i’ve been going through the book of joshua for the past month or so—

i’ve read this story a million times. watched the superbook episode as a kid probably a thousand times.

this story? i know it backward and forward.

but as i’m reading it in this season—
it’s wrecking me in such a new and different way.

this morning, as i was reading joshua 3, i kept noticing the phrase: “crossing over.”

and i believe that’s a word for this season.

so many of us have been in a season that has felt harder than anticipated.

we expected to be out of the wilderness and in the land of milk and honey already.
we expected to be experiencing the fulfillment of dreams, promises, and desires.

and yet… we’re here.

we feel like God has spoken one thing to us—
yet our reality couldn’t feel further from the vision He gave us.

and not only that, but we’re standing in front of what feels like a river of impossibilities.

the future God spoke about—

looks impossible to obtain.
feels too far off.
feels almost too aspirational at this point.

the israelites were there too.

God had spoken to them and said, “i have given you this land.”

past tense.
a promise that did not yet match their present reality.

and yet, they had a choice:
to let what they saw and felt dictate what they did next—
or to keep moving in faith according to what God had spoken.

as they stood before the jordan river—a river overflowing its banks during harvest season—they chose courageous obedience.

and today, as i was reading, this is what got me:

the israelites were never expected to cross the jordan river on their own.

the presence of God quite literally went before them.

the ark of the covenant—the visible sign of God’s presence among His people—was carried ahead by the priests.

and as soon as the priests’ feet touched the water—
a miracle happened.

the flow of the river stopped.
the impossibility in front of them gave way.

and they crossed the jordan on dry ground.
not trudging waist-deep through water.
not carefully wading through a shallow river.
not marching through thick mud.

dry ground.

something only God could have done.

after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the children of israel were crossing over into a new beginning.

the thing standing between them and the promise was being removed right in front of them.

but this is what i noticed, and i think it’s important for us to see:

the miracle met them in their obedience.

they had to move toward the water before they saw it stop.
they didn’t have evidence beforehand of exactly how God was going to make a way.
they simply had His word. and they moved.

as the seasons in nature are changing, i believe something is changing spiritually too.

just as God was preparing to do something new in, through, and with the israelites—bringing them into territory He had promised—
i believe many of us are standing at a similar threshold.

we’re entering a new season.
but crossing over is going to require our participation.

it’s going to require us to step out in faith without having certainty about how everything will unfold.

to step out in obedience even when it doesn’t fully make sense yet.
to step out in courage, keeping God’s truth as the anthem on our lips.
to walk toward the river of impossibilities and take the next step—

instead of backing down.
instead of playing it safe.
instead of withholding effort because we’re afraid of being disappointed again.

to look at what’s in front of us and say:

“God has spoken. God has promised. therefore, i’m moving forward. His presence goes before me, and i trust Him to make a way where i cannot make one myself.”

i feel this in my bones—

in this next season, as we step out in faith and courageously move toward what God has spoken— as we keep His truth, His promises, and His Word in front of us—

i believe we’re going to begin seeing things shift.

we’re going to step into things God has been preparing for us.
we’re going to experience the fulfillment of promises we have carried for a long time.

we’re going to find ourselves surrounded by evidence of God’s goodness— living inside answers to prayers that once felt impossible.

so wherever you are right now—
shake off disappointment.

don’t let fear, exhaustion, or what you currently see convince you to stop at the edge of the river.

it may feel like things have been stagnant.
it may feel like you’ve put in a lot of effort and come up empty.
it may feel like you’ve been wandering for far too long.
but don’t mistake a long wilderness for your final destination.

there comes a moment when God says:
it’s time to cross over.

and when that moment comes, we have to be willing to move.

prepare your heart.
prepare your mind.
prepare your work.

move in faith now.
move in obedience now.

stay aligned with what God has spoken.

the wilderness is behind you. you’re not being asked to wander another lap. you’re being invited to cross over. don’t miss the crossing because you became too focused on the hardships behind you—or too discouraged to approach the water in front of you.

God is doing a new thing. He’s going to make the way.

the blessings, the future he has prepared for you—
it already exists. it’s already been given to you.

you don’t have to force it.
you don’t have to scheme, orchestrate, or produce it on your own.

God’s presence is going to go before you and make the way.

your part is to move with courage.
to step forward.
to cross over in faith.
and to take possession of what God has already secured for you.

the miracle will meet you in your obedience.

and when it does—
it’s going to make your head spin.

blessing after blessing.

you’re going to see the goodness of God unfold in ways you couldn’t have orchestrated yourself.

and beyond a shadow of a doubt, you’ll know:
this was all God.

xx lindsey eryn

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WHAT YOU SAY MATTERS—

especially when you’re crossing over into something new.

because if you’re constantly rehearsing your fears, your feelings, everything that could go wrong, everything that hasn’t happened yet—

it’s going to impact what you believe.

and what you believe is going to impact how you move.

you can make it a lot harder to cross over into what God has for you when your words are agreeing with what you’re afraid of instead of what God has said.

that’s exactly why i created the creator(s) field manual—

101 real situations creators and entrepreneurs face—

and the Scripture, biblical reminders, prayers & declarations to help you navigate them.

when you’re in transition. waiting for provision. needing inspiration. about to launch. struggling to find peace. discouraged. afraid. unsure what to do next.

find what you’re facing.
find what God says.
agree with Him.
pray it.
declare it.
then move from there.

don’t cross into what’s next rehearsing the same fears that kept you stuck in what was.

get the creator(s) field manual →

… and start speaking the Word over what you’re building today

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you bring the coffee. i’ll bring the ideas.

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→ provision is not your job
→ daily affirmations for creator(s) & entrepreneurs

but every opportunity you have to worry, you take it.
every opportunity you have to try to make things work yourself—you take it.
every opportunity you have to complain about your situation—you take it.

God isn’t going to compete for your trust.

He’s going to wait.
He’s patient.

because He cares more about your development and growth than He does about rushing you to an outcome.

and you already know God is faithful—
you’ve seen Him show up in your life.
you’ve seen Him rescue you before.
you’ve seen Him redeem situations that looked beyond recovery.
you’ve seen Him miraculously provide.

so how is this situation any different?

your life didn’t suddenly get “too hard” for God.
there’s no such thing.

what you need—
what you’re facing—
what looks impossible to you—
is no big deal to God.

maybe you’ve been saying—
“i can’t take this anymore.”
“i don’t have anything else to give.”
“i don’t have the capacity for this.”

but this season was never supposed to be sustained by your capacity alone.

this isn’t about how much more you can force.
how much harder you can work.
how much longer you can grit your way through it.

because when you’ve reached the end of what you can do, you haven’t reached the end of what God can do.

His strength isn’t limited by your exhaustion.
His provision isn’t limited by your resources.
His ability to move isn’t limited by your ability to figure out how.

maybe this season has less to do with increasing your capacity and more to do with increasing your dependence.

it’s about releasing your grip and allowing God’s grace to empower you for what He’s asking of you here.

learning to trust God to give you grace for today—
and trusting Him to move, provide, open doors, and shift what you could never shift on your own.

so, trust Him.

trust is a heart posture, but your mouth plays an active role in maintaining it.

so, take inventory of what you’re saying.
what you’re repeating.
what you’re narrating.
what you’re rehearsing to yourself and to everyone around you.

because you can’t continually rehearse defeat and expect it not to shape your faith.

you can acknowledge what’s hard.
you can grieve what’s painful.
you can tell God exactly how you feel.

but don’t let what you see become more authoritative than what God has said.
don’t let your circumstances have a louder voice than His promises.

you can’t speak like a victim and expect to live like a victor.
you can’t surrender control while simultaneously trying to control everything.
you can’t say you trust God while giving worry the final word.

at some point, you have to choose.
choose trust.

but, please know this: the moment you trust won’t suddenly be magic and stardust.
it doesn’t mean everything changes overnight.

trust isn’t a formula for getting God to move faster.
it’s a posture that says, “even while i’m waiting, i believe You.”

and sometimes, you’ll choose trust before you see any evidence that things are changing.

but something is changing—
you’re beginning to move in alignment.
your thoughts, your words, your actions, your expectations—beginning to agree with what God has said.

and when you’re in alignment with God, anything can happen.

so choose alignment—

even if it’s taking longer than you thought.
even if you can’t see movement yet.
even if it feels like time is passing and nothing is changing.

because God can do a lot in a little bit of time.

He can propel you forward in ways you could never manufacture on your own.
He can accomplish in a moment what you’ve spent months trying to force.

so maybe this isn’t the season to hold back until you have more evidence.

maybe this is the season to go all in—

in faith.
in belief.
in hope.

and finally relinquish the worry, the control, and the fear that have been keeping you from fully trusting God.

this is the season to cross over.
to stop circling the same territory and start taking it.
to see what happens when your faith, your words, and your actions finally come into alignment with what God has said.

this is the season to ascend the mountain—
and gain elevation. but the ascent begins with trust.

xx lindsey eryn

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what are you speaking over what you’re building?

i created a free collection of daily, scripture-based affirmations for creators + entrepreneurs—to help you start your day anchored in what God says about you, your work, your provision, your ideas, and your future.

because entrepreneurship will give you plenty of opportunities to agree with fear.

this is your reminder to agree with God instead.

download the affirmations free →

subscribe for free and i’ll meet you in your inbox. or, for about the price of a fancy lavender latte from your favorite local coffee shop, become a paid subscriber and help me keep writing + creating.

this publication is reader-supported, so you’re quite literally the reason i get to keep doing this. 🤍

and i promise there’s something in it for you, too.

paid is where i open up my strategist brain — with deep dives, frameworks, audits, exercises + resources to help you actually do something with the ideas we talk about here.

you bring the coffee. i’ll bring the ideas.

