiful obituaries.

We stand at funerals and tell incredible stories.

We suddenly find language for impact after the person who made the impact can no longer hear us.

I want to do more of that while people are alive.

Tell your sister, mentor, the friend who showed up, the teacher, the colleague.

Tell the woman who prayed you through the season nobody knew about.

Tell your mama, your daughter, your husband.

Tell your people.

Don’t assume they know.

Love deserves language.

I sat at my birthday brunch listening to women give me my flowers while I could still smell them.

And for once...

I didn’t hand them back.

I didn’t explain why I didn’t deserve them.

I didn’t immediately start naming everything I still need to improve.

I received them.

That’s growth for me.

Maybe receiving love is part of healing too.

I’ve been sitting with four lessons since that weekend. I’m sharing them because maybe one of them belongs to you too.

1. Who has loved you through multiple versions of yourself?

Take inventory.

Think about the people who knew you before the breakthrough, during the breakdown, inside the rebuilding, and somewhere along the becoming.

Reach out to one of them.

Tell them what their presence has meant.

Friendship deserves acknowledgment while both people are still here to receive it.

2. Where are you still armoring when love is trying to reach you?

Compliment... Affection…. Celebration…. Help…. Care….

Sometimes we become so skilled at protecting ourselves that protection begins blocking the very thing we’ve been praying for.

Practice receiving without deflecting.

Someone says, “I’m proud of you.”

Try simply saying:

“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

No joke.

No explanation.

No returning the compliment before theirs has even landed.

Let love finish its sentence.

3. Have you made room for new people without dishonoring the old?

Every person who belongs in your life won’t arrive during the same chapter.

Some friendships grow with you for decades.

Others enter during a very specific season and somehow feel familiar quickly.

Give relationships permission to develop without forcing them to compete.

Your newest friend doesn’t have to replace your oldest friend.

Your oldest friend doesn’t have to understand every part of your newest season.

There is room at the table.

4. Are you actually present for the love you have right now?

This may be the one I’m studying most.

Gratitude requires presence.

Look around.

Who calls?

Who checks?

Who prays?

Who laughs with you?

Who challenges you?

Who celebrates your wins without becoming strange about them?

Who can sit with your tears without immediately trying to fix you?

Who lets you be brilliant and ridiculous in the same evening?

THOSE ARE YOUR PEOPLE.

Love them while they’re here.

Forty seven has already given me something I didn’t know I needed.

Permission to hear my own life reflected through the people who have experienced me.

That birthday brunch reminded me that a life isn’t measured only by accomplishments.

A life can also be measured in relationships.

In people who remember. People who stayed. New people who showed up.

People who prayed. People who laughed. People who corrected.

People who carried. People who allowed themselves to be carried too.

Leadership matters.

Purpose matters.

Impact matters.

Still, I am increasingly convinced that one of life’s greatest accomplishments is building a life where love has somewhere to live.

So yes...

I basically attended my own living funeral for my birthday…..

And 10 out of 10, I highly recommend it.

Let your people tell you.

Sit there.

Try your best to behave.

Cry when you need to.

Laugh when it gets too serious.

And when they tell you that your life has mattered to theirs...

believe them.

Because sometimes gratitude sounds like “thank you.”

Sometimes gratitude sounds like “I love you too.”

And sometimes gratitude is simply taking off the armor, sitting quietly at the table, and allowing yourself to finally receive the love you’ve spent years giving away.

I’m grateful for the sisters who knew me then.

I’m grateful for the sisters who know me now.

And I’m deeply grateful for the ones God is introducing to the woman I am still becoming.

May we never become so busy building a life that we forget to love the people God gave us to live it with.

And may we never wait for a funeral to tell somebody what their life has meant to ours.

Give the flowers.

Say the words.

Take the picture. Book the room. Have the sleepover.

Stay up too late laughing.

Tell the old stories again.

Make some new ones.

And when love shows up at your table... stop armoring long enough to let it find you.

For those navigating leadership, relationships, purpose, transition, or simply trying to build healthier ways of living and leading, this is much of the work we explore through Unlearn Everything and Live. Individual and organizational support is available at “Unlearn Everything and Live” www.unlearneverythingandlive.com

Until next time, take good care of your people.

And please...

Let your people take good care of you too.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Have you ever noticed how the strongest people rarely tell you when they’re tired?

I’ve been carrying that question with me all week.

Often it is not because someone asked me, it’s because I kept seeing it.

Last week looked a little different on the calendar, every room somehow found its way to the same conversation.

I spent time with counselors who spend their days helping people find language for pain.

Business owners who quietly carry the weight of payroll, , and purpose.

School leaders trying to create safe places for students while navigating challenges no job description could ever fully capture.

Managers who absorb tension before it reaches their teams.

Helping professionals who listen to heartbreak for a living.

Nonprofit leaders.

Chaplains.

Human resource professionals.

People from different industries.

Different backgrounds, various titles.

All with different stories.

Yet every conversation slowly circled back to the same place.

Who helps the helper?

The room usually became quiet.

Not awkward quiet.

The kind of quiet that happens when someone finally says out loud what everyone else has been carrying.

I watched people nod before anyone spoke.

Some smiled.

Others looked down.

A few quietly wiped away tears they hoped no one noticed.

I’ve learned something over the years.

Titles change.

Humanity doesn’t.

The counselor still needs someone to listen.

The therapist still has difficult days.

The principal still carries invisible pressure.

The entrepreneur still wonders if they’re doing enough.

The pastor still grieves.

The CEO still questions decisions.

The mother who spends all day making everyone else feel safe still needs somewhere she can exhale.

Helping people has never exempted us from being human.

Somewhere along the way, many helpers quietly accepted an unspoken agreement.

“I’ll carry everyone else.”

It sounds noble.

It even feels noble.

Until one day you realize you’ve become so committed to checking on everyone else that you haven’t checked on yourself in months.

Interesting, isn’t it?

I’ve been wondering...

Who notices when the one who always notices everyone else begins to fade?

Who asks the second question after the helper says, “I’m fine”?

Who recognizes that the strongest person in the room may also be the most exhausted?

Who gives them permission to stop performing strength for just a little while?

Those questions stayed with me because, if I’m honest, they aren’t just questions I ask other people.

They’re questions I’ve had to ask myself.

I’ve spent much of my life pouring into others.

Teaching, Coaching, Mentoring.

Leading…………………..

Walking alongside people through grief, purpose, leadership, trauma, transition, and healing.

It is one of the greatest privileges of my life.

It is also one of the reasons I’ve had to learn that purpose and productivity are not the same thing.

For a long time, I thought they were.

I knew how to recognize burnout in the people I served.

I could often hear grief before someone ever spoke the word.

I could see compassion fatigue hiding behind a smile.

Meanwhile, I was becoming remarkably skilled at overlooking my own.

Funny how that works.

Sometimes the easiest person to miss is the one staring back at us in the mirror.

One of the things I often say during my Who Helps the Helper session is this:

“The strongest person in the room should never become the loneliest person in the room.”

I believe that with my whole heart.

Here’s another one.

“Purpose was never designed to cost you your personhood.”

Read that one slowly.

Because somewhere along the journey, many of us started believing our greatest value was found in how much we could carry.

How many problems we could solve.

How available we could remain.

How indispensable we could become.

Eventually, being needed quietly became part of our identity.

I’ve lived there.

Maybe you have too.

I remember a season when I was moving from one engagement to the next, pouring into organizations, encouraging leaders, coaching teams, celebrating wins with clients, praying with people through difficult moments, and somehow convincing myself I was doing just fine.

Looking back, I wasn’t paying attention to the quiet signals.

My patience was shorter.

Rest felt unproductive.

Joy required more effort.

I wasn’t falling apart.

I was slowly running on empty.

The difficult part is that helpers often don’t recognize it because we know how to function while we’re hurting.

Psychologists have a name for some of what we experience.

Compassion fatigue.

Dr. Charles Figley, one of the leading researchers on the subject, describes compassion fatigue as the emotional, physical, and spiritual exhaustion that can develop after caring deeply for others over an extended period. It doesn’t happen because we stop loving people.

It often happens because we’ve loved well for so long without creating space to replenish what we’ve been giving away.

That definition gave language to something I had felt but couldn’t quite name.

Dr. Anita Phillips often reminds us that our bodies keep score when our souls stay silent.

I’ve found that to be true.

Sometimes our bodies whisper before they shout.

Sometimes fatigue is speaking.

Sometimes irritability is speaking.

Sometimes numbness is speaking.

Sometimes the tears that arrive over something small have very little to do with that moment and everything to do with everything we’ve been carrying.

The question becomes...

Are we listening?

Because here’s what I’ve learned.

Purpose should stretch you.

It should never erase you.

...

I’ve been wondering if one of the greatest gifts we could give the helpers in our lives isn’t another thank-you card.

Maybe it’s a safe place.

A place where they don’t have to lead.

Don’t have to fix.

Don’t have to carry.

Don’t have to be the strong one.

Just...

Be human.

For a long time, I believed the strongest leaders were the ones who could carry the most.

Carry the vision.

The team. The family. The disappointment.

I carried the conflict.

The grief.

I would often carry everybody else’s hopes while quietly setting my own somewhere on a shelf for “later.”

The problem with later is...

Later has a funny way of never showing up.

I’ve been learning that lesson in some beautiful and humbling ways over the last few years.

One of the greatest gifts therapy has given me wasn’t a strategy.

It was language.

Language for things I had been experiencing but never slowing down long enough to name.

I remember my therapist saying something that completely stopped me in my tracks.

She said,

“Lakweshia, you celebrate everyone else beautifully...but you rarely stop to celebrate yourself.”

At first, I wanted to disagree.

Then I started thinking.

She was right.

Somehow I had normalized things that years ago I would have prayed for.

Major accomplishments quietly became Tuesday.

Dreams that once seemed impossible became another item checked off the list.

I would finish something significant and immediately ask,

“Okay...what’s next?”

No pause.

No celebration.

No gratitude.

Just forward.

Always forward.

Interesting, isn’t it?

I wonder how many helpers do that.

How many counselors spend all day celebrating breakthroughs while quietly overlooking their own growth.

How many principals celebrate graduating seniors while forgetting the thousands of lives they’ve influenced.

How many business owners keep moving the finish line every time they reach it.

How many parents quietly normalize the miracle of raising kind human beings because there’s another load of laundry waiting.

How many pastors preach resurrection while forgetting to celebrate the ways God has already brought them back to life.

I’ve been wondering...

When did we start believing that pausing somehow meant we were falling behind?

Somewhere along the way, I confused movement with meaning.

Productivity became evidence that I was living on purpose.

God has been gently untangling those two things ever since.

Because purpose isn’t measured by how full my calendar is.

Purpose isn’t determined by how many people need me.

Purpose doesn’t disappear when I take a nap.

Purpose doesn’t leave because I declined a meeting.

Purpose doesn’t become more valuable because I answered emails at eleven o’clock at night.

Purpose is much sturdier than that.

One of my favorite things Jesus ever said is found in Matthew 11.

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Notice what He didn’t say.

He didn’t say,

“Come to me after you’ve finished.”

He didn’t say,

“Come to me once you’ve earned it.”

He didn’t say,

“Come to me when everyone else is okay.”

He simply said...

Come.

I think many helpers have accidentally built a theology where everybody else gets to come first.

Everybody else gets the prayer.

Everybody else gets the encouragement.

Everybody else gets the grace.

Meanwhile, we quietly tell ourselves,

“I’ll deal with me later.”

Friends...

Later is expensive.

It costs marriages.

It costs joy.

It costs health.

Sometimes it costs purpose itself because eventually exhaustion starts making decisions that a rested soul never would.

Research continues to support what so many helping professionals already know from experience.

Psychologists studying compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress have found that people who spend prolonged periods caring for others often become less aware of their own emotional needs. Their attention naturally turns outward. Over time, their own grief, disappointment, fear, or loneliness can become background noise.

That sentence stayed with me.

Background noise.

I wonder what has become background noise in your life.

Your exhaustion?

Your sadness?

Your disappointment?

Your loneliness?

Your body trying to tell you something?

I’ve had to ask myself those questions.

Sometimes the answers weren’t comfortable.

There have been seasons when I cried more than I had cried during the previous twenty years combined.

And you know what?

I’m grateful for every single tear.

I mean that.

Those tears weren’t evidence that I was falling apart.

They were evidence that my heart was finally refusing to stay numb.

Looking back now, I think those tears were like fresh water on a desert journey.

God wasn’t punishing me.

He was softening places I had unknowingly allowed to become hard.

I often tell leaders,

“Healing isn’t what happens after leadership. Healing is part of leading well.”

You cannot pour wisdom from a weary soul forever.

Eventually your cup starts teaching louder than your words.

That realization changed me.

It also changed the way I lead.

I ask different questions now.

When someone tells me they’re tired, I don’t immediately ask about their workload.

I ask about their heart.

When someone says they’re overwhelmed, I don’t rush into problem-solving mode.

I become curious.

What’s underneath that?

What has gone unnamed?

What have they been carrying alone?

Because I’ve learned something.

The issue we talk about is rarely the only issue in the room.

Helpers know that.

People usually tell us the story sitting on top.

Healing often begins with the story underneath.

Maybe that’s why Jesus asked so many questions.

He certainly knew the answers.

Still...

He asked.

I’ve started trying to lead more like that.

Less fixing.

More listening.

Less assuming.

More wondering.

Less performing.

More being present.

Turns out...

People don’t always need another expert.

Sometimes they simply need someone who cares enough to stay in the conversation long enough for the real story to find its way to the surface.

I’ve discovered that includes me.

Maybe it includes you too.

Lately I’ve been carrying four questions with me.

Not because I have all the answers.

Because these questions have been quietly doing their own work on me.

Maybe they’ll do something in you too.

The first one is this...

Who pours into me while I’m busy pouring into everyone else?

That question sounds simple until you really sit with it.

I’ve spent years creating spaces where people could tell the truth.

I’ve coached leaders through impossible decisions.

I’ve prayed with people whose worlds had fallen apart.

I’ve celebrated promotions, comforted grieving families, mentored young professionals, encouraged pastors, listened to business owners trying to figure out how to keep their companies moving forward, and walked alongside organizations trying to become healthier than they were yesterday.

I love every bit of it.

I believe I was created for it.

Still...

Even a well eventually needs rain.

I don’t think we talk enough about that.

People assume that because someone pours well, they must always be full.

Those are two very different things.

A pitcher can keep pouring long after it’s almost empty.

I’ve done it.

Maybe you have too.

The second question has been following me for a while now.

When did I begin believing that needing help somehow made me less effective?

I honestly don’t know when that happened.

I don’t remember anyone sitting me down and saying,

“Lakweshia, make sure everyone thinks you’ve got it all together.”

Somehow I just picked it up.

Maybe leadership culture taught me.

Maybe achievement taught me.

Maybe ministry taught me.

Maybe life taught me.

Wherever it came from, I’ve been working hard to unlearn it.

Because here’s what I’ve discovered.

People don’t trust leaders because they’re perfect.

People trust leaders because they’re honest.

I’ve never walked away from someone thinking,

“I respect them because they never struggled.”

I’ve walked away thinking,

“I trust them because they had the courage to tell the truth.”

Truth builds bridges.

Performance builds stages.

I’d rather build bridges.