Subscribe now

let’s stay connected, k?

→ follow me on instagram

ready for the next step?

→ clarify your next steps with a 1:1 coaching session
→ learn how to create passive income
→ share your work: a 21-day guide to getting your ideas seen

build your online home

→ launch your dream website in one week
→ shop website templates

free resources

→ provision is not your job
→ daily affirmations for creator(s) & entrepreneurs

YOU ARE A WINNER.

it may not feel like it.
it may not look like it some days.

but a winner isn’t defined by their circumstances.
they are defined by their posture.

a winner gets back.

keeps believing.
keeps fighting.
keeps pressing towards the vision—
even when circumstances cloud their ability to see it.

you are coming through this season.
you’ll find yourself on mountaintops again.

your best days are not behind you.
your greatest achievements are not in your past.

this season, while painful, has been purposeful.

while it may have felt like loss after loss—those losses do not define you.

they have been refining you.
they have been exposing your weaknesses so you can develop strength.
they have been readjusting your posture so you stop trying to bear the weight of your dreams and goals by yourself—and start depending on God to do what you could never do on your own.

the valley was never your destination—
but God has refused to waste it.

and maybe the greatest thing this valley has taught you is this:
you were never meant to win in your own strength.

you’ve learned how to lean on God.
how to trust Him when you can’t see.
how to keep moving when you don’t have all the answers.
how to believe what He said when your circumstances seem to say the opposite.

that’s what you’re carrying out of this valley.

because without it, you wouldn’t have become the person of strength, resilience, and character required to carry the assignment that’s coming next.

graduation season is coming.
and it’ll be God Himself who transports you there.

keep pressing forward—
you are a winner.

and God—the undefeated champion—is backing you every step of the way.

xx lindsey eryn

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subscribe for free and i’ll meet you in your inbox. or, for about the price of a fancy lavender latte from your favorite local coffee shop, become a paid subscriber and help me keep writing + creating.

this publication is reader-supported, so you’re quite literally the reason i get to keep doing this. 🤍

and i promise there’s something in it for you, too.

paid is where i open up my strategist brain — with deep dives, frameworks, audits, exercises + resources to help you actually do something with the ideas we talk about here.

you bring the coffee. i’ll bring the ideas.

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let’s stay connected, k?

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keep reading

→ Provision Is Not Your Job

MARGIN NOTES is a collection of reflections from my daily time in the Bible—the things i’m learning, noticing, and scribbling down as i spend time with God and His Word. because margins are the open spaces around the words—the places where we pause, notice, and leave room for something more. i think we need those kinds of margins in our lives, too. space to slow down, listen, and notice what God is saying.

i’ve been studying the book of joshua lately.

it’s been a major repeated theme for me over the past few weeks—and honestly, it’s shifting a lot of the way i think, believe, and act.

today, i found myself back in joshua 1 again.

i’ve read this chapter so many times, but this time something different stood out to me.

before joshua ever crossed the jordan, before israel ever stepped foot into the promised land, before they fought a single battle, God said:

“wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you.”
— joshua 1:3

I have given you.
not I might give you.
not if you fight hard enough, I’ll give it to you.

God spoke about the land as something that had already been given to them.

it wasn’t merely something that might happen someday—it was already a heavenly reality established by the Word of God, even though it had not yet become their lived experience.

and i think this can be difficult for us to understand because we are so accustomed to defining reality by what we can see.

we look at our circumstances and think, this is what is real.
but what we can see is not the full picture.

we are looking from inside time, from one moment, with a limited perspective.

God sees the whole thing.

He sees the beginning and the end. He sees what is visible and what is invisible. He is not waiting for something to appear in the natural before He can call it true.

what God has spoken is not less real because you cannot see evidence of it yet.

that’s what gets me about joshua.

when God said, “I have given you,” the Israelites were standing on the wrong side of the jordan.

the land was occupied.
jericho was still standing.
there were battles they had not fought.
everything they could see said, not yet.

and God spoke from a reality greater than what they could see:
”I have given it to you.”

their circumstances had not caught up to what God had already declared.

and the bridge between the reality God could see and the reality they could see was faith expressed through obedience.

they had to believe what God said enough to move according to it.

belief became obedience.
obedience became action.
and action moved them into the lived experience of what God had already promised.

they still had to cross the Jordan.
they still had to march around Jericho.
they still had to take the land.

their obedience didn’t create the promise or make it true. their obedience brought their lived experience into alignment with the heavenly reality God had already declared.

and this is the part that has been shifting something in me:

when you believe what God has spoken to you is true—when His Word becomes more authoritative than what you are currently facing—obedience begins to make sense.

you move.
you take action.
you follow His instructions.

not because what He is asking you to do is always easy.
not because you can see how it will work.
not because your circumstances are giving you evidence that you should.
but because you believe Him.

joshua crossed the jordan because God said the land was theirs.
he marched around jericho because God told him how to take the city.
he kept moving forward because he believed what God had declared more than what he could see in front of him.

his obedience wasn’t an attempt to make God’s Word come true.
his obedience was the natural response to believing that it already was.

and maybe that’s what faith looks like for us, too.

when you really believe what God has spoken, it changes what makes sense.

starting the business makes sense.
writing the book makes sense.
preparing for what hasn’t arrived yet makes sense.
staying when He says stay makes sense.
leaving when He says leave makes sense.
continuing when everything you can see gives you a reason to quit makes sense.

because obedience is what belief looks like in motion.

and maybe this is the question underneath all of this:

what are you allowing to define reality—what you presently see, or what God has spoken?

if God told you that you were going to become a new york times bestselling author, what would you be doing today?

you’d write.
you’d work on the manuscript.
you’d study your craft.
you’d develop your voice.

you’d prepare for the thing God told you was coming before there was any visible evidence of it.

if God told you that you were going to be a mother, you’d begin preparing your life, your home, and your heart for motherhood.

if God told you that you were going to be the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company, you’d start building the systems, team, and structure for it.

if God told you that you were going to be a world-renowned speaker, you’d start practicing, refining your message, and taking the opportunities He puts in front of you.

if God told you that you were going to carry influence through your creativity, you’d stop waiting for permission and start stewarding your gifts with discipline and consistency.

if God told you that you were going to step into ministry, you’d start praying, studying, serving, and becoming faithful in the hidden places long before the visible platform ever arrives.

not because your actions make His Word true.
because you believe it already is.

this is what we see throughout Scripture.

noah built an ark for a flood he had never seen.
abraham left home for a place God said He would show him.
joshua moved toward land God said He had already given him.

their faith changed their behavior.

they prepared for realities they could not yet see because they believed the God who could see them.

and maybe that’s one of the clearest pictures of faith:
living in agreement with what God has spoken, even when the natural realm has not caught up yet.

this isn’t striving.

you don’t have to make the promise true.

you believe God.
you listen for His instruction.
you obey what He tells you to do.
you prepare for what He tells you to prepare for.
and you keep moving in agreement with His Word.

you are not obeying to make God’s promise true.
you are obeying because you believe it already is.

faith says: if God said it, I will let His Word—not what I currently see—determine how I live today.

so, here’s what i want you to ask yourself today:

what has God spoken to you that you need to start believing?
and what do you need to start taking action on because you believe Him?

xx lindsey eryn

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subscribe for free and i’ll meet you in your inbox. or, for about the price of a fancy lavender latte from your favorite local coffee shop, become a paid subscriber and help me keep writing + creating.

this publication is reader-supported, so you’re quite literally the reason i get to keep doing this. 🤍

and i promise there’s something in it for you, too.

paid is where i open up my strategist brain — with deep dives, frameworks, audits, exercises + resources to help you actually do something with the ideas we talk about here.

you bring the coffee. i’ll bring the ideas.

Subscribe now

let’s stay connected, k?

→ Follow me on Instagram

ready for the next step?

→ Clarify Your Next Steps with a 1:1 Coaching Session
→ Learn How to Create Passive Income
→ Share Your Work: A 21-Day Guide to Getting Your Ideas Seen

build your online home

→ Launch Your Dream Website in One Week
→ Shop Website Templates

keep reading

→ Provision Is Not Your Job

it seems like everyone has an opinion —
about what i’m doing and how i’m doing it.

the fact that i live with my family in a multi-generational home.
the fact that most of my traveling is with my family.
the fact that most days, i’m by myself — working — from home.

and let’s not even get started on dating.

the fact that i’m single at 39.
the fact that i’m not on any dating apps.
the fact that i don’t date multiple people at one time.

everyone has an opinion.