The third question has probably challenged me the most.

Would the people closest to me describe me as healthy...or simply dependable?

Ouch.

That one sat with me for a while.

Dependable is a beautiful word.

I hope people always know they can count on me.

At the same time...

I’ve learned that dependability without boundaries eventually becomes depletion.

My husband doesn’t need the version of me that’s left over after everyone else has received my best.

My friends deserve more than whatever energy remains after I’ve given everything away.

The people I love shouldn’t always have to compete with my calling.

I’ve been asking God to help me become the kind of leader whose public impact never costs my private relationships.

Because success isn’t success if the people sitting at my dinner table never get to experience it.

The fourth question surprised me.

It arrived while I was praying one morning.

If God asked me to stop producing for a season...would I still know who I am?

I wish I had answered immediately.

I couldn’t.

Because the question exposed something I hadn’t fully realized.

So much of my identity had become attached to what I produced.

The keynotes, or coaching sessions, articles, meetings, ideas, solutions….

I love creating.

I think God wired me that way.

Yet somewhere along the journey I started introducing myself by my assignments instead of my identity.

God has been gently reminding me that daughters don’t have to audition.

Children don’t earn belonging.

Love doesn’t require performance.

I’ve been sitting with that.

Actually...

I’ve been resting in that.

Because before I was a speaker...

I was God’s.

Before I was a coach...

I was God’s.

Before I led organizations...

I was God’s.

Before anyone knew my name...

He did.

Nothing I’ve accomplished has made Him love me more.

Nothing I fail to accomplish will make Him love me less.

That’s freeing.

Maybe freedom looks more like that than we realize.

I’ve also noticed something else.

Every one of these questions has slowly been changing the way I lead.

I celebrate people more often.

I ask deeper questions.

I pause longer before saying yes.

I’ve become much quicker to admit when I’m tired.

I no longer think asking for help is a leadership weakness.

I actually think it’s one of the healthiest things a leader can do.

Because healthy leaders give everyone around them permission to be human.

I’ve been wondering...

What would happen if our organizations became places where people didn’t have to pretend?

Where counselors could admit they were grieving.

Where pastors could acknowledge they were weary.

Where principals could say they felt overwhelmed.

Where executives could ask for support.

Where entrepreneurs could confess they were afraid.

Where helpers finally discovered that someone was willing to help them.

Interesting thought.

Maybe healthier organizations don’t begin with better policies.

Maybe they begin with safer people.

People who know how to tell the truth.

Folks who know how to receive care.

People who understand that strength and softness have never been enemies.

I’ve been learning that the strongest leaders I’ve ever met all had something in common.

They had somewhere to lay down what they carried.

A trusted friend.

A wise mentor.

A spiritual director, your spouse or a small group of friends.

Someone.

Nobody was designed to carry the weight of leadership alone.

Not even Jesus.

He had Peter, James, and John.

He withdrew, he prayed, he rested, he wept and

He received care.

If the Son of God embraced community...

Maybe the rest of us can too. I’ve realized something growth hasn’t come from learning more.

At least not lately.

Most of my growth has come from letting go.

Letting go of ideas that once served me but no longer fit the woman God is calling me to become.

Maybe that’s why the name of my company still feels so personal.

Unlearn Everything and Live.

Not because everything we’ve learned is wrong.

Because some things have quietly outlived their usefulness.

So before I leave you this week, I want to share a few things I’m still unlearning.

Maybe you’ll find yourself in some of them too.

I’m unlearning that being needed means I’m healthy.

For years I measured my value by how many people called, how many meetings filled my calendar, how many problems I could solve, and how many people depended on me.

Today I’m learning something much gentler.

Being needed and being healthy are two very different things.

The people I love deserve a version of me that is emotionally present, spiritually grounded, and physically well.

Not simply available.

I’m unlearning that purpose depends on productivity.

Somewhere along the journey, I quietly connected my purpose to my pace.

If I was moving, I felt purposeful.

If I slowed down, I wondered whether I was doing enough.

God has been patiently teaching me that purpose doesn’t disappear because I take a Sabbath.

Purpose doesn’t leave because I decline an invitation.

Purpose isn’t measured by how exhausted I become.

I’m beginning to believe that my purpose is safest in God’s hands, not mine.

I’m unlearning that asking for help is a leadership weakness.

I’ve discovered something beautiful.

The strongest leaders I know have trusted people around them.

They have therapists, Mentors, Pastors, Friends, Spouses.

Communities that remind them they don’t have to carry everything alone.

Strength isn’t pretending you have no needs.

Strength is knowing where to take them.

I’m unlearning that my body exists to keep up with my calendar.

My body has become one of God’s kindest teachers.

Fatigue has something to say.

Tears have something to say.

Joy has something to say.

Peace has something to say.

I’ve spent years helping leaders listen to everyone else.

I’m finally learning to listen to myself.

I’m unlearning that saying “yes” is always loving.

Some of the most loving things I’ve done recently have sounded like “I can’t.”

“I don’t have the capacity.”

“I need to pray about that.”

“I won’t be able to make it.”

Healthy boundaries don’t make love smaller.

They help it last longer.

I’m unlearning that I have to deserve rest.

This one still stretches me.

There are days when doing absolutely nothing feels strangely uncomfortable.

My mind starts making lists.

Creating projects.

Looking for something productive.

Then God gently reminds me...

“Lakweshia...you don’t have to earn what I already designed.”

Rest isn’t a prize.

It’s part of creation.

I’m unlearning that I have to carry everyone else’s pain.

Compassion is one of the greatest gifts God has given me.

It has also become one of my greatest teachers.

I can sit beside someone’s grief.

I can pray with them.

I can support them.

I can love them deeply.

I don’t have to become their savior.

Jesus already has that job.

He’s remarkably good at it.

I’m unlearning that my humanity gets in the way of my calling.

For years I quietly believed I had to become less human to become a better leader.

Now I think the opposite is true.

Every tear has softened me.

Every disappointment has deepened me.

Every unanswered prayer has expanded my compassion.

Every season of healing has changed the way I love people.

My humanity hasn’t weakened my leadership.

It’s become one of its greatest strengths.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to say through this entire letter.

The world doesn’t need more exhausted heroes.

It needs whole people.

People who know how to lead and receive.

People who know how to pour and be poured into.

People who know how to care for others without forgetting themselves.

People who understand that healing isn’t something we finish before we lead.

Healing is something we continue while we lead.

So before you answer another email...

Before you schedule another meeting...

Before you carry one more burden that belongs to someone else...

I hope you’ll ask yourself one more question.

Who helps the helper?

My prayer is that this week...

The answer includes you.

And if this letter found you at exactly the right moment...

If you’ve been carrying more than you’ve admitted...

If your body has been whispering while your calendar keeps shouting...

If you’re ready to explore what healthier leadership, emotional sustainability, and compassionate support could look like for you or your organization...

I’d be honored to walk alongside you.

You can learn more at

www.unlearneverythingandlive.com

You have spent so much of your life reminding other people that they matter.

Here’s my reminder to you.

You do too.

One last thought before I go...

The world celebrates the people who keep showing up for everyone else.

God also cares deeply about the person who quietly goes home after everyone else has been cared for.

Don’t forget that person.

They have your name.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

Tell me something...

When was the last time you did absolutely nothing?

I don’t mean folding laundry while listening to a podcast.

Or answering emails from your patio because technically you’re “outside.”

Or even scrolling social media while convincing yourself you’re relaxing.

I mean...

Nothing.

Like really, No agenda, no checklist. no side hustle energy. no multitasking.

No trying to become a better version of yourself before next week, lol.

Just...Being.

I asked myself that question recently, and my first response was honestly a little embarrassing.

I started listing all the things I had accomplished during my “day off.”

People often tell me,

“One of the benefits of being an entrepreneur is that you get to make your own schedule.”

And they are right. I do get to make my own schedule…

The problem is...

I’ve discovered that having control over my calendar doesn’t automatically mean I’ve given myself permission to slow down.

In fact, sometimes I become the most demanding boss I’ve ever worked for.

Have you ever noticed that?

I can wake up on what I proudly call a “day off” my “do nothing” day only to realize I’ve scheduled a meetup at Cadence Coffee with someone, answered a few emails “real quick,” worked on a presentation because inspiration struck, checked in with a client, cleaned something that suddenly felt urgent, made a couple of phone calls, read three chapters of a leadership book because I should always be learning, and somehow convinced myself...

“I rested today.”

No, ma’am you DID NOT, lol

You changed locations.

You changed tasks on your task list……

You even changed clothes.

But you never changed your pace.

I’ve laughed at myself more than once because I realized I had created the busiest day off imaginable.

Apparently my to-do list didn’t get the memo that we were supposed to be resting.

Maybe yours hasn’t either.

Somewhere along the way I became incredibly efficient at resting productively.

Which, when you say it out loud, sounds ridiculous.

“Today I’m going to relax...

...right after I answer these fourteen emails, reorganize a closet that wasn’t bothering anybody, meal prep for three days, read two chapters of a book, return a few phone calls, and color-code my calendar.”

That’s not rest.

That’s work wearing sweatpants. Maybe you’ve done this too.

We live in a culture that celebrates motion. Busy has somehow become a badge of honor.

Exhaustion gets applauded. Calendars overflowing with commitments become proof that we’re needed.

The first question people ask isn’t, “How is your soul?”

It’s usually, “So...what have you been up to?”

Interesting question to ask when you stop to really think about it?

Somewhere along the journey, many of us started measuring the value of our lives by the weight of our schedules.

I’m still unlearning that.

Truthfully, I think many leaders are.

A few weeks ago I found myself sitting quietly with a cup of tea, which is one of my favorite things to do…..

No phone, laptop, or meeting.

No deadlines. No TV. No music.

Just silence.

At first, it felt. A little bit strange almost uncomfortable even.

My mind immediately started creating imaginary to-do lists.

You should answer those emails.

You forgot to follow up with...

Did you remember to...

You could probably finish writing that article right now.

Maybe just do thirty little minutes of work.

It was almost funny now that I’m typing it out

I finally laughed out loud and said to myself,

“Kweshia...sit down somewhere.”

Sometimes the hardest person to lead is the one staring back at me in the mirror.

Maybe that’s because stillness has a way of exposing the conversations we’ve been too busy to hear.

Busyness is loud.

Silence whispers.

I’ve noticed something about God.

He rarely competes with noise.

Over and over throughout Scripture, people encountered Him after they paused.

Moses noticed a burning bush because he stopped long enough to turn aside.

Elijah heard God’s voice after the wind, the earthquake, and the fire had passed.

Jesus regularly withdrew to lonely places to pray before returning to the crowds.

Even God rested on the seventh day and not because He was tired.

Because He was teaching us something.

Rest isn’t the reward for finishing everything.

Rest is part of how God designed life from the very beginning.

I’ve been wondering...

What if Sabbath was never about recovering from work?

What if it was about remembering who we are without it?

That question has stayed with me.

Because if I’m honest, there have been seasons where I introduced myself by everything I did.

Speaker. Consultant. Author. Coach. Leader. Strategist.

And while those things are true...

None of them tell God who I am.

Before I ever accomplished anything...

I was loved.

Before I ever led anyone...

I belonged.

Before I ever built anything...

I was His.

One thing I’ve been learning is that Sabbath isn’t just about ceasing from work.

It’s about ceasing from feeling like I have to prove something.

Every time I pause, I’m quietly reminding myself that my worth isn’t tied to my productivity.

I don’t have to impress God.

I don’t have to convince Him I’m valuable.

I don’t have to earn a seat at His table.

I already have one.

Rest is simply remembering what hustle made me forget.

Sometimes I think we spend so much time proving our worth that we forget it was settled long before we arrived.

There’s a quote from philosopher Dallas Willard that has stayed with me for years.

“Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.”

I believe him.

Because hurry doesn’t just steal our time.

It steals our attention. Our wonder. Our gratitude. Our relationships.

And our JOY..

Research continues to affirm what Scripture has quietly taught all along. Studies have linked intentional rest and downtime with improved creativity, better memory consolidation, lower stress levels, improved emotional regulation, and stronger decision-making. Even our brains have what neuroscientists call the “default mode network,” a network that becomes active during periods of rest and quiet reflection. In other words, your brain was designed to benefit from moments when you’re doing...well...nothing.

Maybe God knew what He was doing all along.

Actually...

I know He did.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that pausing is an act of trust.

Every time we stop, we’re declaring something.

The world will continue spinning. The emails will still be there. The laundry can wait.

The dishes have never once filed a formal complaint because I took a nap.

I checked.

Believe it or not dishes are remarkably patient.

Maybe we could learn something from them. LOL

There is a holy kind of resistance in refusing to believe your value is tied to your output.

That’s difficult for achievers. It’s certainly been difficult for me.

There have been moments when doing nothing felt irresponsible.

Until I realized something.

Sometimes doing nothing is exactly what allows me to become fully present for the something that matters most.

I’ve never regretted lingering over dinner with my husband.

I’ve never regretted laughing until my stomach hurt with friends.

I’ve never regretted taking the scenic route home simply because it was beautiful.

I’ve never regretted watching the sun quietly disappear behind the horizon.

I’ve never regretted sitting still long enough to hear my own thoughts again.

Funny enough...I’ve regretted rushing through almost all of those moments.

I’ve never regretted sitting quietly with God long enough to stop talking and simply listen.

Those moments have shaped me just as much as any boardroom, conference, or training room ever has.

Maybe more.

One of the greatest lies ambitious people believe is that everything depends on us.

It doesn’t.

God has been faithfully running the universe for quite some time without our help.

He is exceptionally good at His job.

That realization has become strangely freeing.

Maybe faith looks less like doing more. Maybe it looks more like trusting enough to stop.

Five Gentle Invitations This Week

1. Schedule a pause before you schedule another meeting.
Treat rest as a commitment, not an afterthought. If it’s only what’s left over, it will never happen.

2. Spend thirty uninterrupted minutes doing absolutely nothing.
No music. No phone. No podcast. Just sit, breathe, pray, watch the trees move, or simply be still. Notice what rises to the surface.

3. Replace one hour of productivity with one hour of presence.
Call your parents. Sit with your spouse. Play with your children. Watch the sunset. Drink coffee without an agenda.

4. Ask yourself one question:
“Who am I when I’m not accomplishing something?”
Don’t rush the answer.

5. Give someone else permission to pause.
Sometimes the greatest gift we can offer another high-capacity person is reminding them they don’t have to earn rest.

A few last thoughts before I go...

Maybe your breakthrough isn’t hiding in another meeting.

Or buried inside another podcast.

Maybe it isn’t waiting at the bottom of your inbox.

Maybe...

It’s sitting quietly on your back porch.

Waiting for you to finally stop long enough to notice it.

So this week...

Cancel one thing.

Take the long way home.

Watch the sunset.

Laugh with your people.

Leave a text message unanswered until tomorrow.

Drink your coffee while it’s still hot.

Take a nap without apologizing for it.

Remember who you are before the world tells you what it needs from you.

Because you don’t have to earn a pause.

It was God’s idea before it was ever yours.

So here’s your homework this week.

Cancel one thing.

Leave one email unanswered until tomorrow.

Let the laundry wait.

Watch a sunset.

Sit in your favorite chair with absolutely no agenda.

Call a friend simply because you miss their voice.