“you don’t put yourself out there.”
“you need to go on a dating app or you’re going to miss the boat.”
“you need to hire a matchmaker.”
“you need to be going out — how else are you going to meet someone?”
“you can’t just go to cute aesthetic places. you need to go where the men are.”
“you gotta go to sports bars. golf courses. yacht week. networking events.”
“you can’t just sit in your room and expect someone to come to your doorstep.”
“you’re getting older. you need to think about freezing your eggs.”

and it’s never ending —
do this. do that.

when the opinions come from every direction, it starts to feel like you’re doing your own life wrong. like you’re messing things up.

because you’re not like everyone else.
because you’re not married yet.
because you don’t have a husband, and a house, and kids running around the kitchen with one attached to your body at all times.

it’s exhausting.

somewhere in there i hear it too:

“if you want to get married, you have to put your goals aside and make time for it.”

as if i didn’t spend my twenties doing exactly what everyone else did when they got married. as if i’ve been hiding away like a nun in a convent.

and where in there am i supposed to fit work, and family, and the actual dreams God gave me?

to be honest, i don’t know why i’m still single.

i don’t know why i didn’t meet someone in college like my friends.
why i didn’t meet someone at the gym in my twenties.
why i didn’t meet my person on the conference circuit.
why i’ve never met anyone at church.
why i didn’t meet my person when i was in london.
why i didn’t meet my person eating a slice of pizza on some corner in new york at midnight.

i couldn’t tell you — other than the fact that God must have a plan.

God must know something i don’t. there must be things i can’t see that have required time and preparation.

but, i can tell you this—

if getting married had been the only goal, i could have made different choices.

i could have settled. i could have forced it to work.

but how are you going to settle — when you’re driving down the 805 freeway and God tells you, “if you’re ever with this person, it’ll be good — but it’ll never be great.”

the goal, for me, has never been to simply check marriage off the list of life milestones. it’s been divine partnership.

and, so, i know beyond a shadow of a doubt—

God has protected me.
He’s watched over me.

He’s kept me from situations i didn’t need to be in.
He’s kept me from settling in relationships that wouldn’t have been God’s best.

and in that —
He’s protected my heart,
my integrity,
my self-worth,
and —

my purpose.

because who you choose to partner your life with will inevitably shape the direction of that life. the right partnership can strengthen you in your purpose; the wrong one can pull you away from it.

and if there’s one thing i feel extremely confident about —

i have a purpose.
i have a divine assignment on my life.

and i have a responsibility to protect it. which means i can’t treat marriage like another milestone i’m racing to check off the list, or be flippant about who i choose to tether my life to simply because everyone else thinks i should be there by now.

i know women who have gotten married, divorced, and remarried before i get to my one husband.
i know women who have gone through five boyfriends in two years.
i know women who have been on twenty-something first dates this calendar year.

there’s so much visible movement in their lives. new dates. new relationships. new beginnings.

and then there’s me — seemingly standing in the exact same place, with no updates to report.

and it’s easy to look to the side and wonder — are all the opinions right?
am i messing my life up? am i not doing enough?

but, as my sister once told me,

“lindsey, they are on a treadmill going nowhere.”

because movement isn’t always progress.

you can put in an enormous amount of effort to “be productive” and still end up exactly where you started — only more exhausted, more discouraged, and sometimes carrying heartbreak you didn’t have before.

and that’s not a judgment on anyone else’s choices. it’s a reminder to me that doing more doesn’t automatically mean i’m moving forward.

what if the most productive thing you can do isn’t the thing that looks the most productive?

as a culture, we’ve confused activity with faithfulness.

we’ve assumed that the busier we are...
the more intentional we are...
the more strategies we try...
the more progress we’re making.

but scripture keeps showing me something different.

God doesn’t seem nearly as impressed with activity as we are.

He’s looking for obedience. and obedience starts with trust — trusting Him enough to do the small, quiet thing in front of you instead of the loud thing everyone else is telling you to do.

i was out on the trail behind my house one day, walking and praying, when i felt the Lord whisper:

“lindsey, the most productive thing you can do right now is this — walking with Me.”

and i believe Him.

because if there’s one thing i’ve learned about the way God speaks to me, it’s this:
He’s always saying, “trust Me.”

never,
“if you don’t hurry, you’re going to miss out.”

for much of my life, i’ve felt hidden. which is admittedly kind of funny, because i’m not living in a convent somewhere. i’m probably one of the easiest people to google.

but a while back, the Lord reminded me of david.

david was out in a field. hidden. not forgotten by God — but overlooked by everyone else.

when the Lord told samuel it was time to anoint a new king, He didn’t tell him who it would be. He simply said, “go to bethlehem.” when samuel arrived, God gave him the next instruction: “go to the house of jesse. invite him to the sacrifice.” that’s all. God didn’t hand samuel the entire plan —

He gave him enough direction for the next step.

jesse gathered his sons and lined them up before samuel. david wasn’t among them. he hadn’t even been invited. he was still out in the fields, faithfully tending sheep.

samuel looked at the first son and thought, “surely this is the Lord’s anointed.” tall. strong. every appearance of a king. but God said no. one by one, down the line — not this one, not this one, not this one — until samuel finally asked, “are these all your sons?”

only then did jesse mention david. only then did someone go get him.

and where was david? exactly where he was supposed to be— out in the field, faithfully carrying out the assignment God had already given him.

i resonate with this story. probably more than any other in this season. because it’s so incredibly countercultural.

david’s obscurity did not prevent the right people from finding him.

he didn’t have to make himself more visible or strategically position himself in front of the people who could move his life forward. he was faithful to where God had assigned him in that season.

and when it was time for the next part of his life to unfold, God knew exactly where david was.

samuel came looking for david.
david didn’t have to go looking for samuel.

God orchestrated both of their steps — so that, at the appointed time, their paths would intersect.

i think about that often.

because everything around us says: make yourself more visible. put yourself out there. if you don’t create enough opportunities, you’ll miss what God has for you.

but scripture keeps showing me something different.

the same God who knew where david was — knew how to get samuel there.

every ordinary day in the field wasn’t keeping david from the people, relationships, and opportunities ahead of him. it was preparing him for them.

david wasn’t passive. he was working. he was tending sheep. he was faithfully carrying out the assignment God had already given him.

what he wasn’t doing was trying to manufacture the opportunities, relationships, or circumstances that would move him into what God had for him next.

and when it was time, God knew exactly where to find him.

for myself in this season — while everyone else may look at my life and have the opinion that i’m being passive when it comes to dating, let them.

i feel a deep conviction around my purpose. i’ve been given an assignment — to write and publish books, to ideate, create, design, and produce ecosystems that allow my words to circulate the world, offer people perspective and hope, and ultimately point them to Jesus.

and i take that assignment seriously.

one day, i’ll be held accountable for what i did with what God placed in my hands — how i stewarded it and how i spent the time i was given.

i don’t want to look back and realize i spent years so consumed with everyone else’s opinions about my life — where i should be, what i should be doing, what should have happened by now — that i became distracted from the very thing God had asked me to do.

i don’t want other people’s urgency to cost me my obedience.

so, for me, the most productive thing i can do in this season is be faithful to what God has actually asked of me — to work diligently toward what He’s instructed me to build, while trusting Him with the parts of my life i cannot manufacture.

trusting that my obedience is positioning me exactly where i need to be to collide with what God has for me.

that isn’t passivity. it’s priority.

i trust that God has heard every prayer and every desire. and i refuse to live under the fear that if i don’t follow everyone else’s formula, i’ll somehow miss God’s best.

everyone keeps telling me, “a husband isn’t just going to show up at your doorstep.” and, of course, i understand what they mean.

i’m not against action.
faith and action go hand in hand.

for some, stepping into those opportunities may be exactly what obedience looks like.

but there’s a difference between taking action because you feel led and taking action because you’re terrified that standing still for a moment means you’ll miss your life.

i’m against allowing fear to convince me that if i don’t do what culture or other people tell me i should be doing — if i don’t follow everyone else’s formula — God somehow won’t be able to get His plans to me.

i’m against living as though God’s plans are fragile —

as though one missed event or one unopened dating app could somehow derail what He’s ordained.

because i think our limited imagination often causes us to underestimate what God is capable of orchestrating.

rebekah was at a well, doing the most ordinary thing imaginable, when a stranger showed up.

he wasn’t selling something.
he wasn’t asking for directions.

he had been sent by abraham to find a wife for his son — and had just prayed for God to lead him to the right woman.

and then rebekah walked up.

he was essentially like,

“hi. i have a husband for you.”

one divinely orchestrated interaction later — okay, plus a conversation with her family and a very long camel ride — rebekah was on her way to meet isaac.

meanwhile, isaac wasn’t speed dating.
he wasn’t at a networking event.
he wasn’t optimizing his chances of meeting “the one.”

he was literally out in a field.

and one evening, he looked up and saw the camels coming.
among them was the woman who would become his wife.

but none of this was passive.

there was movement. there was action. there was obedience.

abraham sent his servant. his servant went. he prayed for direction. rebekah went to the well. she said yes when the opportunity appeared. isaac was where he was supposed to be.

the extraordinary happened, not because everyone was frantically trying to manufacture an outcome, but because they were willing to walk by faith — listening for God’s direction, responding in obedience, and trusting Him with each next step.

there was faith in the action. trust in the movement.

and through all of those individual acts of obedience, God orchestrated the collision.

that’s the kind of action i’m interested in.

my job is not to chase down God’s plans for me.

my job is to be obedient in the day to day — faithful with what’s in front of me. my job is to stay in alignment with God, close enough to hear His voice and courageous enough to obey it — so that when He says move, i move. when He says be still, i’m still. when He says pivot, i pivot. when He says go right, i go right. when He says turn left, i turn left.

and as i follow His voice, i trust that He’ll position me to collide with everything He has purposed and planned for me — husband included.

because if God is capable of directing samuel to a shepherd in a field, He’s capable of directing my steps too.

if He was capable of orchestrating every step that brought rebekah and isaac together, He’s capable of orchestrating the details of my life too.

i don’t need to know how He’s going to do it. i just need to be faithful with my part.