Laugh longer than necessary.

Pray without asking God for anything.

And if you’re anything like me...

Resist the urge to turn your “day off” into another beautifully disguised workday.

Because your soul deserves more than rearranged daily productivity.

It deserves rest. Real rest. The kind your Father modeled before you ever thought you had to earn it.

Perhaps the most productive thing you’ll do this week is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

Have you ever wondered how many tears you have never seen?

Not because they were never cried, but because the person crying them had learned how to make them invisible.

This week, I sat on a patio with some great friends. The sun had already slipped beneath the horizon, leaving behind the kind of darkness that makes people talk a little more honestly. The only light near us came from a candle flickering in the center of the table.

Our conversation turned toward love.

Strong love. Weakened love. Broken love.

All three were sitting at that table, because all three usually are.

We spoke about the love that holds us together and the love that has worn us down. We talked about the relationships that feel safe, the ones we are still trying to understand, and the ones that left us carrying questions long after the person stopped answering them.

Eventually, the conversation turned toward God’s love.

And somewhere between the candlelight, the quiet, and the truth being shared, I looked across the table and saw tears resting in my friend’s eyes.

She did not say a word.

She subtly wiped them away, almost as though she did not want to interrupt the conversation with her feelings. There was no announcement. No dramatic pause. No explanation offered.

Just tears.

I wondered what they meant.

Were they tears of relief?

Had something we said given language to something she had been carrying silently?

Were they tears of heaviness, escaping from a place she had worked hard to keep composed?

Were they tears of joy because she remembered she was deeply loved?

Were they tears of uncertainty because she wanted to believe what we were saying, but life had given her reasons to hesitate?

I still do not know.

Every tear does not arrive with an explanation.

Sometimes tears show up before the words do. Sometimes the body tells the truth while the mouth is still trying to decide whether it feels safe enough to speak.

Whatever those tears meant, they flowed.

And they were seen.

That stayed with me.

How often are our tears, literal or figurative, actually seen?

How often do we sit beside people who are crying on the inside while smiling on the outside?

How many strong leaders, faithful friends, loving spouses, dependable family members, pastors, caregivers, and community builders have become so skilled at holding everyone else that no one thinks to ask what they are carrying?

Strength can make you visible for what you do and invisible in what you feel.

People admire the way you keep going. They celebrate your ability to manage the moment, solve the problem, pray the prayer, make the call, lead the meeting, care for the family, and somehow remember everybody’s birthday.

But admiration does not always become attention.

Sometimes people are so impressed by your strength that they forget strength gets tired too.

The strongest person in the room may be carrying the quietest ache.

And silence does not always mean someone is okay. Sometimes silence means they have not decided where it is safe to fall apart.

Strong love is beautiful.

It is steady without being controlling. It creates room for honesty. It can sit beside your pain without trying to rush you toward a lesson. Strong love does not need you to perform wellness to remain welcome.

It says, “You can tell me the truth, even when the truth is complicated.”

Strong love notices.

It notices the pause before the answer. The sudden change in tone. The smile that arrives a little too quickly. The person who is participating in the conversation while slowly disappearing inside of themselves.

Strong love asks twice.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, really. How are you?”

There are times when that second question becomes a lifeline.

We have become accustomed to polite concern. We ask questions while walking away. We say, “Let me know if you need anything,” to people whose pain has made it difficult to know what they need, much less find the strength to request it.

Strong love stays long enough for the real answer.

That does not mean forcing people to speak before they are ready. It means creating the kind of presence that lets them know they will be received when they are.

Strong love also understands that being seen is different from being exposed. Seeing someone’s tears does not give us permission to demand their story. Sometimes the holiest thing we can do is quietly acknowledge the emotion and protect the person’s dignity.

A hand on the shoulder.

A soft, “I’m here.”

A text after everyone has gone home.

A prayer that does not turn their private pain into public information all over social media or in other conversation with others..

Sometimes love does not need a microphone. It needs discernment.

A few things strong love teaches us:

1. Presence often matters more than an answer. Most people are not expecting us to fix the ache. They need to know they do not have to carry it alone.

2. Safety is built through consistency. People share their tender places with those who have proven they can hold them carefully.

3. Listening is an expression of love. Listen without correcting, comparing, interrogating, or preparing your own story while the other person is still speaking.

4. Follow-up is part of care. The moment may pass, but the weight may remain. Check again tomorrow, next week, and after everyone else assumes they have moved on.

Strong love does not merely hear what was said.

Strong love pays attention to what silence is trying to say.

Then there is weakened love.

It has not disappeared, but it is tired.

This is the love between people who still care but have become strained by disappointment, distance, grief, responsibilities, misunderstandings, unmet needs, or too many conversations that never quite reached the truth.

Weakened love can exist in marriages, friendships, families, churches, and within our relationship with ourselves. It is the place where affection remains, but ease has left the room.

Sometimes love grows weary because we have asked it to survive on assumptions.

We assumed they knew, assumed they understood, assumed they would always be there.

We assumed our history was strong enough to carry what our present communication would not.

Love can be real and still require repair.

That sentence may bother those of us who have been taught that genuine love should effortlessly overcome everything. But love is living. Living things require care. They need attention, nourishment, boundaries, honesty, rest, and occasionally some serious pruning.

Even healthy relationships can become tired when nobody admits that something has changed.

One person is silently hurting. The other is silently confused. Both are waiting for the other to notice. Now everybody is strong, everybody is quiet, and nobody is healed.

We cannot keep calling emotional avoidance peace.

Sometimes the most loving sentence we can offer is, “Something between us feels different, and I care enough to talk about it.”

Weakened love does not always need an ending. Sometimes it needs language.

It needs us to admit that closeness has shifted. Trust has been bruised. Expectations were never discussed. Life changed us, and we have been trying to relate to who each other used to be.

A few things weakened love asks of us:

1. Name the change without immediately assigning blame. Begin with what you have noticed and how it has affected you. Truth can be clear without becoming cruel.

2. Ask whether both people are willing to participate in repair. One person can begin a conversation, but one person cannot rebuild an entire relationship alone.

3. Allow the relationship to take a new shape. Healing may restore closeness, or it may create a healthier distance. Every repaired relationship will not return to its previous form.

4. Stop treating exhaustion as evidence that love was never real. Sometimes people become tired because they cared deeply for a long time. Weariness is information. Listen to it.

Weakened love needs courage, because honest love is not afraid to admit when something is hurting.

And sometimes the tears we hide are grieving the distance between what a relationship is and what we remember it being.

Broken love carries a different kind of ache.

This is the love that ended without closure. The friendship that fractured. The marriage that could not be restored. The family relationship that became unsafe. The trust that could not survive what happened. The person who is still alive but no longer present in your life.

Broken love makes us grieve people we can still see.

That is a peculiar grief.

There may be no funeral, no sympathy cards, no casserole, no accepted ritual that tells the world something meaningful has been lost. Life continues around you while a relationship that once helped shape your life becomes a memory you are still trying to understand.

People may encourage you to “just move on.”

But the heart does not always move according to instructions.

It circles back. It remembers. It wonders. It rehearses the last conversation and imagines the one that might have changed everything. It misses what was good while also remembering why leaving, releasing, or creating distance became necessary.

Broken love can leave us questioning our judgment.

Was any of it real?

Did I miss the signs?

Should I have stayed longer?

Why wasn’t my love enough?

Could I have done something differently?

Some questions have answers. Some will have to be surrendered.

You can honor what was real without returning to what harmed you.

You can love someone and recognize that access to you is no longer healthy.

You can forgive and maintain a boundary.

You can miss a person and remain committed to your healing.

You can remember the beautiful parts without rewriting the painful ones.

Love does not require amnesia.

A few things broken love teaches us:

1. Closure may have to come from within. The person who participated in the wound may never possess the honesty, language, or willingness to help you heal it.

2. Grief needs somewhere to go. Write the letter you may never send. Pray the prayer you have been afraid to pray. Talk with someone safe. Give the invisible loss a visible expression.

3. Boundaries can coexist with compassion. You do not have to hate someone to acknowledge that closeness with them costs too much.

4. The ending of a relationship does not erase your capacity to love. What happened may change the way you offer your heart, but it does not have to close your heart forever.

Broken love produces invisible tears because people rarely know what to say about losses they cannot publicly explain.

So we wipe the tears quickly. We change the subject. We say we are fine. We continue leading.

But grief does not leave simply because we have become good at concealing it.

What remains unspoken still deserves care.

Some tears are invisible to others because we deliberately hide them.

Other tears are invisible because we have hidden them from ourselves.

We keep moving before the feeling has time to catch us.

We fill the calendar. Answer the phone. Help somebody else. Start another project. Attend another event. Solve another crisis. We become productive enough to avoid being present with our own hearts.

Busyness is excellent camouflage.

People call us disciplined. Dependable. Strong. Focused. Anointed. Resilient.

And we may be all of those things.

We may also be exhausted.

Sometimes the version of us that “keeps going” is really the version that is afraid of what might happen if we stop.

Stopping can feel dangerous when we know there are tears waiting for us in the stillness.

Yet healing often begins in the pause we have been avoiding.

What am I really feeling?

What have I lost?

What am I pretending no longer hurts?

What did I need that I never received?

What truth has my strength helped me survive but prevented me from fully processing?

Those are not weak questions. They are honest ones.

There comes a point when strength must make room for tenderness. We were never meant to spend our entire lives bracing ourselves.

You deserve to be more than the person who survives everything.

You deserve somewhere to exhale.

As I watched my friend quietly wipe away her tears, I thought about Hagar.

Hagar was used, mistreated, displaced, and sent into the wilderness. She found herself in a place where people had failed to see her as fully human. Yet God met her there.

She called Him El Roi, “the God who sees me.”

Not the God who merely saw the situation.

The God who saw her.

There is a difference.

God sees beyond the title you carry and the role you perform. He sees the part of you beneath the strength. He sees the tears that fell in the shower, in the car, behind the closed office door, or into the pillow after everyone else went to sleep.

Psalm 56:8 says, “Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?”

What an intimate image.

God does not dismiss our tears as emotional excess. He gathers them. He remembers them. He recognizes each one as evidence that something touched us deeply.

Jesus also wept.

John 11:35 gives us two of the shortest and most powerful words in Scripture: “Jesus wept.”

Jesus knew resurrection was coming. He knew the grave would not have the final word. He still made room for tears.

Knowing God will work something out does not mean we must rush past what hurts.

Faith does not require emotional dishonesty.

Hope and heartbreak can sit in the same body.

Trust and tears can share the same prayer.

Strength and sorrow can occupy the same seat at the table.

The presence of tears is not the absence of God.

Sometimes tears are the place where we discover just how close He has been.

God sees every tear, including the ones that never reached your eyes.

I keep returning to that candlelit moment because it reminded me that there is a ministry available to all of us.

And that is the MINISTRY OF NOTICING.

It does not require ordination, a platform, a title, or a microphone.

It only requires our presence.

Noticing is sacred because the world teaches people how to disappear in plain sight.

We scroll past pain. Rush through conversations. Offer quick encouragement. Call people strong because their strength is convenient for us. We enjoy the fruit of their resilience without considering what it has cost them to keep producing it.

The ministry of noticing slows down long enough to see the person.

Leaders need this ministry. Pastors need it. Parents need it. Friends need it.

Caregivers especially need it, because the people who consistently care for others are often the least likely to be asked what care looks like for them.

Noticing may sound like:

“I saw your face change when that was mentioned. You do not have to talk about it, but I want you to know I’m here.”

“You have been carrying a lot lately. What has been carrying you?”

“Everybody keeps telling you how strong you are. Where do you get to be soft?”

“I know you said you’re okay. I also know okay can mean many things. Which kind of okay is this?”

That last question might make a few of us laugh, but it is true. There is the “I am genuinely well” okay. The “I can’t talk here” okay. The “I don’t have the words yet” okay. The “I know you don’t have time for the real answer” okay. And the ever-popular church okay that arrives fully dressed, smiling, and prepared to usher.

Every “okay” is not the same.

Pay attention.

Someone near you may be praying that you notice what they do not yet know how to say.

And to those of us who are accustomed to being strong:

You are allowed to be seen before everything becomes an emergency.

You don’t have to collapse before you qualify for care.

Nor do you have to explain every tear.

You do not have to turn your pain into a testimony while you are still bleeding.

And you sorrow doesn’t have to be inspirational so other people will feel comfortable sitting beside it.

You are allowed to say, “I’m hurting.”

You are allowed to say, “I don’t know.”

You are allowed to need prayer without being the one who leads it.

You are allowed to be held after spending years holding everyone else.

Strength is a gift, but it was never supposed to become a prison.

Let someone trustworthy see you.

Not everyone has earned access to the tender parts of your story, so choose wisely. But please choose someone. Healing becomes much harder when secrecy convinces us we must suffer alone.

The goal is not to become less strong.

It is to become safe enough that strength is no longer your only option.

I want US ALL to pause and consider:

Whose tears have you noticed lately?

Who in your life is always strong, always available, always helping, and rarely asked what they need?

Is there someone whose silence deserves your attention?

And what about you?

What tears have you hidden from others?

What tears have you hidden from yourself?

What love in your life is strong and worthy of gratitude?

What love has grown weary and needs an honest conversation?

What broken love are you still grieving without permission or language?

Where do you need to let God meet you as El Roi, the God who sees?

Reach out to the person who crossed your mind while reading this.

Sit with your own heart long enough to hear what it has been trying to tell you.

And when tears come, let them.

Every tear does not require an explanation.

Some tears are prayers, some are releases others are memories.

The body way of admitting that the soul has carried enough for one day.

And some are simply evidence that beneath all the leadership, responsibility, resilience, wisdom, and strength, you are still beautifully human.

That night on the patio, my friend’s tears were quiet.

They did not stop the conversation.

They became THE CONVERSATION……

The candle kept flickering. The night continued. Love remained at the table in all three of its forms: strong, weakened, and broken.

And God was there. Seeing you. Holding you.

Understanding what none of us had words to explain.

Maybe healing begins the moment you realize you no longer have to hide your tears.

And perhaps love becomes holy when someone else notices them and chooses to stay.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

—LJ

Hey Everybody,

A friend shared a sermon with me this week.

Honestly, I thought I was about to receive a little encouragement. Something comforting. Something I could nod along with, send her a few heart emojis about, and continue minding my business.

That is absolutely not what happened.

One sentence reached through the screen, grabbed me by the shoulders, and sat me all the way down.

“An intervention is what happens when love refuses to stay silent.”

Listen.

I had to pause.

Because I have always thought of intervention as something dramatic. Families gathered in a living room. Hard conversations. Tears. Somebody finally saying the thing everybody else has whispered about for months.

Yet that sentence opened the meaning for me.

An intervention can also happen when somebody who loves you watches you keep abandoning yourself and finally says, “Enough.”

Enough carrying people who refuse to carry themselves.

Enough calling exhaustion faithfulness. Confusing access with love.

Volunteering for emotional assignments God never gave you.

Enough setting yourself on fire to keep everybody else warm.

And this last statement is the one that got me and knocked me upside my head.

Mainly because I have spent a good portion of my life being very capable with a box of matches.

I know how to help.

I know how to anticipate needs before anyone says a word.

I know how to walk into a room and sense who feels uncomfortable, who is overwhelmed, who needs encouragement, and who may be one inconvenience away from falling apart.

Empathy has served me well.

It has made me a better leader.

A better friend, a better listener.

A better human.

It has also gotten me into trouble.

Because empathy without wisdom can become self abandonment wearing a church hat.

Yes, I said it.

Sometimes the thing we call compassion is actually fear.

Fear of disappointing people or appearing selfish.

Fear of being misunderstood.

Fear that somebody might struggle and somehow blame us for refusing to prevent it.

Fear that love will leave once access changes.

So we say yes.

Again and again.

And one more time for good measure because apparently we enjoy learning lessons through complete exhaustion.

Eventually the yes comes out of our mouths while everything inside us is screaming.

That is where I have been doing some thinking.

What are the roots of self sacrifice?

Where did I learn that love had to hurt me in order to count?

Who taught so many of us that goodness looks like depletion?

Why do capable women feel guilty when we have reached our capacity?

And how many leaders are quietly resentful because we keep agreeing to things our souls rejected three commitments ago?

Interesting questions.

A little uncomfortable too.

Which usually means they are worth asking.

When Empathy Becomes Toxic

Dr. Dharius Daniels recently taught about toxic empathy, and his framing gave me language for a pattern I have seen in myself and in leaders everywhere.

Toxic empathy begins when we confuse our calling to care with a responsibility to carry, fix, rescue, protect, or absorb what belongs to someone else.

Healthy empathy allows me to understand your pain.

Toxic empathy convinces me that your pain is now mine to solve.

Healthy compassion helps you stand.

Toxic empathy keeps removing every consequence that might teach you how to use your own legs.

Healthy love sits beside someone in the fire.

Toxic empathy jumps into the fire, forgets where the exit is, and then wonders why everybody smells like smoke.

There is a real difference.

I have watched leaders feel responsible for every emotion in the room.

Someone is disappointed, so we immediately adjust the plan.

A team member refuses accountability, so we soften the truth until it has no teeth.

An employee regularly misses expectations, and the leader keeps absorbing the impact because the person has a difficult story.

A family member creates crisis after crisis, and everybody else reorganizes their lives around the latest emergency.

A friend continually takes without giving, while the empathetic person keeps explaining away the imbalance.

We see the wound, understand the history and know why the behavior exists.

But understanding slowly becomes permission.

And that is dangerous.

A painful past can explain behavior.

Explanation still leaves room for responsibility.

Love can make room for someone’s humanity while requiring maturity.

Grace can meet people where they are and still refuse to help them stay there.

Jesus was full of compassion. He was also incredibly clear.

He healed people and asked them to rise.

He forgave people and called them toward a changed life.

He fed crowds, then withdrew.

He loved Peter deeply and corrected him directly.

He allowed the rich young ruler to walk away.

That last one has always challenged me.

Jesus loved him, told him the truth and gave him a choice.

When the man chose to leave, Jesus allowed the decision to stand.

No chasing or negotiating.

No rewriting the standard so the man would feel more comfortable.

That is a kind of love many of us are still learning.

I often wonder “ why do we throw ourselves into the fire ?” for others

I can think of seasons when I believed my ability to help meant I was supposed to help.

Those are two entirely different things.

Capability can become a trap for leaders.

People discover what you do well, then every problem begins traveling in your direction.

You know how to organize, so you organize everything.

You know how to listen, so everybody brings you their emotional luggage.

You know how to solve problems, so people stop attempting to solve their own.

You remain dependable, so requests keep arriving.

Then one day you look around and realize you have built a life where everybody gets the benefit of your strength except you.

I remember taking a call during a season when I was already emotionally tired. My own life needed attention. My body needed rest. Several responsibilities were waiting on me.

Still, when the phone rang and I heard the strain in someone’s voice, my needs immediately moved to the back of the line.

I listened.

I comforted.

I started building solutions.

By the end of the conversation, they felt lighter.

I felt heavier.

The person went on with their evening.

I carried the conversation into mine.

That pattern happened often enough that I finally had to confront it.

Nobody had forced me to take on the weight.

I volunteered.

That realization stung a little.

It was easier to blame people for taking too much than to admit I had repeatedly offered more than I could afford to give.

Some of us need that truth.

Resentment often grows in places where boundaries should have been planted.

Another moment came through a friend who loved me enough to pay attention.

She had watched me continue showing up for people while moving through my own hard season. Eventually she said something along the lines of, “You do know you are allowed to have needs too, right?”

Simple question.

Heavy answer.

Because intellectually, of course I knew.

Emotionally, I had built an identity around being needed.

Being helpful felt safe and being useful felt valuable.

Being the one with needs felt far more vulnerable.

Service was never the problem. Self erasure was.

So how do we process this hard but factual reality. I believe that one of the first things I had to realize is that leaders often receive praise for the very patterns that are draining the life out of us.

“She is always available.”

“He never lets anything fall.”

“You can call her anytime.”

“She will figure it out.”

Those words sound like compliments until you realize they describe a person with no margin, no backup, and no room to be human.

Leadership can make self sacrifice look noble.

Every yes receives applause.

Boundaries rarely do.

People celebrate the leader who saves the day.

Few people ask why the entire system requires one person to keep saving it.

That question matters.

An organization built around the constant sacrifice of one capable person is already unhealthy.

A ministry dependent on one exhausted leader has confused faithfulness with poor structure.

A family that survives because one woman keeps swallowing her needs is living on borrowed time.

Healthy leaders build capacity in others. Healthy leaders let people experience the results of their choices.

These type of leaders say what is true before frustration says it badly.

A truly healthy leader understands that compassion and accountability belong in the same conversation.

Galatians 6 gives us language for this tension.

Verse 2 says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

Then verse 5 says, “For every man shall bear his own burden.”

Both verses belong in the Bible.

Some burdens are too heavy to carry alone. Grief. Illness. Crisis. Sudden loss. Those moments call community closer.

Other responsibilities belong to the person living the life. Their choices. Their growth. Their obedience. Their consequences. Their healing work.

Wisdom learns the difference.

Without that wisdom, helpers become resentful and the people receiving help remain dependent.

Nobody grows.

If this is the best thing to do as a leader and we understand this cognitively and sometimes even emotionally then “Why does saying “No” Feels So Hard.

Saying no can stir up emotions that have very little to do with the current request.

For some of us, no once came with punishment.

Maybe love felt conditional.

Perhaps being helpful created safety in an unpredictable home.

Possibly praise only arrived when you performed, achieved, served, or stayed easy to manage.

Your nervous system learned that yes kept connection intact.

Now adulthood arrives and the pattern continues.

You say yes before checking your calendar.

Yes before checking your energy.

Yes before checking with God.

Yes before asking whether the request even belongs to you.

Then your body pays the bill.

Fatigue, Irritability, Anxiety, Tension, Resentment.

A quiet desire to disappear for several business days.

Psalm 139:23 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.”

That prayer requires courage.

Searching the heart reveals motives we have dressed up in beautiful language.

Am I serving from love?

Am I helping from guilt?

Am I responding to a real need?

Am I trying to control the outcome?

Does this person need support?

Would stepping back give them room to grow?

Am I obeying God?

Am I trying to become God in this situation?

That final question will humble you quickly. Well I will admit it humbled me.

We are called to be godly.

We were never called to be God.

God can be everywhere.

I cannot.

God can carry the whole world.

My shoulders were never designed for that.

God knows every outcome.

I have spent plenty of time being loudly confident and completely unaware of what happens next.

God is the Savior.

I am Lakweshia.

Important distinction.

First Peter 5:7 tells us, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

Casting requires release.

Many of us bring our cares to God in prayer, explain them thoroughly, cry a little, say amen, then pick everything back up before leaving the room.

I have done it.

Probably with impressive form too.

Real surrender means leaving the weight where I placed it.

Because real Love refuses to stay silent

That sermon line from earlier keeps returning to me.

“An intervention is what happens when love refuses to stay silent.”

Sometimes we need to intervene in someone else’s life.

Other times, love needs to intervene in ours.

A trusted friend may notice the exhaustion we keep calling commitment.

A therapist may help us see how childhood patterns shaped adult relationships.

A husband or wife may point out that everybody receives our best energy while home receives whatever is left.

A colleague may finally say the system cannot continue depending on our constant over-functioning.

God may use a headache, a missed deadline, a short temper, or complete emotional fatigue to say what our spirit has been whispering for months.

Enough.

Love speaks.

Real love also risks disappointing people.

That part is hard.

Everybody benefits from the version of you who has no limits.

Of course some people will resist the healthier version.

A boundary changes the arrangement.

Access shifts.

Expectations get examined.

People who were comfortable with your sacrifice may call your growth selfish.

Let them adjust.

Your responsibility is faithfulness.

Their response belongs to them.

Maya Angelou is often credited with saying, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

I would add something from my own learning.

When your body shows you that you are exhausted, believe it too.

When resentment keeps appearing, listen.

When every request feels heavy, pause.

When your prayer life becomes a running list of people you are trying to save, hand the job back to Jesus.

This is what I Am Learning About the word “No”

No is a complete sentence, though mine occasionally arrives with a paragraph, three apologies, and a small dissertation.

I am growing.

A healthy no can sound warm.

“I care about this, and I do not have the capacity to take it on.”

“I can listen for a few minutes, though I am unable to solve this for you.”

“I trust you to make that decision.”

“I am unavailable.”

“That responsibility belongs with your team.”

“I need time before answering.”

Clear language protects relationships from the resentment created by reluctant yeses.

The goal is never to become cold.

My empathy is part of my gift.

I simply want it governed by wisdom.

Compassion deserves stewardship.

Leadership deserves sustainability.

Love deserves truth.

Here are a few practices I am carrying with me.

1. Pause before giving an answer

Urgency has convinced many of us to make commitments our wisdom would have declined.

A pause creates room to check your capacity, motives, responsibilities, and peace.

Try saying, “Let me look at what I am carrying and get back to you.”

Then actually look.

2. Ask whether helping will create growth or dependency

Support should strengthen people.

Repeated rescue can quietly teach helplessness.

Before stepping in, ask:

Will my involvement help this person move forward?

Am I removing a consequence they need to experience?

Could guidance serve them better than intervention?

Love wants people whole, even when the process feels uncomfortable.

3. Let discomfort exist without treating it as danger

Guilt may show up when you begin setting boundaries.

Someone may feel disappointed.

A conversation may become awkward.

Discomfort does not automatically mean you made the wrong decision.

Sometimes discomfort is simply the feeling of a new pattern replacing an old one.

4. Build systems that reduce dependence on you

Leaders need teams.

Delegate clearly.

Teach what you know.

Share information.

Create processes.

Develop people who can think, decide, and lead without waiting for you to rescue every moment.

Your leadership should increase the capacity of the room.

5. Identify the fear underneath your yes

Ask yourself:

What do I believe will happen if I say no?

Will they leave?

Will they judge me?

Will I feel less valuable?

Will the situation fall apart?

Naming the fear removes some of its power.

6. Invite people who love you enough to intervene

Every strong leader needs someone who can say, “You are doing too much,” and remain unimpressed by the speech explaining why all of it is necessary.

Choose people who can recognize your calling and still care about your humanity.

Let them tell the truth.

Then resist the urge to prepare a twelve point rebuttal.

Listen.

I love my “TRUE” sisters and brothers who love me enough to speak TRUTH

I am still learning the art of no.

Some days I do well.

Other days I find myself halfway through a commitment wondering who gave me permission to agree to it, then remembering it was me.

Grace.

Growth.

Another chance to choose differently.

Here is what I know now.

Empathy is beautiful.

Sacrifice has a sacred place.

Service is part of who I am.

Yet God receives no glory from me destroying the person He created while trying to help everybody else.

That is my mic drop this week:

Love may ask you to carry a burden for a season. It will never require you to become the sacrifice on every altar.

Put down the matches.

Let somebody else manage their own fire.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

I hope that you are enjoying your day so far . This is probably the longest article I’ve ever written so far, but how can I truly capture the emotions, thoughts and questions of a 250 year moment lol . What I have realized is every year around this time, I find myself asking the same question.

What exactly are we celebrating?

I’m asking that sincerely.

I’ve never been interested in shallow conversations. You probably know that about me by now. My brain has always been wired to look underneath things. Curiosity has a way of doing that. It keeps asking another question long after everyone else has moved on.

Maybe that’s why I love this HOME community so much.

We can wrestle here.

We can ask honest questions here.

We can love deeply enough to tell the whole story here.

Today marks 250 years since America declared its independence.

Two hundred and fifty years.

Just saying that out loud feels significant.

It’s a birthday.

It’s a milestone.

It’s also an invitation.

An invitation to pause long enough to remember where we’ve been, where we are, and where God might still be leading us.

As I sat with that thought this week, I realized something.

Fireworks have never been my favorite part of the Fourth of July.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a good fireworks show. I’ll probably still look up tonight with everybody else.

What captures my attention isn’t what lights up the sky.

It’s what rises inside people.

Gratitude....Pride...Memories

Questions.

Hope.

Sometimes grief.

All of it sitting together in the same lawn chair looking up at the sky.

Life has taught me that the most meaningful moments usually carry more than one emotion.

Joy and sorrow have become old friends as they have walked together in my life many times.

Celebration and remembrance often show up holding hands.

Hope has learned how to sit beside heartbreak without trying to rush it out of the room.

Maybe that’s maturity or discipleship.

Maybe that’s just what love looks like.

I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life traveling this country.

One week I’m sitting with corporate executives talking about leadership.

Another week I’m standing in a church talking about purpose.

Sometimes I’m with educators.

Sometimes philanthropists.

Sometimes law enforcement.

Sometimes nonprofit leaders trying to stretch resources that never seem large enough for the need in front of them.

I’ve been in classrooms.

Boardrooms.

Community centers.

Courtrooms.

Sanctuaries.

Neighborhoods that have everything.

Neighborhoods that have almost nothing.

Every place has taught me something about America.

I’ve watched complete strangers organize food drives after tornadoes.

I’ve seen churches open their doors to people they had never met.

I’ve watched business owners quietly pay someone’s rent without asking for recognition.

I’ve seen children dream beyond circumstances that should have limited them.

I’ve watched teachers spend their own money because they refused to let a child go without.

I’ve seen the very best of this country.

I’ve also stood in neighborhoods where zip codes still predict opportunity.

I’ve listened to mothers explain what it feels like to choose between medicine and groceries.

I’ve walked through schools where educators carry impossible expectations with extraordinary grace.

I’ve sat with families trying to navigate systems that often feel harder to understand than they should.

I’ve seen beautiful things.

I’ve seen broken things.

Both belong to the story.

And somewhere along the way, we’ve convinced ourselves we have to choose.

Either celebrate.

Or remember.

Either love America.

Or tell the truth about America.

I’ve never believed those were the only options.

Healthy families don’t work that way.

Healthy marriages don’t work that way.

Healthy friendships certainly don’t work that way.

Why would healthy nations?

The people I love most know me completely.

They know the parts of me that are still growing.

They know the mistakes I’ve made.

They know my strengths.

They know my blind spots.

Their love has never depended on pretending I’m perfect.

Real love has always made room for truth.

I’ve been wondering lately...

What would happen if we loved our country that way?

What would happen if we celebrated every ounce of ingenuity, resilience, sacrifice, innovation, creativity, generosity, courage, and possibility while also refusing to look away from pain that still deserves our attention?