i understand that most people’s opinions are well-intentioned.
they care.
they want to help.
they’re trying to spare me from disappointment.

but an opinion is still an opinion.
it’s a conclusion someone has reached without having the full picture.

they’re not living in my season.
they don’t carry my calling.
they’re measuring against their convictions, not mine.

they don’t know what God has spoken to me.
they don’t know the prayers i’ve prayed.
they don’t know the doors He’s closed, the things He’s protected me from, or the promises He’s planted in my heart.

they’re responding to the limited information they have. God sees the whole story.

and if i’m honest, i’ve realized that a lot of opinions aren’t just shaped by someone else’s wisdom. they’re shaped by someone else’s fears, their urgency, their timeline, their disappointments.

and if i’m not careful, i’ll start living someone else’s fears instead of following God’s leading.

so i’ve had to learn that i don’t have to absorb every opinion offered to me. i can hear what someone has to say without carrying it with me. not because i don’t value wise counsel — i do. scripture is clear about the value of godly counsel. but there’s a difference between wisdom and a constant stream of commentary that causes me to question what God has already settled in my heart.

because opinions don’t always strengthen my faith.
sometimes they quietly strengthen my fear.

and i refuse to let fear become the loudest voice in my life.

here’s why i’m sharing all of this.

this was never really about being single.

i think singleness just happens to be the arena where i’ve felt it most.

but all of us have an area of our lives where everyone seems to have an opinion.

your timeline.
your calling.
your healing.
your family.
your faith.

the details may change.

the temptation doesn’t: to start trusting the voices around us more than the voice of God.

maybe for you, it isn’t singleness at all.

maybe it’s your marriage.
maybe it’s living with family—or moving back home.
maybe it’s how you’re raising your kids.
maybe it’s the business you’re building.
maybe it’s the dream God placed in your heart.
maybe it’s your healing journey.
maybe it’s where you’re living.
maybe it’s when you’re starting.
maybe it’s whether you feel “behind.”

whatever it is...

the question is the same:
whose voice will you trust?

at the end of the day, there will always be voices.

opinions.
advice.
fear.
pressure.

but Jesus said,

“My sheep hear My voice... and they follow Me.” (john 10:27)

that’s the voice i want to become most familiar with.

because the louder i know His voice,
the quieter everyone else’s opinions become.

“trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5–6)

that’s the invitation.

not to listen to every commentary on your life.
not to chase every strategy until you’re exhausted.
not to move out of fear because someone else’s opinion made you question what God already settled in your heart.

but to trust God enough to follow Him—
one faithful step at a time.

if you want an exceptional life, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t look like everyone else’s.

God has never been in the business of mass-producing lives.

He doesn’t work from templates.
He writes stories.

that means your life may not fit someone else’s formula.

it may not happen on their timeline.
it may not make sense to the people watching from the outside—

because His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways. (Isaiah 55:8–9)

for some of you, that might mean your family looks different than everyone around you.

maybe you’re raising your children differently.
building your business differently.
waiting differently.
choosing integrity when compromise would get you ahead.

that’s okay.

your goal was never to look like everyone else.

so, if you needed permission — here it is.

you’re allowed to stop giving every opinion about your life a vote.

get close enough to God that His voice becomes the one you recognize above all the noise.

and then have the courage to obey it.

when He says move, move.
when He says wait, wait.
when He says stay, stay.
when He says go, go.

because the goal isn’t to do nothing. the goal isn’t even to do something different just for the sake of being different.

the goal is alignment — to hear God clearly and trust Him enough to follow wherever He leads.

and if that looks completely different from what everyone around you thinks you should be doing —let it.

you don’t need everyone else to understand the life God is leading you to live.
you just need to hear His voice — and have the courage to follow it.

xx lindsey eryn

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unmistakable™ is a series about rejecting sameness, discovering what makes you uniquely you, and having the courage to express it—in your ideas, your work, your business, and the way you show up in the world.

i’ve spent years helping hundreds of creatives and entrepreneurs uncover what makes their work different and build brands and businesses around it through my creative design studio, third story apartment.

this series is everything i’ve learned about becoming impossible to confuse with anyone else. because if there’s one thing i know, it’s this: your difference isn’t something to overcome. it’s often the very thing you were given to contribute to the world.

there’s a word i can’t stop thinking about lately:

unmistakable.

i love this word.

maybe because we’re living in such a same-same world.

everyone is starting to look the same. botox. filler. GLP-1s. the same hair. the same clothes. the same aesthetic.

a few months ago, i watched a tiktok about how the algorithm actually favors a certain look and aesthetic for women — meaning even the technology we use every day can reinforce a particular version of what is desirable, clickable, worthy of being seen.

and it’s not just how we look.

it’s how we create.

the same trending audio.
the same hooks.
the same canva templates.
the same business models.
the same offers.
the same beige branding.
the same advice repackaged 400 different ways.

everything about our culture seems to be nudging us toward sameness.

and i keep thinking:
but we were never created for that.

you were created with a unique appearance, a unique perspective, a unique combination of gifts, a unique way of seeing things, a unique way of interpreting the world, a unique way of creating, communicating, building, solving problems, and making things.

why would we ever want to forfeit that to become more like everyone else?

i’ve been listening to the unseen realm by michael s. heiser, and one of the ideas he discusses is what it means for humanity to be created as image bearers of God.

we carry His image.

and i find that incredibly powerful to think about collectively.

none of us can contain the fullness of an infinite God. but together, humanity reflects something of Him in an extraordinary diversity of ways.

your creativity can reveal something about God’s creativity.
the way your mind works can reveal something about His.
the things you notice that everyone else walks past.

the ideas you have.
the way you make things.
the way you tell stories.
the problems you feel compelled to solve.
the beauty you bring into the world.

the things that make you you aren’t necessarily things to edit out.
they are often what you were put here to contribute.

and yet here we are...

dismissing them.
flattening them.
trying to become the same.

for what?

an algorithm?
a trend?
culture?
popularity?

is that actually important in the grand scheme of things?

in my opinion, no.

you can’t convince me.

because when i zoom all the way out, i don’t think this life is ultimately about popularity, growth, followers, or monetary success.

it’s about purpose.

it’s about showing up in this world as only you can and contributing something that only you can contribute.

something only you can make.
only you can say.
only you can express.

God placed you here for such a time as this, and there is a divine assignment attached to your life.

but fulfilling it requires us to stop chasing sameness.

stop chasing the next trend to make money.
the next trend on tiktok.
the next instagram strategy.
the next aesthetic.
the next thing everyone has suddenly decided we need to create.
and start chasing purpose.

because something interesting happens when you do.

you become unmistakable.

i just got back from a trip to africa, and while i was there, we went on a game drive in botswana.

at the beginning of the drive, we saw an impala.

we were ooohing and ahhhing.

LOOK!!! AN IMPALA!!!

we thought it was incredible.

twenty minutes later, we’d seen so many impala that we barely noticed them anymore.

they hadn’t become less beautiful.
they had simply become familiar.

then i asked our driver if he’d seen any zebras lately.

he said no.

and quietly, in my heart, i thought, God, i would really love to see a zebra in the wild.

about thirty minutes later, we were driving through the bush when suddenly...

there it was.

a zebra.

standing against this sea of beige, staring directly at us.

black and white stripes.

majestic.

brilliant.

unmistakable.

we stopped the vehicle.

and we just watched it.

there was something magnetic about it. you couldn’t not look.

then our driver told us something that made the moment even more incredible:
he hadn’t seen a zebra there in two years.

and i’ve thought about that zebra ever since.

because i think there is something in that picture for us.

we were never meant to disappear into a sea of sameness.

i think God intended for what He placed inside of us to be expressed so fully, so freely, so distinctly that when someone encounters our work, our ideas, our creativity, our businesses, our lives...

there is something magnetic and recognizable about it.

something they couldn’t have gotten from anyone else.

not because we’re desperately trying to stand out.
but because we’ve stopped trying to fit in.

that’s unmistakable.

and i think becoming unmistakable has far less to do with inventing some fascinating version of yourself and far more to do with having the courage to fully become who God already created you to be.

to stop sanding down the edges.
to stop abandoning your instincts because they’re different.
to stop assuming different means wrong.
to stop looking around for permission.
to stop asking the algorithm who you should become.

and start asking God:
what did You put in me that i’m supposed to bring into the world?

because maybe the very thing you’ve been tempted to edit out is the thing that makes your work impossible to mistake for anyone else’s.

and maybe your difference isn’t something standing between you and your purpose.
maybe it’s part of how you’ll fulfill it.

it’s time to become unmistakable.

in today’s paid section: the unmistakable audit.

we’re taking this idea beyond inspiration and into application — why being unmistakable is a real strategic advantage, how sameness can make even a great brand forgettable, and where to start building something people actually remember.

plus, you’ll get the unmistakable audit: a simple exercise to identify where your brand or work may be blending in — and start uncovering what could make it impossible to mistake for anyone else’s.

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i write a lot about ideas, creativity, purpose, and building work that actually means something.

but i don’t want to just leave you with something to think about.

i want to help you do something with it.

behind the paywall is where we get practical.

i share the strategies, frameworks, exercises, observations, and unfiltered lessons i’ve learned from building my own businesses and helping hundreds of clients build theirs.

think of it as access to my strategist brain — the questions i’d ask you if we were sitting across from each other working through your brand, your ideas, or your business together.

paid subscribers get:

• practical frameworks you can apply to your creative work, brand, and business

• exercises + audits to help you see what you might be too close to see yourself

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• deeper application of the ideas i’m exploring here — so you don’t just leave inspired, you leave knowing what to do next

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ready to become unmistakable?

this is the work i love most.

helping you uncover what makes you different — your perspective, your ideas, your point of view, your story, your taste, your way of doing things — and then helping you express it in a way that other people can see, feel, and remember.

because you don’t need to become more like what’s already working for everyone else.

you need to become more you.

sometimes that looks like a 1:1 strategy session, where we figure out what makes you unmistakable and how to build around it.

sometimes it looks like building a website that finally expresses who you are, what you do, and why you’re different.

either way, the goal is the same:

to build something that could only come from you.

if you’re ready to figure out what makes you unmistakable — and build around it — i’d love to work with you.

book a call with me →

work with me on your website →

bc i like design, enjoy ;)

a new season is emerging—
where things have felt stagnant,
you will experience a fresh wind.

where things have felt heavy,
you will experience a lightness.

where things have felt hard and disappointing,
you will experience growth and acceleration.

as the season shifts,
don’t fear change.

this new season will require you to move outside of your comfort zone and let go of people, places, things, habits, and patterns. while it’s easy to hold onto what is familiar or what has worked in previous seasons, don’t resist the call to change.

when you cling to sameness, you resist what the Goodness Of Life is trying to do in you and through you. you can’t expect to stay in the same places, doing the same things, and experience different results.

if you want something different, if you want something more—
you have to be willing to change and let go of what is no longer serving you.

you have to be willing to let go of what is familiar and step out in faith—
holding your hands open to receive new things,
being brave enough to enter new spaces,
allowing yourself to try new things,
and making yourself available to meet new people.

there’s something significant about to happen—
don’t miss it because you’re holding onto the past or old ways of doing things.

transformation doesn’t happen because you want it or wish for it.
it happens because you dare to change.

pay attention to the still, small voice inside of you, leading you and showing you how and where to make changes in your life. don’t dismiss it or brush it off as insignificant or irrelevant.

be obedient to follow through with the direction you are receiving.

your obedience will lead you into the “immeasurably more” you’ve been praying for.

xx lindsey eryn

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i ordered a salted caramel latte — the kind with actual pieces of salt in it, so when it hits your tongue, it’s unexpected. really good.

headphones on. M83 playing. my writing portal music — because it’s serious business now.

the last substack i wrote was about being in a hospital. about grief. we said goodbye to yet another loved one, and it did something to me. many things.

the days that followed — leaving the hospital, the funeral — were hard. unbearably hard.

i could feel the weight of grief and sadness closing in on me again. attempting to suffocate me.

i had a client deadline. and deadlines don’t wait — they exist even when life is happening and tears are falling.

at the time, i was frustrated. frustrated the project was behind. frustrated that this deadline was asking more of me than i wanted to give.

i could have justified stopping. no one would have blamed me.

but the truth is — grief has already taken so much from me. i wasn’t willing to hand it more.

because underneath that one deadline, there’s a PEPTALKS™ book i’ve been writing and designing. a creator’s circle i’ve been building. a devotional series i’ve been working on behind the scenes.

things i actually care about. things i’ve prayed over. things that matter.

and i thought, if i let this season take my momentum too, and i thought — if i let grief have this too, on top of everything else it’s already taken, i don’t know how long it’ll take me to find my way back to it.

so i chose to get up anyway. to open my laptop. to keep moving, to keep working— even with grief sitting right next to me.

looking back, i don’t think that was really about the deadline. i think it was obedience — practiced in the smallest, least spiritual-looking way possible. before i ever knew i was practicing it.

because grief is not the opposite of movement.

sometimes you grieve and keep walking at the same time.

the past five years have been defined by loss.

saying goodbye to my dad in a hospital room is the hardest thing i’ve ever done. and healing took time.

with this loss — another one — it would have been easy to sit. to stay. to give myself space.

after all, i deserved it.
life has been hard.
it’s been cruel and unfair.

but i don’t think we’re supposed to set up camp in our valleys.

when everything happened with my dad almost five years ago, psalm 23 brought me so much comfort —

“yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death — i will fear no evil, for You are with me.”

here i am again. in the valley of the shadow of death.

and this time, one word stops me.
walk.

not sit. not stay — even when staying would be justified.

we’re told to walk.

it reminds me of the story of joshua in the bible.
you know the one — where God tells him “be strong and courageous.”

when we quote the verse though, i think we forget the context.

we’ve stripped the story down to a soundbite. something you’d find on pinterest or hobby lobby wall art.

but in reality, the story is incredibly relatable.

joshua, along with the children of israel, had left egypt. wandered the desert for 40 years. lived off manna. fought battle after battle.

they were tired.

the story is already loaded with hardship, but now tragedy finds its way in, because moses, joshua’s mentor, the only leader israel had ever known, has just died.

israel grieved him. there were thirty full days of mourning — an appointed season of grief — before God ever speaks to joshua. God didn’t rush their sadness or ask them to get over it. He let the mourning run its course, in full.

but when the appointed thirty days ended — God spoke, fully knowing grief doesn’t work on a calendar. that the sorrow and pain of losing a friend, and a leader, was still there.

God was fully aware of joshua’s emotional state —

he’s grieving the man who trained him.
he has inherited the role of leader over millions of people.
and now, he’s facing another battle.

he’s carrying an impossible task.
he is, in every sense, in his feelings.

and even so — God asks joshua to move.

“my servant Moses is dead. now get up. prepare to cross the Jordan River, you and all the people. lead them into the land i am giving to the Israelites.” (Joshua 1:2)

it’d be easy for him to say — “hold on, God. i can’t fight battles right now. i’m still grieving. i have to rest. i have to collect myself.”

but he doesn’t.

joshua doesn’t argue his circumstances with God. he moves in obedience.

and this is what God tells him —

• everything that’s been promised will be received. “every place the sole of your foot treads upon, i have given you, as i said to Moses.” (1:3)

• you will be undefeatable. “no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life... i will not leave you nor forsake you.” (1:5)

• be strong and courageous. — He says it four times in this one chapter, because He knows joshua doesn’t feel strong. He knows he doesn’t feel brave.

• obey God’s word, and you will find success. “do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go.” (1:7)

• recite God’s word, day and night. “this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night.” (1:8)

• don’t give in to fear or discouragement. “be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed.” (1:9)

• and God will be with you. “for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (1:9)

that whole sequence got me. but what stopped me — what convicted me — was one line, in the nkjv: “for then you will make your way prosperous.”

because how often do we find ourselves in a hard season — in a wilderness, emotionally exhausted, physically depleted — and ask God to give us a breakthrough?

we pray for a shift. a change.

and low-key, we’re praying God takes the hard away. that He “fixes” it. makes it easy, make it light. so we’re not uncomfortable anymore, and can just get on our way toward our dreams, our visions, our goals.

but when we look at joshua’s story, we see God doesn’t take the hard away.

He doesn’t dismiss joshua’s pain, or his exhaustion —in fact, that’s why He says “be strong and courageous” four times. He knows joshua isn’t feeling his strongest. his best.

but regardless — God tells him: “move. I will be with you.”

He encourages him. “you’re going to win. you’re going to be undefeatable. you’re going to be successful. everywhere you go, you’ll experience success.”

but you have to move.

there’s something worth sitting with here — the hebrew word behind “prosperous” is tzalach. it doesn’t just mean success the way we use the word now. it carries the sense of pushing forward. breaking through. forcing your way past what’s in front of you.

prosperity, in this story, was never the absence of hard. it was forward motion through it.

God was going to do His part.
but joshua still had to do his.

and that’s what we sometimes miss. we act like breakthrough is just something we pray for — like God will supernaturally, miraculously fix everything without our help.

but breakthrough has always been something we co-labor for. and passively waiting — sitting still and calling it faith — isn’t actually spiritual. it’s disobedience.

joshua still had to move. to put his feelings aside. to lead. to fight. he had to push forward — to push his way toward what God had already promised him.

and then God reminds him — keep my word in your mouth. recite it. out loud. daily. not just in the morning when you start the day — throughout the day. so that when you’re not feeling strong, my words, my promises, will strengthen you and give you the courage to keep moving."

i just wonder —

what if the instruction God gave joshua is the same instruction He’s speaking to us?

not just me.
us.

collectively, we’ve all been going through a hard season.

many of us have felt like we’re wandering in the wilderness — dependent on daily manna, just to get through the day.

and maybe, like me and my family, you find yourself grieving something. or someone.

this season hasn’t been easy.

and i think it’s easy to slide from “i’m giving myself grace” into “i’m giving myself permission to stop.” those aren’t the same thing.

grace says — “this is hard, and i’m still here.”
permission-to-stop says — “this is hard, so i’m not moving until it isn’t.”

we can’t settle in our grief. in our sadness. in our disappointment.

not because those things don’t matter. but because we were never told to camp there.

we have to keep moving. we have to make our way prosperous — with the certainty that God is with us.