I don’t think those ideas compete with each other.

I think they strengthen each other.

That’s one of the reasons I keep coming back to Jesus.

Every time.

No matter what conversation I’m having.

Political conversations eventually run out of wisdom.

Social media definitely runs out of wisdom.

Jesus never does.

When Jesus stood in the synagogue and opened the scroll of Isaiah, He described His own mission.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives... to set at liberty them that are bruised.” Luke 4:18 KJV.

I’ve read those verses dozens of times.

This week they landed differently.

Freedom.

Jesus talked about freedom before He talked about power.

Freedom before popularity.

Freedom before influence.

Freedom before success.

The freedom Jesus described wasn’t limited to governments.

It reached souls.

It restored dignity.

It healed hearts.

It welcomed outsiders.

It lifted burdens.

It returned people to the image of God that had been buried beneath oppression, shame, sin, violence, or despair.

That changes the conversation for me.

Because freedom becomes much bigger than a date on a calendar.

Freedom becomes the restoration of what God intended from the very beginning.

I’ve come to believe freedom looks like a child believing they’re valuable because they’re made in the image of God.

Freedom looks like worship without fear.

Freedom looks like truth without retaliation.

Freedom looks like opportunity without discrimination.

Freedom looks like communities where every child has the chance to flourish.

Freedom looks like dignity.

Freedom looks like belonging.

Freedom looks like people who have enough daily bread to dream about tomorrow instead of simply surviving today.

Maybe that’s why Jesus cared so deeply about people the world overlooked.

He wasn’t simply saving souls for heaven.

He was restoring humanity on earth.

That thought led me back to Frederick Douglass.

Every July I find myself rereading portions of his famous speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

For years people have used that speech as a weapon.

Others have ignored it completely.

I don’t think either response honors what Douglass was trying to do.

When I read his words, I don’t hear a man trying to destroy America.

I hear a patriot refusing to settle for an incomplete version of freedom.

I hear someone who believed the promises written into the Declaration of Independence should reach every human being.

I hear someone calling a nation to become more fully itself.

That’s different.

Love has always told the truth.

The prophets told the truth because they loved Israel.

Jesus told the truth because He loved people.

Parents tell the truth because they love their children.

Good friends tell the truth because the relationship matters more than temporary comfort.

Truth has never been the opposite of love.

Sometimes it’s the greatest expression of it.

Douglass loved this nation enough to ask difficult questions.

Jesus loved humanity enough to ask difficult questions.

Maybe faithful leadership still requires the same thing today.

Not louder voices.

Truer ones.

Voices that refuse easy answers.

Voices willing to hold celebration and remembrance in the same conversation.

Voices that understand redemption has always begun with honesty.

I’ve spent the better part of the last decade studying what Scripture teaches about justice.

Interestingly enough, the more I study justice, the more hopeful I become.

People often assume justice begins with anger.

Mine began with Genesis.

It began with a God who looked at humanity and declared His creation very good.

It began with people created in His image.

It began with dignity before it ever arrived at policy.

Everything else grows from there.

That’s why I’ve come to define Biblical Justice this way.

Biblical Justice is the application of God’s righteousness to every relationship, every system, and every opportunity to reflect His heart in the earth.

Justice isn’t simply about correcting what’s broken.

Justice is about restoring what God intended.

Every time I teach Biblical Justice, I come back to five simple invitations.

Make right.

Do right.

Seek right.

Lead right.

Think right.

I’ve discovered those questions work just as well in a boardroom as they do in a Bible study.

They work in city hall.

They work at the dinner table.

They work in our homes.

They work in our hearts.

Because justice isn’t merely something we advocate for.

Justice becomes a way we learn to see.

And once your eyes begin to see people the way God sees them...

You never quite look at the world the same again.

I’ve been wondering lately if we’ve made truth harder than it needs to be.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve been told every conversation has to end with somebody winning and somebody losing.

Somebody has to be completely right.

Somebody has to be completely wrong.

Real life has never worked that way.

Neither has Scripture.

The Bible is remarkably honest.

God never edited Israel’s story to make His people look better.

He didn’t erase David’s failures.

Moses’ anger stayed in the story.

Peter’s denial stayed in the story.

Thomas’ doubts stayed in the story.

Paul’s persecution of Christians stayed in the story.

Why?

Because redemption has never required pretending.

It requires truth.

Maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts Scripture gives us.

Permission to tell the whole story.

America deserves the same honesty.

Our history carries remarkable ingenuity.

This nation helped change transportation, medicine, agriculture, aviation, technology, manufacturing, communications, and scientific discovery in ways that continue to shape the world. Universities, entrepreneurs, inventors, researchers, and ordinary people dreamed beyond what seemed possible, and generations benefited because they refused to stop imagining.

Think about that for a minute.

People crossed oceans.

Railroads stretched across a continent.

Vaccines saved lives.

Small businesses became global companies.

Communities rebuilt after wars, disasters, recessions, and heartbreak.

Innovation has always been one of America’s gifts.

And resilience has been another.

Yet and Still...

Every gift carries a responsibility.

Innovation asks us, “Who benefits?”

Prosperity asks us, “Who still hasn’t been invited?”

Growth asks us, “Who got left behind?”

Those questions aren’t attacks.

They’re stewardship.

Whenever I work with leaders, I remind them that every organization has blind spots.

Churches do.

Businesses do.

Families do.

Cities do.

Every leader does.

Blind spots aren’t evidence that you’re failing.

Refusing to acknowledge them usually is.

That’s one of the reasons I love leadership.

Healthy leadership has never required perfection.

It requires humility.

I think about Nehemiah often.

His response to broken walls has always fascinated me.

He didn’t begin with blame.

He began with prayer.

He didn’t spend all his energy rehearsing what had happened.

He started rebuilding.

Brick by brick.

Family by family.

Gate by gate.

Prayer by prayer.

Hope became visible because somebody picked up a stone.

That story speaks to me.

Because rebuilding rarely happens all at once.

Communities heal one relationship at a time.

Organizations change one leader at a time.

Families grow one conversation at a time.

Justice often looks slower than we’d like.

Love usually does.

This week I found myself revisiting a statistic that always humbles me.

Researchers from the Harvard Study of Adult Development have spent more than eighty years studying what helps people live healthy, meaningful lives.

Their conclusion surprises many people.

Strong relationships matter more than wealth.

More than status.

More than fame.

More than professional success.

People flourish in healthy relationships.

I’ve quoted that study before because I believe it.

Today it feels even more relevant.

Countries flourish the same way.

Communities flourish the same way.

Freedom has always been relational.

I’ve never met someone who felt completely free while living in fear.

I’ve never met someone who felt completely free while believing they had no dignity.

I’ve never met someone who felt completely free while wondering whether their children would have opportunities they never received.

Freedom has always been connected to belonging.

Belonging has always been connected to love.

Love has always been connected to responsibility.

Maybe that’s why Jesus reduced the law to two commandments.

Love God.

Love your neighbor.

Simple.

Profound.

Difficult.

Transformative.

Everything keeps coming back to relationships.

Even our nation’s hardest conversations.

Every issue eventually lands in somebody’s living room.

Housing becomes a family’s story.

Education becomes a child’s story.

Healthcare becomes a grandmother’s story.

Economic mobility becomes somebody’s dream.

Justice always has a face.

That’s why numbers matter.

They tell us where to look.

People matter.

They tell us why.

Today, despite remarkable progress across many areas of American life, significant disparities remain in wealth accumulation, homeownership, maternal health, educational opportunity, and life expectancy. Those realities aren’t invitations to despair.

They’re invitations to keep working.

They’re reminders that freedom is still becoming.

Sometimes I think we misunderstand hope.

Hope isn’t pretending everything is okay.

Hope rolls up its sleeves.

Hope organizes.

Hope mentors.

Hope votes.

Hope volunteers.

Hope builds businesses.

Hope starts nonprofits.

Hope plants churches.

Hope teaches children.

Hope creates scholarships.

Hope adopts.

Hope forgives.

Hope keeps showing up long after the cameras leave.

That’s the kind of hope I want.

Not wishful thinking.

Working hope.

James wrote it this way.

“Faith, if it hath not works, is dead.”

Living faith moves.

Living hope moves.

Living love moves.

One of my favorite quotes from Bryan Stevenson says,

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

I’ve carried those words for years.

Lately I’ve wondered whether they apply to communities too.

Maybe cities are more than their worst chapters.

Maybe churches are more than their biggest failures.

Maybe nations are more than their deepest wounds.

Acknowledging the wound doesn’t erase the beauty.

Celebrating the beauty doesn’t heal the wound.

Both deserve attention.

Both deserve honesty.

Both deserve hope.

I’ve also found myself returning to something Maya Angelou wrote years ago.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

There’s wisdom in that.

Growth has always required learning.

Learning requires humility.

Humility creates room for transformation.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be part of a generation willing to grow than one determined to defend every mistake we’ve inherited.

There’s courage in that.

Leadership requires it.

Discipleship requires it even more.

Sometimes I imagine what America might look like if more of us became students again.

Curious enough to listen.

Wise enough to ask questions.

Confident enough to admit we don’t know everything.

Loving enough to stay at the table.

Because the table matters.

Healing rarely happens across a battlefield.

It often begins around a table.

People sharing stories.

People breaking bread.

People listening long enough to discover the humanity sitting across from them.

Jesus seemed to enjoy tables.

Maybe we should too.

I don’t think God is asking us to agree on everything.

I do think He’s asking us to love each other while we keep learning.

Those are different assignments.

One produces arguments.

The other produces transformation.

Transformation has always been the Kingdom’s preferred strategy.

Before I leave you today, let me offer four thoughts I’m carrying into the next 250 years.

Freedom grows every time someone else’s dignity becomes as important as your own.

The image of God has never been selective.

Every conversation becomes different when we remember who people belong to.

Healing moves at the speed of relationships.

Policies matter.

Laws matter.

Systems matter.

People change people.

Never underestimate the quiet power of a meal, a friendship, a mentor, a teacher, a pastor, a neighbor, or a conversation filled with grace.

Hope is one of the bravest forms of leadership I know.

Cynicism is easy.

Hope costs something.

Hope keeps planting trees whose shade it may never enjoy.

Hope keeps believing children deserve a better tomorrow.

Hope keeps showing up.

Leave every place a little more like heaven than you found it.

Your office, church, classroom, business, neighborhood, city or your family.

That’s Kingdom work.

That’s freedom.

That’s leadership.

If this article stirred something in you and you’d like to keep learning, at the end of this article I will provide just a small sample of books that have shaped my thinking over the years.

One last thought before I go.

Fireworks fill the sky for a few minutes.

Freedom asks something of us every single day.

It asks us to remember.

It asks us to tell the truth.

It asks us to keep learning.

It asks us to make room.

It asks us to love our neighbors.

It asks us to leave this world a little more like the Kingdom of God than the way we found it.

That’s the freedom I’m celebrating today.

My prayer is that 250 years from now, another generation will look back at ours and say...

“They inherited a complicated story.

They loved it enough to tell the truth about it.

They loved each other enough to keep writing a better chapter.”

Until next time...

Keep choosing curiosity over certainty.

At HOME Reading Shelf

The Holy Bible (KJV)

Generous Justice — Timothy Keller

The Justice Calling

The Cross and the Lynching Tree — James H. Cone

Jesus and the Disinherited — Howard Thurman

Strength to Love — Martin Luther King Jr.

Beloved- Toni Morrison

Life Together — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Pursuit of God — A. W. Tozer

PowerNomics- Claude Anderson

The Very Good Gospel — Lisa Sharon Harper

On the Resurrection of the Dead — Richard B. Gaffin Jr.

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Exclusion and Embrace — Miroslav Volf

The Color of Law — Richard Rothstein

Caste — Isabel Wilkerson

The Making of Asian America — Erika Lee

The Warmth of Other Suns — Isabel Wilkerson

The Latino Threat — Leo R. Chavez

How the Word Is Passed — Clint Smit

In the Matter of Color- A. Leon Higginbotham

Discrimination and Disparities — Thomas Sowell

Basic Economics — Thomas Sowell

Dog Whistle Politics — Ian Haney López Racism without Racists — Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

The New Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander

Just Mercy — Bryan Stevenson

The Sum of Us — Heather McGhee

Democracy in Black — Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Begin Again — Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Jesus and the Disinherited — Howard Thurman

Where Do We go from here — Martin Luther King Jr.

The Souls of Black Folk — W. E. B. Du Bois

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

I’ve spent the last few days in a room with leaders from every imaginable sector.

Business leaders. Government leaders. Nonprofit leaders. Educators. Economic development professionals.

People responsible for shaping the future of entire regions.

The conversations were fascinating.

We talked about innovation, prosperity, workforce development, funding, regional competitiveness, housing, infrastructure, talent.

Every presentation looked a little different and all the panels brought a different perspective to the conversation.

Every organization had its own priorities and yet somehow...every conversation kept finding its way back to relationships.

I smiled every single time.

Because isn’t that just like God?

We came together to talk about economic development and somehow kept discovering that people are still the greatest resource any community has.

One phrase came up over and over again this week.

Clusters.

Now unless you’ve spent time around economists or regional planners, that word probably doesn’t mean much.

It didn’t mean much to me either the first time I heard it.

A cluster is simply a group of interconnected people, organizations, businesses, institutions, and resources that become stronger because they’re connected to one another.

They share ideas.

They solve problems together.

They create opportunities together.

They strengthen one another.

The whole system becomes healthier because everybody contributes something.

As I listened, I found myself thinking...

That’s interesting.

God has been building clusters since Genesis.

Think about it.

The Garden.

Families.

The twelve disciples.

The early church.

Paul’s ministry partnerships, Priscilla and Aquila, Timothy, Barnabas, Lydia.

Community has always been part of God’s strategy.

Nobody was meant to flourish alone.

Ecclesiastes says two are better than one.

Paul describes the Church as one body with many members.

Even creation itself operates as an ecosystem.

Nothing thrives in complete isolation.

Then I started laughing to myself.

Because I realized I’ve spent most of my adult life building clusters.

I just didn’t have language for it.

Professionally, I’ve always believed relationships move farther than résumés.

Some of the greatest opportunities in my life came because someone trusted me enough to open a door.

A conversation led to another conversation.

One introduction became a partnership.

A partnership became a movement.

A movement became impact.

Looking back, very little happened because I knew the right information.

Almost everything happened because I invested in the right relationships.

People often ask me how I seem to know so many people.

Truthfully?

I don’t collect contacts.

I cultivate people.

There’s a difference.

I’ve never wanted the biggest network.

I’ve wanted the healthiest one.

That changes how you show up.

It changes why you connect.

It changes how you care.

Professional clusters matter.

Personal ones matter even more.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that every woman needs her own ecosystem.

People who remind you who you are when life gets loud.

Friends who celebrate your wins without competition.

People who tell you the truth with kindness.

People who pray.

People who laugh.

People who show up with food when you’re grieving.

People who send voice notes because they know you’re carrying too much.

People who can sit in silence without feeling obligated to fix everything.

I’ve become very protective of that part of my life.

Because ecosystems determine outcomes.

Read that again.

Ecosystems determine outcomes.

A healthy seed planted in unhealthy soil struggles.

The same seed planted in healthy soil flourishes.