God knows what we’re carrying. He knows we’re not at our best. that’s exactly why He promises to empower us. that’s why He tells us to come to Him with our burdens. that’s why His grace is described as flowing — not stagnant. moving.

but that flow — that supernatural strength — it meets us in the moving. not in the stopping.

we don’t experience it by staying still, waiting for the hard to pass.
we experience it in obedience. in motion. one step, even a shaky one, at a time.

and if i’m honest, that line — “make your way prosperous” — convicted me.

push your way forward.

because here’s what got me: i’ve spent a lot of this season praying for breakthrough while quietly hoping God would remove everything that made breakthrough difficult.

i wanted the promise.
i just didn’t want the resistance that stood between me and it.

and somewhere along the way, i started believing that because life had been hard, i was justified in giving half effort.

not no effort. just... reserved effort.

the kind where you show up, but you’re holding something back because you’re afraid if you give everything you’ve got, there won’t be anything left tomorrow.

but maybe that’s not how grace works.

maybe grace doesn’t replace effort.
maybe grace empowers it.

maybe that’s why scripture talks so often about running the race, fighting the good fight, pressing on, taking hold. the christian life has never been passive. it’s always required movement.

and our job right now is to move in obedience.

giving our all—not half effort, even though we have every justification for it.

full effort.
because that’s obedience.
that’s trust in God.

i wonder if we need to stop praying as if we’re powerless in our circumstances—and start moving as if we’re powerful. as if we’re already victorious because God has gone before us. as if the God who created the universe is ahead of us, beside us, and behind us, making a way where we can’t yet see one.

and when i say i wonder...

i don’t really wonder.

i know.

i know that’s what God has been speaking to me.

because maybe being strong and courageous was never about feeling fearless.

maybe it was always about moving while you’re still grieving.
moving while you’re still disappointed.
moving while you’re still exhausted.
moving while you’re still waiting.

because that’s exactly what joshua did.

God didn’t wait until joshua’s grief had disappeared before calling him forward.

He called him to lead anyway.

to cross the jordan.
to take territory.
to receive everything God had already promised.

and then He gave him one promise in return:
“i will be with you wherever you go.”

that’s what i’ve been missing.

God never asked joshua to give half effort because life had been hard.
He asked him to move with courage because God Himself was going with him.

that’s what trust looks like.
that’s what obedience looks like.

giving your all—not because life feels easy, but because God is faithful.

pushing your way forward doesn’t always look like running.
sometimes it looks like refusing to stop.
sometimes it looks like taking the next faithful step with everything you’ve got.

and maybe that’s why psalm 23 has been coming back to me over and over again.
“though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death...”

walk.

not because the valley is easy.
not because you’re taking it slow.

but because you’re unwilling to stay there.

we walk through the valley.
we don’t build a home there.

disappointment deserves to be acknowledged.
weariness deserves to be felt.
grief deserves to be mourned.

but none of them get to decide where our story ends.

i keep thinking about the day i’ll stand before God and hear,
“well done, good and faithful servant.”

i think about seeing my dad again. and i want to run up to him and say, “dad... i did it.”

life was hard.
there were days i wanted to quit.
but i kept walking.
i kept creating.
i kept choosing hope.
i kept saying yes.

not because i was always strong.
but because God was.

that’s the kind of life i want to live.

and i have a feeling it’s the kind of life you want to live too.

so let’s keep walking, keep moving, keep taking territory.

let’s be people who are strong and courageous.
let’s refuse to let grief, disappointment, fear, or weariness have the final word.

because the valley was never meant to become our address.
it was always something we were meant to walk through.

xx lindsey eryn

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another round in the hospital — wrestling with heaven for a miracle.
contending for mercy,
pleading for a life to be spared.

to see another loved one
hooked up to machines,
lying in bed, no longer looking like themselves —
the joy, the laughter, the smile, the twinkle in their eye, the life —
still.

i can’t take another loss —
and the questions that come with it:
“why did this happen?”
“why like this?”
“what if i had done something differently — could i have changed the outcome?”

people talk about loss — the tears, the grief —
but no one talks about the aftermath.

until you’ve experienced intimate loss,
you don’t understand what it does to a family.

because loss doesn’t just take a person.
it takes a pillar.

and when a pillar falls, the weight doesn’t disappear.

it shifts.

suddenly, everyone still standing is carrying something they weren’t carrying before.

for some, it’s becoming the provider—
carrying a financial weight that was never theirs to carry.

for some, it’s becoming the peacemaker —
trying to preserve unity together when grief pulls everyone apart.

for some, it’s becoming the one everyone looks to for answers.

for some, it’s becoming the strong one, whether they’re ready or not.

and for some — it’s simply the unbearable ache of learning to live without the presence that made everything feel steady.

and what makes it harder
is that no one carries the weight the same way.

what breaks one person open
makes another person shut down completely.

what causes one person to cling tighter
causes another to pull away.

you’re all standing beneath the same roof,
all grieving the same loss —
but bearing different burdens.

we harden where we used to be soft.
we fracture where we used to be strong.
we take on roles we were never meant to carry alone.

we blame ourselves for things that were never in our hands.

the weight redistributes —
and not always evenly, not always fairly.

some people carry far more than they ever should have had to.

and still —
someone you love is carrying a weight you can’t lift for them.
all you can do is watch, and pray,
and trust that God sees and protects what you can’t.

and then there’s the becoming.

the ways grief asks something of you
that you never volunteered for.
you grow into spaces you didn’t know were yours to fill.

you find yourself carrying things,
saying things,
being things that used to belong to someone else.

and it’s not just hard because it’s heavy.

it’s hard because in the becoming,
you feel the absence of them most.
every role you grow into
is a reminder of who used to hold it.

but grief also exposes you.
it surfaces what’s been buried —
the places you’ve hardened,
the places you’ve hidden,
the places that still need healing.

and as much as you don’t want to look at them —
loss has a way of holding up a mirror.
and asking you to become softer than your pain wants you to be.
more gracious than your grief thinks is fair.
more like Him —
even here. especially here.

and still — life doesn’t pause.
the calendar keeps moving.
the bills come.
the phone rings.
people need things from you.
and you’re expected to show up
as if the weight isn’t there.
as if you’re not carrying something
that makes ordinary wednesday feel unbearable.

and no one understands that
until they’re walking through it themselves —
loss after loss after loss,
no space in between to catch your breath.

nothing remains what it was before.

except one thing:
God remains faithful.
God remains good.

even in the questions, even in the hurt, even in the agony —
His faithfulness remains.

after another loss —
another time approaching the throne room of heaven
and still not witnessing the miracle i so desperately wanted to see —
it would be so easy to question the one thing holding us all together.

it would be so easy
to let unanswered prayers become a wall
between me
and the God i’ve been running to.

but i won’t.

because here is what i know:
heaven didn’t ignore us.

help arrived — right on time.

we wanted to see them dance out of that hospital room.
we wanted the miracle we could celebrate,
the one we could see with our own eyes,
the one that would make sense of all the prayers,
all the contending, all the pleading.

but the miracle still came.

their physical body didn’t receive the healing we asked for — but their spirit?
their spirit was escorted by angels into the presence of our Savior.

no longer still.
no more pain. no more machines. no more suffering.
fully alive. fully whole. fully free.
healed in a way no hospital room could offer.

they got their miracle.

as much as we wanted more time,
more days, more moments, more of them here with us —
eternal life was always the greater contention.

heaven was always fighting for something bigger than we could see.
and what we couldn’t get them in a hospital room,
eternity gave them in full.

and for us —
the miracle is that we’re still here.

still held.
still being carried through the valley of the shadow of death
that we didn’t choose
but were not left to walk alone.

and the weight we inherited from the loss —
the roles, the responsibility, the grief we’re carrying for others —
God is lifting. slowly. faithfully.

and we see it —

the miracle in the mother who is still standing
after burying more than any one person should have to bury.

the miracle is in the daughters who keep showing up
even when they’re exhausted,
even when they’re breaking,
even when no one sees it.

the miracle is in the ones who had every reason to fall apart,
every reason to go back to what once numbed the pain —and didn’t.

and still — none of this makes it easy.

it’s hard.

and hard is too small a word.

to wrestle with questions that have no clean answers.
to stand at a crossroads you didn’t want to visit — or revisit —
and to still choose joy.
still choose hope.
still choose faith.

not because the grief is resolved —
it isn’t.

grief rarely resolves neatly.
there are questions that will remain open,
wounds that will ache longer than feels fair,
dynamics that will take years to untangle.

but you can choose to be resolved within the unresolved.
you can decide —
even when life has given you every right to be bitter,
every right to fall apart,
every right to walk away —

you can still decide:
God is good.

not because life has been easy.
not because the prayers were answered the way we hoped.
but because we’re living in a fallen world,
where loss and life exist side by side,
where death is real and grief is real
and nothing is promised —

and even here,
even in this,
God is present.

people look at me and see joy,
and they don’t realize the joy i carry is not my own.
it is joy received from a loving Savior —
given back to me every time i have come to Him empty,
every time i have had nothing left to offer but the weight of what i’m carrying.

i can’t explain why loss comes the way it does.
i can’t explain why it sometimes arrives back to back,
no space to breathe between.

i can’t explain why it makes everything else harder —
why a regular wednesday can feel unbearable
when you’re grieving,
when you’re worried,
when you’re holding everyone else together
and hoping no one notices you’re barely holding yourself.

but i don’t need to explain it.

what i need —
what we all need —
is a Shepherd.

and so for now, i’ll settle into this:
the Good Shepherd will protect me and my family —
against the invisible but lethal aftershock of another loss.

He will walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death.
He will prepare a table for us even here.
He will restore what grief has taken
in ways we cannot yet see or imagine.

and until then—

i’ll keep choosing.

choosing to trust.
choosing to hope.

choosing to believe that the Good Shepherd has never stopped walking beside us—
and never will.

xx lindsey eryn

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another engagement announcement.
another promotion.
another answered prayer.
another dream becoming reality.

and meanwhile, you’re still waiting.

waiting for clarity.
waiting for provision.
waiting for the relationship.
waiting for the opportunity.
waiting for God to do the thing you thought He would have done by now.

and if you’re not careful, you’ll start to believe that everyone else has been picked except you.

but can i remind you of something?