Jesus understood ecosystems.

He chose twelve.

Within the twelve, He invested deeply in three.

Even the Son of God surrounded Himself with people.

That says something.

Dr. Henry Cloud writes in Boundaries that our relationships shape the course of our lives more than we often realize.

Research consistently tells us the same thing.

The longest running study on adult happiness from Harvard found that the single greatest predictor of long term health and happiness wasn’t money.

It wasn’t success.

It wasn’t status.

It was healthy relationships.

Imagine that.

We’ve built entire cultures chasing everything except the thing that actually helps us flourish.

I’ve been wondering...

What kind of ecosystem have you built around your life?

Who challenges you?

Who calms you?

Who sharpens your thinking?

Who protects your peace?

Who celebrates your becoming instead of competing with it?

Who has permission to tell you you’re wrong?

Interesting questions.

Questions worth sitting with.

Here are a few things I’m taking home from this week.

Build relationships before you need them.

Trust grows over time.

Invest while life is ordinary.

Choose people whose values strengthen yours.

Proximity has influence.

Pay attention to what your ecosystem is producing.

Become the kind of person you’d want in your own cluster.

Generosity attracts generosity.

Trustworthiness attracts trust.

Presence attracts presence.

Remember that every healthy ecosystem requires contribution.

Receive support.

Offer support.

Celebrate others.

Share wisdom.

Everybody brings something to the table.

Here’s the thought that keeps following me home.

Maybe success has never been about finding the perfect opportunity.

Maybe it’s always been about building the right ecosystem.

Because healthy people help heal people.

Healthy leaders develop healthy leaders.

Healthy friendships build healthy lives.

And healthy ecosystems change communities.

My takeaway this week?

You don’t simply inherit the life you want.

You build the relationships that make that life possible.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

This week was supposed to be simple.

A few days in Ohio.

Meaningful work.

Great conversations.

Wonderful people.

The kind of week that fills your cup.

Then it was time to come home.

And baby...

The devil was working overtime in airway’s reservation system.

Let me explain.

Apparently somewhere along the way my flight was booked under somebody else’s name.

An entirely different human being.

A real person.

A person who was definitely not Lakweshia Ewing.

Now listen.

I wish I was making that up.

I am not.

After sorting through that adventure, weather decided it wanted to participate too.

Storms.

Delays.

Planes circling.

Pilots waiting.

At one point they announced there were around sixty planes waiting on the tarmac or being rerouted

Sixty.

I remember sitting there thinking, “Well this can’t possibly get worse.”

Friends, that was a mistake.

Never ask life that question.

Life loves a challenge.

Somewhere between hope and delusion, I convinced myself I was still going to make my connecting flight to Chattanooga.

Then my phone buzzed.

I didn’t even look.

You know those moments when your spirit reads the text message before your eyes do?

Yeah.

That.

Canceled.

The last flight home.

Gone.

At this point I shifted into problem solving mode.

Because that’s what many of us do.

We pivot.

We adjust.

We figure it out.

Rental car.

No cars available.

Not low inventory.

No inventory.

Amtrak.

No tickets.

Hotel room.

No rooms.

Not one.

Apparently sixty delayed planes create a lot of competition for beds.

Who knew?

There I was.

Cold.

Hungry.

Cramping.

Tired.

Missing home.

Thinking about my little sister’s bachelorette weekend and wondering if I was about to miss that too.

At some point frustration turned into sadness.

Then sadness turned into exhaustion.

Then exhaustion turned into me staring into space wondering whether I actually lived at the airport now.

Eventually I called Julian.

After listening to my entire saga he said something very simple.

“I’m on my way, babe.”

That’s it.

No debate.

No committee meeting.

No strategic planning session.

Just...

“I’m on my way.”

Five and a half hours drive.

One direction.

3am in the morning.

After a full day.

His response should have immediately filled me with gratitude.

Instead, I got irritated.

I know.

Judge somebody else.

I told him to stay home.

Get some sleep.

I’d figure it out.

Something would open up.

Something would become available.

I’d survive.

And that’s when I heard myself.

I’d survive.

Interesting choice of words.

Because survival and support are not the same thing.

Somewhere over the years I’ve become really comfortable surviving.

Many women leaders have.

Need a solution?

We’ll find one.

Need somebody to step up?

We’ll do it.

Need somebody to carry the weight?

We’ve got strong shoulders.

Until one day you’re sitting in an airport realizing you’ve become so accustomed to rescuing yourself that being rescued feels uncomfortable.

That thought sat with me.

Why was I fighting help?

Why was I negotiating against love?

Why was I arguing with someone who was literally driving across state lines because he cared about me?

Then it hit me.

Receiving can feel harder than giving.

Giving feels powerful.

Receiving feels vulnerable.

Giving keeps us in control.

Receiving requires trust.

Giving allows us to stay in our role.

Receiving asks us to become human again.

Maybe that’s why so many leaders struggle here.

I’ve watched executives carry impossible workloads while refusing support.

I’ve watched nonprofit leaders run themselves into the ground trying to save everyone around them.

I’ve watched ministry leaders pray for everybody except themselves.

I’ve watched women show up for entire organizations while quietly falling apart in private.

The common thread?

Somewhere along the way we started believing needing help and being capable couldn’t exist in the same person.

That’s a lie.

Moses needed Aaron.

Ruth needed Naomi.

Esther needed Mordecai.

Paul needed Timothy.

Even Jesus accepted help carrying the cross.

Ecclesiastes says two are better than one.

I’ve read that scripture hundreds of times.

This week I experienced it.

Literally.

In a car.

Driven by a man who loved me enough to lose sleep.

Maya Angelou once said,

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”

I’ve been thinking about that quote differently.

Because sometimes trusting love looks like letting people show up.

Sometimes trusting love looks like accepting the ride.

Sometimes trusting love looks like putting down the burden and climbing into the passenger seat.

Here’s what I’m pondering this week.

How much energy do we spend proving we can carry things that God never asked us to carry alone?

How many blessings have we delayed because we were determined to save ourselves?

How many people have wanted to love us well while we kept insisting, “I’m fine”?

Interesting questions.

Questions I’m still sitting with.

For now, here’s what I know.

God often answers prayers through people.

Help isn’t weakness.

Support isn’t failure.

Being rescued doesn’t make you less strong.

Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is stop fighting the person God sent to help you.

My takeaway this week?

The miracle wasn’t finding a way home.

The miracle was realizing somebody was already on the way.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

A quote crossed my screen recently and instead of scrolling past it, I took a screenshot and revisited that thought for days.

I know I’m not the only person who does that, lol

A sentence finds you at exactly the right moment and suddenly you’re having conversations with yourself in the grocery store, in the car, while brushing your teeth.

The quote said:

“If you’ve never seen the soft side of me, it’s because I’ve never met the safe side of you.”

I sat with that for a while.

Partly because it felt true.

Partly because it felt incomplete.

Mostly because it made me think about people.

And then it made me think about me.

For years, I’ve watched people misunderstand strength.

Strong gets translated as distant.

Strong gets translated as intimidating.

Strong gets translated as having it all together.

Meanwhile, some of the strongest people I know cry easily, love deeply, feel everything, and somehow still show up for others when life gets hard.

I’ve learned those things can coexist.

A person can be incredibly strong and incredibly tender at the same time.

Matter of fact, I think that’s where some of the real strength lives.

Life has a way of teaching us caution.

A broken heart can teach it.

A betrayal can teach it.

Being misunderstood often enough can teach it.

Leadership can definitely teach it.

Nothing quite prepares you for the reality that people will celebrate your vulnerability right up until the moment you become vulnerable in a way that makes them uncomfortable.

That’s a lesson.

One I learned the hard way.

Years ago, I thought being strong meant being unaffected.

The assignment was simple.

Handle it.

Carry it.

Figure it out.

Keep moving.

Somewhere in that process, I became really good at protecting myself.

Good enough that I stopped recognizing I was doing it.

That’s the thing about protection.

Leave it in place long enough and it starts looking like personality.

Leave it in place long enough and it starts sounding like wisdom.

Leave it in place long enough and eventually you forget what existed before it.

Looking back now, I can see there were seasons where people knew my work and had very little access to my heart.

The consultant was available.

The speaker was available.

The leader was available.

The woman underneath all of those titles stayed tucked away somewhere in the background.

A few years ago, I picked up The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

One idea from that book has stayed with me ever since.

The body remembers.

Experiences leave traces behind.

Some memories live in our minds.

Others settle into our nervous systems.

Certain disappointments shape the way we trust.

Certain losses shape the way we attach.

Certain betrayals influence how much access we’re willing to give people.

Then one day we’re responding to a current situation while carrying reactions that were formed years ago.

That realization gave me a lot more grace for myself.

Maybe it will give some grace to you too.

Because there were seasons where I couldn’t understand why some things hit me so deeply.

A goodbye felt heavier than expected.

A disappointment lingered longer than it should have.

Trust occasionally felt expensive.

The answer wasn’t weakness.

History was involved.

Dr. van der Kolk writes that feeling safe with other people may be one of the most important aspects of mental health.

Reading that felt like finding language for something I’ve been trying to describe for years.

HOME.

That’s what HOME has always represented to me.

A place where people can exhale.

A place where masks get tired and honesty finally wins.

A place where you don’t have to perform your way into belonging.

A place where your humanity doesn’t disqualify you from connection.

When safety enters the room, interesting things start happening.

Shoulders relax.

Laughter gets louder.

Conversations get deeper.

Truth comes out.

The edited version of ourselves starts disappearing.

I think that’s why healthy relationships are so powerful.

A few years ago, God brought several people into my life who gave me something I didn’t even realize I needed.

Room.

Room to be uncertain.

Room to ask questions.

Room to grieve.

Room to laugh.

Room to be strong one day and exhausted the next.

What a gift.

Scripture says in Romans 12:15 to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.

That verse has been speaking to me differently lately.

Real relationships require emotional range.

One season calls for celebration.

Another season calls for comfort.

Sometimes people need encouragement.

Other times they need company.

Love knows how to stay present through all of it.

Jesus modeled that beautifully.

Compassion flowed from Him.

Authority flowed from Him.

Tenderness flowed from Him.

Power flowed from Him.

John 11:35 simply says:

“Jesus wept.”

Two words.

A lifetime of permission.

Because somewhere along the way many of us learned how to survive while forgetting how to soften.

Maybe softness never disappeared.

Perhaps it was waiting for healing.

Perhaps it was waiting for trust.

Perhaps it was waiting for someone safe enough to receive it.

I’ve been wondering how many people are carrying beautiful parts of themselves that rarely get seen.

How many marriages would look different?

How many friendships would feel deeper?

How many leaders would experience freedom?

How many families would heal?

Interesting questions.

For those of us trying to become whole, a few thoughts come to mind.

Pay attention to what happens in your body around certain people.

Peace tells a story.

Tension tells a story too.

Listen carefully.

Give trust the time it deserves.

Character reveals itself over time.

Consistency has a way of exposing what words try to hide.

Let connection become part of your healing.

God often uses people to help restore what people damaged.

Honor your humanity.

Tears belong here.

Questions belong here.

Needs belong here.

You belong here.

One thought keeps finding me.

Hardness often gets mistaken for strength.

Wholeness is something different.

The strongest people I know still have access to their hearts.

Despite disappointment.

Despite loss.

Despite everything life tried to convince them to become.

That’s courage.

And maybe that’s the real audacity.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

- Lakweshia

Hey Everybody !!

A conversation with my friend Tiffanie a few weeks ago has been sitting with me for awhile now. Heavy things were spilling out of me that day. Questions. Uncertainty. The kind of stuff you carry around quietly until it finally finds its way into a long conversation.

Life has felt tender lately. Some days have brought tears.

Other moments have brought more questions than answers.

A few situations left me staring toward Heaven wondering what God might be doing under the surface of things I can’t yet understand.

While I was processing on the phone with Tiffanie , she shared a sermon she had recently heard.

Joy filled her voice as she talked about it.

One statement from the preacher landed squarely in my spirit.

People were encouraged not to lose heart during difficult seasons because they were simply living in the “before” of their after.

My Lord, Today, lol!!! That hit me like a sack of potatoes

Church folks know exactly what I’m talking about. Because we say in services all the time

“There shall be glory after this.” Most of us have heard it, some of us have sung it.

Quite a few of us have ugly cried through it, lol.

Experience has taught us all what an “after this” season feels like.

We get answers to our prayers. Or unexpected provisions…. Someone gets healed , or peace is brought to a situation. Some type of breakthrough or change has happened and WE ARE RELIEVED

God has a way of bringing people into seasons they never could have imagined while they were standing in the middle of the struggle.

Navigating the before is a completely different experience though.

In this space we WAIT. Many long nights of silence and questions live in this space.

Our faith gets stretched there. And often our trust gets tested there.

Lately, that thought keeps finding me.

A close friend walked through a particularly painful situation this week. Disrespect. Rejection. Unfairness. Uncertainty. Watching it unfold hurt because I care about her deeply.

Listening to her share her heart, one thought kept rising inside me.

She’s living in the “before “of her “after this.”

The pain and disappointment is real. None of it felt fair.

Still, something in me knew God isn’t finished writing the story.

News from my own family brought another wave of tears a few days later.

More questions.. lots of concern and silence would soon follow

Right there in the middle of all of it, that same phrase returned.

This is the “before.”

The after is still coming.

Maybe that’s what faith really is. Holding God’s hand before you have His explanation..

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

Because most of us are fine once the testimony shows up. We are ready to shout it from the rooftops once the breakthrough and healing comes.

You can’t stop us from sharing it once the story makes sense.

Perspective has a way of making hard things easier to carry.

The challenge is living through a chapter that hasn’t revealed its purpose yet.

That’s where many of us find ourselves.

Still loving, wondering, serving, leading and showing up weighted…….

And if I’m honest, I think leaders wrestle with this differently.

We are often the encouragers and problem solvers.

The people others call when life gets messy.

Somebody needs wisdom? There we are

Another person needs prayer? We show up.

Someone needs support? Our shoulder is always ready

But somewhere along the way, many of us start confusing support with responsibility.

I must admit I’ve done it and find myself doing it still

A friend is hurting and suddenly I’m carrying the weight of their situation.

A family member receives difficult news and somehow I convince myself I need to figure out how to make it better.

A community is struggling and my heart immediately starts searching for solutions.

Care turns into carrying and my compassion turns into a burden.

Overnight it seems like the love I felt turned into weight.

Maybe you’ve been there too.

Recently I found myself sitting with a few questions.. Ya’ll know I love questioning myself lol

How do I care deeply without carrying everything?

How do I remain compassionate without becoming consumed?

How do I walk beside people without climbing onto crosses God never assigned to me?

That last question one got me and put me in a headlock ….

Because being godly and being God are two very different things.

One requires faithfulness.

The other requires omnipotence.

One was assigned to US

The other belongs to GOD alone.

Scripture tells us in First Peter 5:7 to cast our cares upon Him because He cares for us.

It doesn’t say because he tolerates us or because He’s obligated to us.

It says because He cares for us.

Those words hit differently when life gets heavy.

Care implies concern, attention and presence.

God isn’t asking us to pretend things don’t hurt.

He’s asking us to stop carrying them alone.

A picture keeps coming to mind.

Years ago, when my niece Madison ( who is now 14 years old) was learning to walk, she would stumble toward whoever she trusted most.

Tiny, wobbly legs.

But she had BIG determination to walk…….

She had no concern about whether someone would catch her.

You see her trust made her brave.

Looking back, I wonder how much energy I waste trying to hold myself up when God has spent the entire time extending His arms toward me.

Maybe that’s what the “before “season teaches us.

Dependence, trust and total Surrender.

I mean real surrender….The kind that happens when nobody knows what you’re carrying.

The kind that whispers, “Lord, I don’t know how this is gonna turn out, but I know You do.”

Romans 8:28 has been living in my spirit lately.

“And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.”

All things.

That means my family concerns. Friendship matters, disappointments, questions, tears, the chapters of my life I would have gladly skipped.

God somehow gathers all of it and creates something redemptive.

That doesn’t mean every season feels good. It means every season still belongs to Him.

So if you’re living through a “this” season right now, here are a few things I’m learning.

1. Leave room for the story to keep unfolding.

Growth takes time and Perspective usually shows up later.

2. Let people love you.

Support isn’t weakness.

Community is one of God’s favorite ways to care for His people.

3. Pay attention to what you’re carrying.

Some burdens belong in your hands but many of them belong at God’s feet. Learn the difference.

4. Remember where God has already brought you from.

Your history contains evidence. I heard it said once faithfulness leaves fingerprints. Look for them in your life.

One thought keeps returning to me.

The before often feels endless while you’re living in it.

Then one day you look up and realize you made it through.

You survived it……You grew.

You learned things you couldn’t have learned any other way.

And suddenly the “after is “standing where the “before “used to be.

Don’t let a temporary chapter convince you it’s the whole story because it is NOT……..

God is still writing.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

Hey Everybody,

Last night I stepped out of my comfort zone and did something my therapist told me to do.

Celebrate myself.

Honestly this simple act feels harder than it should, lol.

Celebrating other people comes easy for me. I love seeing people win. I love hyping people up. I love reminding people how gifted, brilliant, resilient, and valuable they are.

But doing that for me though? It’s been a different story.

During one of our sessions, my therapist said something that really sat with me. She told me I’ve lived a life full of blessings, opportunities, impact, and accomplishments… and somehow I’ve made all of it feel normal.

And the truth ya’ll… she was right.

I’ve normalized things other people pray for.

Somehow, I forgot how hard surviving hard seasons was.
I’ve normalized major milestones.
I even realized that I normalized making it through things that could have broken me.

And instead of pausing to really take it in, I usually move straight to the next assignment.

Write the book.
Lead the meeting.
Help the people.
Solve the problem.
Handle the crisis.
Move to the next thing.

That cycle can make you forget you’re actually living a life worth acknowledging.

So I started asking myself some real questions.

Why don’t I celebrate myself more?
I asked myself why do so many leaders struggle with this?
Why do accomplishments feel temporary while responsibilities feel permanent?

And… I think a lot of us learned how to survive before we ever learned how to celebrate.

Some of us grew up in environments where there was always something to manage, fix, carry, or overcome.

So we stayed strong.
We just handled it.
And kept it moving.

Then life just… continued and roll on.

There wasn’t always space to stop and say:

Mane, (yea that Memphis slang slipped out lol)
Look how far you’ve come.
Look what God brought you through.

So now, even as adults, many of us accomplish meaningful things and emotionally move past them before they ever fully land.

That’s real.

This week I found myself thinking about all the moments I rushed through.

The opportunities I prayed for.
And the rooms I once hoped to walk into.
The people I’ve been blessed to help.
The healing I survived privately while still showing up publicly.

And instead of sitting with those moments, I usually moved straight into productivity mode.

Alright… so what’s next?

That realization hit me harder than I expected.

Because I have never thought that celebration was ego.

But that it was more about gratitude. So why don’t I do it more?

To me celebration has always been about being present long enough to acknowledge that God has been faithful.

Then I was like AHA.. that’s it, that the message…

Psalm 126:3 says,
“The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”

Filled with joy.

That scripture made me pause.

Because I think many of us have become so focused on pressure that we barely recognize joy when it shows up.

I’ve read things that talk about how people often struggle with joy because they’re constantly bracing themselves for disappointment.

And I get it.

A lot of leaders know how to work.
We know how to carry responsibility and how to survive difficult seasons.

But joy, real joy takes practice.

Celebration takes practice too.

Ecclesiastes 3 says there’s “a time to weep and a time to laugh… a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

A time to dance.

Even though I’m not the best dancer…..

Dancing matters.

And maybe some of us need permission to dance again.
To smile again.
To enjoy what God has already done without immediately worrying about what’s next.

So last tonight, I tried something different.

I slowed down long enough to acknowledge my own imperfect life.

And maybe you need to do the same.

Maybe you’ve normalized your resilience and you’ve minimized your growth.
You’ve survived so much that you forgot your life deserves acknowledgment too.

So here are a few things I’m learning right now:

1. Pause before rushing to the next thing
Ask yourself:
What have I survived?
What prayers has God already answered?
What deserves acknowledgment right now?

2. Stop minimizing your wins
Small victories matter. Rest matters. Healing matters. Getting through the week matters.

3. Let joy breathe a little
Celebrate in ways that feel real to you. Dinner with friends. Quiet reflection. A walk. Music. Rest. Gratitude.

You don’t have to wait for some giant milestone to acknowledge your life.

Some of us became so focused on surviving that we forgot we were also allowed to enjoy our lives so I urge you to:

Celebrate yourself .

No your life may not be all roses and candy.
But you’re growing.
You didn’t quit on yourself, you kept going.
and if nothing else you can celebrate because God has been faithful.

And that matters.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

- Lakweshia

Hey Everybody,

This week’s article is inspired by a conversation I had several years ago with a really close friend. She was navigating a moment in her life where people were trying to keep her trapped in the identity of her past professional career as God was clearly moving her into another area of impact and influence. I remember thinking to myself while in this conversation some people are just narrow minded and simple as my grandparents would say and simple people, like simple things, lol.

Simple titles. Simple labels. Simple explanations. One simple box to put you in.

You see when your life only has one lane.
They only have to process one version of you.
Then they only have to process one easy answer when they ask you what many folks believe is the ultimate identity question , “So what do you do?”

But the moment you stop shrinking yourself to fit those neat little categories… people get uncomfortable.

I’ve wrestled with this for years.

Am I the consultant?
The ministry leader?
The speaker?
The strategist?
The writer?
The teacher?
The grief educator?
The bridge builder?
The woman who can walk into a boardroom one day and pray somebody through heartbreak the next?

The answer is yes.

I’m All of it.

And honestly, accepting this reality about myself changed my life.

Because for a long time, I kept separating parts of myself depending on the room I walked into.

Professional version here.
Faith version over there.
The creative version somewhere else. (Yes I am a creative at heart, poetry, prose I love bringing a good story to life in written form…….) I digress, lol

But ya’ll it gets exhausting working to sift through all of the pieces of you just to figure out what to serve up to others, when to offer it and just how much of YOU can they digest..

At some point I realized:

God never asked me to split myself into pieces just so other people could feel comfortable.

Psalm 139:14 says,
“I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Wonderfully made means there may be layers to you people don’t fully understand.

And that’s okay.

I remember being in a meeting years ago where somebody introduced me in what I would call a buttoned-up professional way.

Everything they said was technically right, I guess.

And still, I remember sitting there thinking:

That’s only part of me.

You see people saw the leadership, the strategy or systems thinking parts of me.

But what they didn’t always see was the discernment.
The emotional depth, the spiritual sensitivity or the humanity and heart behind the work.

Honestly, a lot of leaders like us spend years trying to prove we’re “focused enough” because we carry more than one gift.

Meanwhile, Scripture is full of people who carried many things at once.

David was a shepherd, musician, warrior, poet, and king.
Esther carried wisdom, courage, beauty, and leadership.
Joseph interpreted dreams and managed nations.
Paul was deeply intellectual and deeply relational. (for the record he is my favorite disciple to study, we might get into that at another date, lol)

God has always used layered people.

One thing I’ve learned is this:

People will try to hand you a bite-sized version of yourself that makes them comfortable.

The version that’s easier to explain, to label or to place into a neat little category so nobody has to wrestle with the fullness of who you are.

And honestly?
You’ll exhaust yourself trying to fit into spaces that were never built wide enough for you in the first place.

My Lord that line alone will preach, lol……That’s a word for somebody.

Leaders with multiple giftings usually carry a few things strongly.

Discernment is one of them.

You can feel the room before people say anything.

Your intuitiveness allows you to notice the tension and energy shifts.
You notice what people need emotionally even when they don’t have words for it yet.

That’s a gift.

But the truth is it can also wear you out if you don’t protect your peace.

Empathy is another one.

When you are the type of leader im speaking of you feel deeply and care deeply. I often try to explain to people that my love for God and humanity sometimes stretches my heart to the max when Im working with groups because as this type of leader
You carry people in your heart.

Romans 12 talks about gifts given through grace. Some people are wired to lead through compassion and awareness. I believe this is true for me and so many others.

Creativity shows up too.

If you are able see possibilities other people miss or connect dots differently.
Or if ideas flow naturally for you. This is the dimension of myself that birth Unlearn Everything and Live. It was the creative in me who walked into traditional spaces and saw what could be, or who sat in mundane services meetings or conferences and dreamed of ways that those environment could be more engaging.

Brené Brown talks in Dare to Lead about how courage and creativity are connected.

I believe that completely.

And adaptability? Whew, my God today!!!!!

People like us can move between rooms, cultures, conversations, and communities naturally.

That’s why people struggle to label us sometimes.

We’re carrying more than one thing.

One of the hardest parts of being this kind of leader is deciding whose expectations you’re willing to disappoint…..

Because somebody will always want you smaller, quieter, more predictable or easily defined.

And I’ve learned this the hard way:

Shrinking yourself helps people stay comfortable but SHOWING UP fully helps people heal.

Jesus confused people too.

Teacher. Healer. Servant. Savior. Comforter.

People struggled because they kept trying to reduce Him to one thing.

And honestly, many gifted leaders experience that same tension today.

So how do you navigate this?

Here’s what’s helped me.

1. Stop apologizing for your range
You don’t have to explain every layer of yourself to everybody.

2. Let your gifts work together
Empathy strengthens your leadership.
Your spirituality can strengthen your discernment.
And creativity strengthens your strategy.

None of it is random.

3. Protect your emotional capacity
Sensitive leaders absorb a lot.
Jesus rested. Jesus stepped away. Jesus wept, Sometimes you need space… And permission is not required.

4. Build spaces where all of you can exist
That’s part of why these HOME articles matter so much to me. People are tired of dividing themselves just to belong somewhere.

5. Stay close to God’s voice
People will define you based on what they can understand.
God sees the full picture.

Proverbs 3:5 says,
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart…”

Especially when your path doesn’t look traditional.

Here’s what I know for sure:

Some people are called to master one lane.

Others are called to build bridges between many worlds.

Both matter.

And for those of us carrying many gifts, part of the journey is learning how to stop feeling guilty for being multidimensional.

There is room for all of who you are.

Even the parts people don’t fully understand yet.

Don’t shrink.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— Lakweshia

Hey Everybody,

The last few weeks have felt emotionally heavy for me.

The kind of heavy that doesn’t arrive through one singular moment.
It builds slowly. Quietly. Layer by layer.

A diagnosis in my family shifted the atmosphere of our conversations.
Watching communities feel more divided than connected has weighed on me deeply.
Seeing people’s weaknesses exposed publicly in ways that feel harsh and unsettling has stayed with me.
Three close friends shared with me that they’re moving to other states.
And somehow, missing another friend who had only been gone a short time felt much longer than that.

Then this morning arrived.

The final morning of my leadership program.

The morning where my sisters in ministry and I prepared to hug each other one last time before returning to our respective states and cities.

And honestly… the heaviness surprised me.

I sat there this morning thinking about how God can knit hearts together in only a year.

How strangers can become sisters.

How people can walk into your life and somehow begin carrying pieces of your story alongside you.

We shared so much together.

The call God placed on our lives.
The pressure of leadership.
Private fears.
Moments of uncertainty.
The grief we carried.
Conflicts we navigated.
Expectations we wrestled with.
The exhaustion that comes from trying to serve faithfully while still remaining human.

There’s something sacred that happens when people become willing to be vulnerable with one another.

Walls soften.
Truth surfaces.
Trust grows.

And over time, sisterhood forms.

Real sisterhood.

The kind where people remember your hard days.
The kind where they pray for you without needing to be asked.
The kind where they celebrate your growth while still holding space for your pain.

So sitting there this morning preparing to say goodbye, I could feel my heart wrestling with the reality that beautiful seasons still come to an end.

And I think that’s what these last few weeks have been touching in me.

The grief of change.
The grief of transition.
The grief that comes when something meaningful shifts form.

And then during one of our final moments together, Dr. Nate Stucky shared a message about what he called “The Theology of Composting.”

I know… that sounds like a strange combination at first.

And somehow it was one of the most Spirit filled and profound things I’ve heard in a long time.

He said,
“Something has to die in order for future things to live.”

And as tears rolled down my face, I felt the truth of those words deeply.

Because composting is really about transformation.

Things break down.
Things return to the earth.
Things change form.

And somehow, through that process, new life becomes possible.

I sat there realizing how much of life and leadership carries that same truth.

Seasons end.
Relationships change.
Versions of ourselves evolve.
Comfort shifts.
Certainty fades.

And somehow God still creates life from what feels like loss.

John 12:24 says,
“Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

That scripture landed differently for me this week.

Because there are parts of us that have to be released in order for growth to happen.

Old fears, old versions of ourselves.
Old expectations and even all of the old seasons we tried to hold onto longer than necessary.

Releasing them can feel like grief.

I feel deeply.

I’ve always known that about myself.

And since around 2019-2021, after walking through a series of losses that seemed to come one after another, something in me changed. The way I process separation. The way I experience distance. The way I hold on to connection.

Everything feels more tender now.

A goodbye carries weight.
A transition lingers longer.
A shift in rhythm touches something deeper.

And I’ve had to sit with that honestly.

These last few weeks made me realize how many forms grief can take.

When I heard the diagnosis in my family, I felt that quiet tightening in my chest that comes when life changes direction without warning. Immediately, Psalm 34:18 came to mind. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” I needed that reminder in a very real way. As comfort. As presence. As reassurance that God draws near in moments like these.

When my friends shared they were moving away, I felt joy for them and grief for myself at the same time. Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything. A time to gather and a time to release. I could feel both happening at once.

And watching division unfold in the world around me has touched another place in my heart. Romans 12:15 tells us to mourn with those who mourn. I think empathetic people carry that scripture deeply. We feel things beyond ourselves. We absorb atmospheres. We notice pain in rooms before words are ever spoken.

When I step back and sit with all of this, I can see what my heart has been processing.

Change.
Distance.
Uncertainty.
The quiet grief of things shifting.

And it’s layered.

It’s what’s happening now.
And it’s what these moments awaken from before.

Therapists and grief experts describe something called cumulative grief. The understanding that loss layers itself over time. Experiences stack upon one another. The heart remembers.

David Kessler speaks about grief as something we learn to carry while continuing to live fully. Past losses shape present emotions. Certain moments touch old wounds and familiar aches.