God has never misplaced a promise. and He hasn’t forgotten the things He’s spoken over your life.

even if the timeline feels off.
even if the circumstances look nothing like you imagined.
even if you’re wondering where He is.

He sees you.

not the polished version.
not the smiling version.
not the version that tells everyone you’re fine.

He sees the version of you that cries in the car.
The version of you that wonders if you heard Him correctly.
The version of you that's exhausted from hoping.

and He hasn’t turned away.

He's still there.
He's still faithful.
And He's still writing the story.

the fact that you’re waiting does not mean you’ve been overlooked.

sometimes God does His deepest work in hidden places.

long before the promise arrives.
long before the breakthrough comes.
long before anyone else can see what He’s building.

Joseph spent years in a prison before a palace.
David spent years in a field before a throne.
Sarah spent years waiting before Isaac.

the waiting wasn’t wasted.
it was preparation.

delay is not denial.
hidden is not forgotten.

and maybe that’s what you need to hear today.

just because you can’t see what God is doing doesn’t mean He isn’t working.

just because the promise hasn’t arrived doesn’t mean He’s forgotten what He said.

and while you’re looking for movement around you, don’t miss the movement happening within you.

because even now, God is strengthening things in you that couldn’t be built any other way.

faith.
character.
trust.
endurance.

one day you’ll look back and realize that what felt like delay was actually preparation.

so don’t give up.

don’t let disappointment make a home in your heart.

don’t allow comparison to convince you that God has moved on to someone else.

stay close to Him.

keep praying.
keep believing.
keep showing up.

your story is not behind schedule.

and God is not finished writing it.

xx lindsey eryn

LET’S STAY CONNECTED
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not dramatic perseverance.

ordinary perseverance.

the kind that shows up on a random tuesday afternoon when you know exactly what needs to get done, but you don’t feel like doing any of it.

the kind that looks like serving clients, marketing your business, and continuing to build something God asked you to build while wondering why it’s taking so much longer than you thought it would.

if i’m honest, i thought i’d be in a different season by now.

you know the one.

the season with milk and honey.

the season where the book is finished, sitting on coffee tables, and changing people’s lives.

the season where all the hard work finally makes sense.

instead, i’m still here.

formatting pages.

writing words.

building things no one sees yet.

showing up to work that hasn’t produced the outcome i imagined when i started.

some days, social media feels exhausting. technology changes every five minutes. the algorithm shifts again. what worked yesterday doesn’t work today.

and if i’m not careful, i start believing the lie that my circumstances are the final verdict.

that’s usually when God reminds me of something simple: my job isn’t outcome.

it’s obedience.

my job is faithfulness.

because God is bigger than the algorithm.

bigger than engagement metrics.

bigger than timelines.

bigger than the gap between what He promised and what i can currently see.

i’m realizing that endurance isn’t built by grit alone. if it were, i would’ve run out by now.

real endurance comes from staying connected to God.

staying connected to what He’s spoken. staying connected to His character when circumstances seem to be telling a different story.

and maybe that’s been the hardest part of this season.

not continuing to work.

continuing to believe.

continuing to stay emotionally engaged when it would be easier to detach.

continuing to hope when hope feels vulnerable.

continuing to trust when i can’t see evidence yet.

because perseverance isn’t just about refusing to quit.

it’s about refusing to let disappointment harden you.

it’s about remaining open, available, expectant, and faithful while you’re still standing in the middle of the story.

i’ve had to get honest about the fact that my circumstances are temporary.

even when it feels like i’ve fallen off a cliff.

even when it feels like i’ve gone backward.

even when it feels like everyone else is moving ahead while i’m standing still.

God hasn’t forgotten me.

and He hasn’t forgotten you either.

sometimes what feels like going backward is actually the tension of an arrow being pulled back before it’s released.

it doesn’t feel like progress.

but it is.

so if you’re in a season where you’re tired of waiting, tired of building, tired of believing — this is for you.

don’t measure this season by what you can currently see.

measure it by your faithfulness.

you may not see the outcome yet. but God sees what He’s building in you while you wait for it.

so let me ask you: what is this season forming in you that you wouldn’t trade, even if you could skip the wait?

because long before the outcome comes, He’s already at work — building the kind of person who will be ready to carry it.

keep going. stay faithful. He hasn’t forgotten you.

xx lindsey eryn

p.s. i want to know what line stayed with you.

leave a comment and tell me—or come find me on instagram @lindseyeryn and send me a dm.

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i’m not here to publish thoughts and disappear.

this is a conversation.

ily, mean it

my family and i are here traveling — soaking in one of the most breathtaking places on earth. we came for the cape town marathon that my sister ran yesterday. 26.2 miles. you couldn’t pay me to run that. (okay, well, maybe you could — at the right price point.)

i spectated, along with my mom, little sister, and niece — which sounds easy until you’ve sprinted across the city four times trying to catch someone at different points on the course while managing a toddler and a map you can barely read. after the race we dragged ourselves back to the apartment, showered, and somehow summoned the energy to head out to victoria wharf with sport tours international for the evening — celebrating the runners who crossed that finish line. by midnight, we were completely and utterly done.

so yes, we didn’t leave the house until 3pm. no apologies. sleeping in wasn’t laziness — it was survival.

table mountain was the original plan for the day. but by the time we finally got out the door, we had minimal daylight left. we rerouted and went to lion’s head instead — same sky, different view, more room to actually be present.

as soon as we arrived at the trail head for lion’s head — a cloud came.

not gradually. in one breath of wind, a full wall of grey swept across the empty space — covering the view of table mountain, swallowing everything whole. the ocean disappeared. the horizon disappeared. the world closed to ten feet in every direction — thick, still, and completely grey.

part of me wanted to call it a loss.

“we came all this way and we can’t see a thing.”

but we kept hiking.

and then — just as fast as it came — the wind kept moving. the clouds kept rolling. the sky cracked open again, wider than before. the ocean came back. the city came back. and by the time we reached the turn to see camp’s bay, the sky was doing something i didn’t expect — a rainbow, sitting right in the middle of the clouds as they pulled away.

it was one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen.

standing there, i couldn’t help but see it — how much this mirrors life.

we make plans. we reroute. we keep moving. and sometimes, right in the middle of all that effort, the fog comes anyway. not as a warning. not as a detour sign. just — in. all at once. and what felt like momentum starts to feel like a dead end.

the fog didn’t feel like an obstacle. it felt like an ending.

i think a lot of us know that feeling. i know i do — maybe more right now than ever.

and the cruelest part isn’t the loss of the view. it’s what it does to your imagination. when you can’t see what’s ahead, you start to forget that anything is.

but here’s what i had to remind myself, standing on that trail: the view didn’t disappear because something had gone wrong. it disappeared because something was passing through. the mountain hadn’t moved. the ocean hadn’t left. the city below hadn’t gone anywhere. the wind was simply doing what wind does — and it was doing it in both directions.

and that's the truth: what obscures our vision is not evidence that God has stopped working. it is the very sign that He is — that He’s moving, rearranging, making a way on our behalf.

how often do we take what’s on the surface — the fog, the closed door, the silence — and call it the whole story?

we see cloud and we read it as absence — of God’s presence, of possibility, of any hand at work in our lives. we lose visibility and we assume nothing is moving. but there is so much happening beneath the surface, behind the scenes, in places our eyes simply cannot access. the clouds are not the ceiling. they are passing weather.

God is not still. He is moving — commanding the wind, pressing through atmospheres, rearranging things on your behalf in realms you have no instruments to measure. what looked like a closed-off sky at lion’s head was actually a transition between one view and a more open one. the same wind that brought the cloud took it away.

maybe that’s where you are right now.

you’ve been moving. rerouting. showing up. doing the work, making the plans, saying yes to the right things — and then the fog rolled in anyway. the door closed. the silence stretched longer than you expected. what felt like momentum started to feel like a dead end. and somewhere in the middle of all that grey, you started to wonder if you’d missed it. if God had moved on. if the view was ever really there to begin with.

can i tell you something? that fog is not the final word. it is not evidence that you’ve been forgotten or that your faith has failed or that the story is over. it is passing weather.

and this is not a new story. scripture has always shown us this pattern…

moses didn’t navigate the wilderness with a map — he followed a cloud. the very thing that could have felt like obscurity, like uncertainty, like we have no idea where we’re going — was actually the presence of God leading the way. the cloud was never the obstacle. the cloud was the direction.

and then there’s paul — a man who was moving, Spirit-led, doing everything right — and the door closed. acts 16 tells us the Holy Spirit prevented him from going into asia. blocked. rerouted. what looked like a dead end was actually God repositioning him toward macedonia, toward people who needed what he carried, toward a chapter of his story he never could have written himself.

the blocked door was just as much direction as the open one.

that reframe changes everything. because if you believe that — really believe it — then you can move through every season, open doors and closed ones, clear skies and thick fog, with the same settled confidence: God is on my side. the Spirit never stops working. i have not been forgotten.

the Spirit of God is always moving on behalf of His children. always. not sometimes. not when the circumstances are favorable. always.

so don’t settle for the surface reading. don’t give the fog permission to rewrite what you believe. don’t let the closed door become your definition of what’s possible. don’t let the silence convince you that nothing is being said.

the clouds are not the ceiling. they are passing weather.

the wind of God is working in your life right now. and what’s on the other side may be better than anything you could have planned for yourself. it doesn’t matter if plan a fell through, or plan b never got off the ground. God is not bound by your itinerary. He has another plan — and it’s better.

so here’s what i want to leave you with — and it’s practical.

protect your imagination.

the fog’s first target is not your circumstances. it’s your ability to believe that anything good is still possible. so guard that. steward it. don’t let what you can’t see talk you out of what God has already spoken.

get in prayer. get in the Word.

not as a religious checklist — but as the act of repositioning yourself. when you can’t see what’s ahead, you go back to the One who can. ask God to open your heart with revelation. ask Him to fill you with His Spirit so that you have the imagination, the endurance, and the perseverance to keep going even when everything in front of you looks grey.