That gave language to what I’ve been feeling.

These last few weeks touched something older.

And yet, I also keep thinking about Jesus.

John 11:35 simply says, “Jesus wept.”

Two words.
Still powerful.

Jesus stood fully inside the moment. He allowed himself to feel the weight of loss and connection and love.

That scripture reminds me there is holiness in feeling.

There is strength in tenderness.
There is wisdom in allowing yourself to grieve what mattered.

So these last few weeks I’ve been creating space.

Space to cry.
Space to pray.
Space to sit quietly with God.
Space to honor what these seasons and relationships have meant to me.

And I’ve been asking myself:

What does it look like to hold gratitude and grief at the same time?
What does it look like to release people with love instead of fear?
What does it look like to trust God with every transition I cannot control?

Those questions are still unfolding in me.

Here’s what I am practicing right now:

Giving language to what I feel
I am learning that naming grief creates room for healing. Saying “this hurts” has become a form of honesty and care for myself.

Holding on to connection with gentleness
A phone call. A prayer. A thoughtful message. Distance changes things, and love still travels.

Allowing God to meet me honestly
Psalm 46:10 has stayed close to me these last few weeks. “Be still, and know that I am God.” That stillness has become necessary for my soul.

Grief shows up in many forms.

Sometimes it arrives through endings.
Or it can manifest through distance.
Other times it shows up when you realize how deeply you loved a season while you were living inside of it.

And all of it deserves care.

I’m learning that letting go of what is familiar takes grace. It takes patience. It takes faith.

And somehow, even in the heaviness, I can feel God holding every piece of it.

Take care of your heart.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

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Hey Everybody !!!!

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written to you.

And to be transparent… it hasn’t been because I didn’t have anything to say.

It’s because I’ve been walking through a maze of emotionally heavy moments.

Moments that required me to slow down and that asked me to look inside myself.
What I discovered was that these moments revealed parts of me I don’t always bring to the surface.

Ya’ll this kind of self work is hard. Its the work where you sit with yourself long enough to see clearly. Where truth rises without being rushed away……where you aren’t allowed to perform in your strength… you have to examine it. What is it’s source? What is keeping it steady? etc

And in that space, I’ve had moments of doubt, fear, shame, guilt and I must be honest and and admit that space has often been filled with despair.

Ya’ll hear me these are …..Real REAL moments.

And I had to ask myself a question I don’t think we talk about enough:

What do you do when you are the strong one… and you have nothing left to give?

When your voice is tired.
When your energy is low.
When your strength feels like it has reached its edge.

I’ve come to understand something in a deeper way these past few weeks.

You lean on God. Yes, I’ve had a relationship with God for a long time, but this season feels different. I’m learning to Fully. Honestly.
Without trying to hold pieces back… LEAN ON GOD.

There is a kind of leadership that becomes so practiced in strength that it forgets how to rest.

You show up.
You carry.
You respond.
You lead.

And somewhere along the way, strength becomes your default language.

People expect it.
You expect it.

And over time, you can find yourself trapped inside of it.

Trapped in your own capacity.
Trapped in the version of you that everyone has come to rely on.

And the thought of being seen in a different state feels… uncomfortable.

There is a quiet fear there.

The fear of being misunderstood.
The fear of being seen as less capable.
The fear of being taken advantage of.
The fear that your leadership might be questioned.

So you hold it together.

Even when you feel like you are unraveling.

I’ve had to confront that in myself.

There were moments recently where I felt the tears before I had the words.

Moments where I stepped away from everything just to breathe.

Moments where I realized my knowledge, my experience, my leadership… none of it could carry me through what I was feeling.

And I had to admit something honestly:

My human capacity has limits.

And that realization did not weaken me.

It positioned me.

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 12:9 says,
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” That scripture felt different this time. It felt like it was just for me, just in for this moment.

I’ve cried more in the past few years than I have in my entire life and I can say this now with full clarity…

I’m grateful for every tear.

They felt like fresh water on a desert journey of my soul.

They softened places in me that had grown tired.
They released things I didn’t have language for.
They made space for God to meet me in a way I hadn’t experienced before.

Psalm 56:8 says,
“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle.”

That means none of it is wasted. Not one moment. Not one tear.

Brené Brown says, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of courage.”

I’ve come to believe that in a deeper way.

There is strength in tears.

There is power in honesty.
There is leadership in knowing when to release what you’ve been holding.

Here’s something I’ve been saying to myself:

“You don’t lose your strength when you stop performing it.”
“You become more of who you are when you allow yourself to feel.”
“God meets you in the places you stop trying to manage alone.”

Those have been anchors for me.

There’s also a different way of understanding leadership that I’m learning.

Leadership is not sustained by pretending. It is sustained by truth.

People don’t need perfection from you.
They need presence.
They need honesty.
They need to see what it looks like to be human and still lead.

Jesus modeled that.

In John 11:35,
“Jesus wept.”

He didn’t hide the moment.
He stood in it.

That is strength.

So what do you do when your strength feels low? You lean.

Proverbs 3:5 says,
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

That kind of leaning requires surrender and honesty.
It requires letting go of the need to hold everything together.

Here are a few things I’ve been practicing that might help you too:

1. Give yourself permission to feel without rushing past it
Ask yourself: What am I actually feeling right now
Let the answer come without judgment

2. Bring your full truth to God
Not the polished version. The real version
Speak it. Sit in it. Let Him meet you there

3. Release the expectation of constant strength
Where have I been trying to hold everything together on my own
What would it feel like to let go, even for a moment

4. Let someone safe see you
Who can I be honest with right now
What would it look like to share one real thing

These past few weeks have reminded me of something I don’t want to forget.

Strength is not about carrying everything.

It’s about knowing where to lay it down.

Stay honest.
Stay open.

I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— LJ

I remember a season early in my career when I was given a level of responsibility that stretched me in ways I wasn’t fully prepared for.

I was leading a team. Managing expectations. Sitting in rooms where decisions carried weight. I wanted to show up well. I wanted to be trusted. I wanted to prove that I belonged there.

And then one day, I was faced with a decision no one else would have noticed.

It would have been easy to take the quicker route. Smooth something over. Keep everything moving without disruption.

No one would have questioned it.

No one would have known the difference.

And still… I knew.

So I chose the path of integrity, honesty, and truth. Not for anyone else. For me.

That moment has stayed with me for years.

Because it had nothing to do with the room, the role, or the recognition.

It had everything to do with who I was choosing to be when there was no audience.

Who you are in the quiet moments shapes everything.

Not eventually, but Immediately.

I am reminded that “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way as John Maxwell says”

That middle part… goes the way…

That’s the part people don’t always see.

That’s the private work.

The unseen decisions.

The moments where your character is forming in real time.

Scripture in Luke 16:10 says,

“Whoever is faithful in little will be faithful in much.”

Faithfulness doesn’t start when the stakes are high.

It’s built in the small moments. I’ve been thinking about how this shows up in leadership and in relationships. Because the truth is, the way you lead publicly is a reflection of how you live privately. The way you show up for people is shaped by how honest you are with yourself.

You can build influence and still struggle with integrity. You can have access and still lack depth. You can be trusted in rooms and still be disconnected from your own values.

And over time… that gap shows up.

In leadership, it looks like misaligned decisions.

In relationships, it looks like inconsistency.

In life, it looks like a quiet tension you can’t ignore.

So I’ve been pondering…

Who am I when I don’t have to perform?

What choices do I make when no one is watching?

Where am I moving too fast to notice what’s actually happening within me?

What would it look like to live with the same level of integrity in private that I expect in public?

Those questions matter.

Because they bring you back to truth.

There are also some things many of us have learned along the way that need to be unlearned.

Unlearn the idea that image matters more than integrity.

Unlearn the habit of rushing decisions to keep things comfortable.

Unlearn the belief that small compromises don’t count.

In their place, learn to slow down and notice what feels true.

Learn to sit with decisions long enough to choose wisely.

Learn to honor your values even when it costs you convenience.

That is where trust is built.

Not just with others…

Within yourself.

Integrity also shapes how we love people.

In friendships, it looks like being honest even when it’s uncomfortable.

In family, it looks like showing up consistently, not just when it’s convenient.

In leadership, it looks like making decisions that honor people, not just outcomes.

People can feel the difference.

They can feel when you are grounded and when you are present.

They can feel when what you say matches how you live. That kind of leadership creates safety. That kind of presence builds real connection.

So what does this look like in real life?

Here are a few ways to practice this starting today:

1. Slow one decision down

Give yourself space to think before responding. Notice what feels right beneath the surface.

2. Keep a promise to yourself

Follow through on something small. That builds trust within you.

3. Choose honesty in one relationship

Say what needs to be said with care and clarity.

4. Pay attention to your inner tension

When something feels off, pause and explore it. That awareness will guide you.

Integrity is not built in one moment.

It is built in many quiet, ordinary moments.

Moments that no one else will ever see.

And those moments shape the life you are building.

Stay grounded and aware of what your life is asking of you.

I’ll meet you at HOME next week.

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Hey Everyone,

Life is always “Life-ing”, LOL. and I know that you understand what I mean………

Life can get loud.

Not just in sound, but in responsibility. In expectations. In the constant movement of things that need your attention, your energy, your presence.

There are seasons where everything feels like it’s happening at once. Work is moving fast. People need you. Decisions keep coming. The pace doesn’t always leave much room to pause and ask a simple question:

How am I… really? Like really……. HOW AM I ?

I’ve had seasons like that.

Seasons where I was leading, building, showing up for everyone around me. Rooms full of people. Calendars full of commitments. Conversations happening all day long.

And still, there were quiet moments in between where I felt… alone.

Not alone in a way that meant I didn’t have people. I had family. I had friends. I had community.

The kind of alone that comes when you haven’t had space to sit with yourself in a while.

I remember one particular season where everything in my life looked strong from the outside. Progress was happening. Doors were opening. Opportunities were aligning.

And yet, I found myself driving in silence more often.

No music, phone calls, social media scrolling….
Just space.

At first, it felt unfamiliar. Then it became necessary. Because in those quiet drives, something started to surface.

Thoughts I had been too busy to hear.
Feelings I had been moving too fast to process.
Questions I had been avoiding because there was always something else to do.

That quiet began to give me clarity.

There is something powerful about stillness in the middle of chaos.

It doesn’t remove the responsibilities or eliminate the pressure.

It gives you access to yourself again.

A place where you can hear your own thoughts without interruption, your spirit can settle and certainty begins to form, slowly and honestly.

I’ve also learned that loneliness can show up even when life is full. You can be surrounded by people and still feel a sense of distance within yourself.

That feeling is not always about who is around you.

Sometimes it’s an invitation. An invitation to reconnect with yourself and sit with what’s real. Its’ s an invitation to pay attention to what your life is trying to say.

Friendships and family matter deeply in these seasons.

They remind you that you are seen. They ground you in love and connection. I think about the friends in my life who have allowed me to be fully present without needing to have everything figured out. The ones who sit with you in conversation, who laugh with you, who hold space without rushing you to answers. I love then all and THEY know WHO they are !!!!

Those relationships have been my anchors.

Family has been that for me too.

Moments of being around people who know you beyond your titles and responsibilities. People who remember who you were before the world started asking more of you.

Those spaces bring you back to yourself.

And then there are the quiet moments.

The ones that happen in between everything else.

A walk, drive, a moment in the morning before the day begins or pause at the end of the day when everything settles. Those moments are where clarity and peace lives.

That’s where you hear what matters, where your thoughts begin to organize and your next steps start to make sense.

Finding yourself doesn’t always happen in big, life-changing moments.

It often happens in small, quiet ones.

Moments where you are fully present, where you are honest with yourself. and where you allow space instead of feeling pressure to filling it.

Here are a few ways to create that kind of space in your life right now:

1. Create intentional quiet time each day
Even ten minutes can shift your awareness. Sit without distraction. Let your thoughts come. Pay attention to what surfaces.

2. Stay connected to people who allow you to be real
Reach out to someone who knows you beyond your responsibilities. Have a conversation that isn’t rushed. Let yourself be present in it.

3. Notice where you feel most like yourself
Pay attention to the moments where you feel grounded and at ease. Those moments hold clues about what you need more of.

Life will continue to move.

Responsibilities will still be there.
People will still need you.

And within all of that, there is still space for you to hear your own life.

To feel grounded.
To reconnect.
To move forward with clarity.

Stay close to those quiet moments.

They will guide you.

Come back to yourself.
I’ll meet you back at HOME.

— Lakweshia

Hey Everyone

Good Friday always been another moment that slows me down.

It invites a different kind of reflection ,a little quieter and a little more honest on my part. However, this day holds a tension we don’t always talk about openly. Love and loss sitting in the same space. Sacrifice and purpose walking side by side. Pain carrying meaning. And every year, I find myself coming back to a simple question:

What does it look like to endure pain with purpose?

The cross was never random.
It was chosen.
It was carried with full awareness of what it would cost.

Scripture says in Hebrews 12:2,
“…for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross…”

That line stuck with me.

There was real pain. Real weight. And still, there was vision. There was something on the other side of it worth staying for.

I’ve had seasons in my own life where I had to learn that kind of endurance. Times where I was showing up, leading, building, pouring into others… and at the same time carrying things I didn’t always have language for the Grief…..Pressure….. and Responsibility that didn’t pause.

From the outside, everything looked steady. On the inside, I was learning how to stay anchored. How to keep moving without losing myself. How to trust God even when I didn’t fully understand the process. Those seasons didn’t break me. They shaped me. They changed how I lead. They deepened how I see people. They refined what actually matters to me.

That’s the thing about purposeful pain. It does a different kind of work. Viktor Frankl said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Some seasons don’t shift right away. So the growth happens in you.

Your capacity stretches.
Your perspective widens.
Your calling becomes clearer.

Good Friday also reminds me of the kind of love that stays.

A love that endures.
A love that carries through.
A love that doesn’t walk away when things get hard.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” There are things you learn in hard seasons that you can’t learn anywhere else. Things like, Strength. Faith. Resilience. Depth.

And here’s what I’ve come to understand about purpose.

It isn’t always loud.

Most days, it looks like perseverance.

It looks like continuing when it would be easier to stop, holding your values when pressure rises. It looks like trusting that what you’re building in this season matters, even when the outcome isn’t fully visible yet. Priscilla Shirer once said “God is faithful to complete what He started in you.” That truth has carried me more times than I can count.

So what do we do with this in real life?

Here are a few ways to practice this right where you are:

1. Name what this season is building in you
Pause and ask yourself what is being developed. Patience, strength, clarity, boundaries. When you name it, you carry it differently.

2. Stay connected to what grounds you
Prayer, quiet time, reflection, stillness. Come back to the practices that steady you.

3. Choose one act of follow-through today
Finish something. Have the conversation. Show up fully. Small acts of perseverance build strength over time.

4. Pay attention to your growth
Notice how you’re responding differently. Notice what feels clearer. Growth often shows up quietly before it shows up publicly.

5. Give yourself space to feel and still move forward
You can acknowledge the weight and continue walking in purpose at the same time.

Good Friday reminds me that pain can carry purpose.

That endurance has meaning.
That love has the power to hold you steady.

And that what you are walking through is shaping who you are becoming.

Stay steady.
Stay grounded.

I’ll meet you back at HOME next week.

-Lakweshia