He will give you the blueprint. maybe not all at once. maybe not the way you expected. but He will give you what you need for the next step.

and then — move.

have the courage to keep going. keep creating. keep trying. keep showing up for the thing He’s placed in your heart, even when you can’t see the full picture. a closed door is not a stop sign. fog is not a final answer. your reroute might be the very thing that leads you to the most beautiful view of your life.

as for our family, we left the house at 3pm, rerouted at the last minute, lost the view entirely — ended up with a sunset that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

hold on. God is not done with your story. the wind is still blowing.

xx lindsey eryn

p.s. i want to know what line stayed with you.

leave a comment and tell me—or come find me on instagram @lindseyeryn and send me a dm.

Leave a comment

i’m not here to publish thoughts and disappear.

this is a conversation.

ily, mean it

i’m in a season of transition right now. and in the middle of it, God has been speaking. a lot.

what if everything you’ve been feeling stuck about has less to do with your circumstances and more to do with your posture?

i’ve been sitting with that question. and instead of holding it in — i’m giving you the highlights. the raw, unedited overflow of what’s been moving through me.

1. don’t block the flow

we hear about “flow state” and being in a flow — and, i’m here for it. when i think about it, i truly believe we were created to live in a flow state. to be so intimately connected to the Divine that we hear from Heaven and receive wisdom, strategy, divine assignments, divine knowledge straight from the Source. God.

the more i dive into the idea of “co-laboring” with God, the more i realize — God is trying to get us into a flow state and out of our own heads. but we’re the ones who block it. with our pride. with our own agenda. with our insecurities. with our disobedience.

and, i know — no one likes to hear the word “obedience” or, even worse, “disobedience.” it makes you feel like you’re seven years old again, getting reprimanded for the tenth time about the same thing, and punishment is looming. but the reality is — obedience and disobedience are still relevant in our adult lives whether we want to acknowledge it or not. maybe “alignment” and “misalignment” feel more comfortable. and that’s okay. but sometimes we need to feel the full weight of the words “obedience” and “disobedience” — because life is that serious. we’re not here just to pass time, work for the sake of working, and then die. we’re here to accomplish a purpose.

everything in nature was created for a purpose — and created to succeed. flowers. the great sequoias. rivers. no animal worries whether it’s accomplishing its purpose. it just moves, in alignment with how it was made.

but humans are different. we have free will. we can block the flow state. we can block the intimacy. we can block our purpose — and we do. more often than we’d like to admit.

the flow state isn’t some elusive, mystical experience reserved for a select few. it’s available to you. right now. but it’s going to cost you something: your agenda. your comfort. your need to stay in the safe, known, predictable lane you’ve been circling for years. your reputation. your addiction to approval. your attachment to a version of your life that God never actually authored.

here’s the hard truth — a lot of us aren’t blocked because life is hard. we’re blocked because we’re choosing it. we’re choosing misalignment. we’re choosing disobedience. not because we’re bad people, but because what God is calling us into feels uncertain and unfamiliar — and uncertain and unfamiliar is terrifying.

so we stay put. and then we wonder why things feel stuck. we blame our circumstances. we blame other people. we blame God. we blame the universe. but if we’re honest — really honest — the block is us. it’s always been us.

get out of your own way.

get intimate with God. get quiet enough to hear. and then move — in alignment, in obedience, in faith — and watch what starts to flow.

and then there’s this….

2. are you trusting God? or letting your heart wander?

have you ever watched God show up for you — over and over and over again — and still struggled to trust Him?

because i have. and honestly, i’m there right now.

hebrews 3 in the TPT wrecked me today. God is speaking to the children of israel — people who witnessed miracles for forty straight years. forty years of supernatural provision. forty years of His presence showing up. and they still doubted Him. and because of their wandering hearts, because of their stubborn refusal to learn His ways and trust His character — they never entered their rest. they never received their inheritance.

not because it wasn’t available to them.

because they couldn’t get out of their own way.

sound familiar?

i’m in the middle of a transition right now and some days the gap between where i am and where i thought i’d be feels massive. and it’s so easy — so human — to question everything. to question myself. to question what’s happening. to wonder if change is actually coming or if i’ve somehow missed it.

but this passage is a gut-check. a daily one. because a wandering heart isn’t just a feeling — it’s a posture. and that posture can cost you everything God has been quietly preparing for you.

your rest is still available. your inheritance is still on the table. the relationship He’s been preparing. the opportunity you’ve been believing for. the healing that feels just out of reach. the version of your life that feels like it’s taking forever to arrive.

it’s not too late.

but it’s going to require the same thing the flow state requires — trust over doubt. alignment over wandering. every single day.

and i have to say this — because i think it’s one of the most dangerous things we tell each other…

3. “you can’t miss what God has for you” is a lie

i know. i’ve said it too. it sounds like faith. it sounds like grace. it sounds like something you put on a graphic with a nice font and post on a tuesday.

but it’s not the whole truth.

because the israelites? they missed it. God had planned and orchestrated the promised land for them — that was their inheritance. their rest. it was real, it was prepared, it had their name on it. and some of them never experienced it. not because God wasn’t good. not because He wasn’t faithful. not because it wasn’t available.

because they let their hearts wander. they let their emotions lead. they complained about everything God was doing while He was doing it. and despite miracle after miracle after miracle — they still refused to trust Him.

that’s how you miss it.

and i think we need to sit with that for a second instead of rushing past it to make ourselves feel better.

yes — grace exists. and grace will reroute you. but grace is not passive. it requires your active participation. it requires you to stop doing, thinking, and believing the things that interfere with what God is trying to do in you, through you, and for you.

we are not powerless. we are not voiceless. we are not just waiting for life to happen to us. God gave us free will — which means He gave us the ability to respond to what He has already spoken.

the question is whether we will.

i’ll be honest — today, i had to repent and ask God to forgive me. because, in this season of transition, it feels uncomfortable — and there’s been too many days where i’ve entertained fear, where i’ve doubted, where i’ve given my circumstances more airtime than the promises of God. there’s been too many times where i’ve believed that my circumstances are more real than what God has spoken. and as i read hebrews 3 today, i felt so convicted. this posture… if i don’t correct it, it’ll lead me astray and put me on a path to miss what God has for me.

so, with that said, this is where it gets practical…

4. don’t let your emotions dictate your life

i know that sounds simple. maybe even dismissive. but hear me out — because this is not about suppressing what you feel or pretending hard things aren’t hard. it’s about understanding what you actually are.

you are spirit, mind, and body. your emotions live in your mind. but your spirit — the part of you that connects with the Divine — can overrule them. which means you are not a victim to what you feel. you have a choice.

and i think that’s the part we forget.

two things can be true at once. you can be in the hardest season of your life — you cannot see a way forward, you cannot understand why things are happening, you cannot figure out how anything is going to change — and at the same time, you can choose to believe that God is going to come through. you can hold the pain and the faith in the same hand. that’s not denial. that’s not toxic positivity. that’s what it means to be spirit-led.

and being spirit-led doesn’t happen automatically. it’s cultivated.

this is why i protect my mornings. why i walk and pray. why i read the Bible and journal. not because i want to check things off a list or perform what a good christian is supposed to look like. no — because i want to be connected to the Divine. i want to be so intertwined and intermingled with God that when the Holy Spirit moves, speaks, corrects — i’m attentive enough to hear it. obedient enough to act on it. aligned enough to receive it.

some people call it downloads. some people call it flow state. what it comes down to is intimacy. connection. being so close to the Source that His voice is louder than your fear, louder than your doubt, louder than the emotions that are trying to run the show.

and do you see how it’s all connected?

the flow state. the wandering heart. the inheritance you don’t want to miss. the emotions you refuse to be ruled by. it all comes back to the same thing — how close are you to God? how cultivated is that connection? because the closer you are, the easier it is to hear. the easier it is to trust. the easier it is to move.

that’s the whole thing. that’s all of it.

5. so let me ask you something — and i need you to actually sit with it…

where are you wandering?

not in theory. not generally. specifically.

where are you stuck and blaming your circumstances instead of examining your posture? where are your thoughts misaligned? where are your beliefs misaligned? where is your heart misaligned?

what promise do you need to start rehearsing in your mind more than the circumstance you’re facing? because somewhere, something has gotten more airtime than what God has already spoken over you — and you feel it. you know exactly what i’m talking about.

and where do you need to get out of your own way?

because here’s what i know — you want the thing. the job. the opportunity. the breakthrough. the relationship. the version of your life that feels like it’s always just out of reach. and i’m telling you — it’s available. it’s not hidden. it’s not being withheld from you.

you don’t need to work harder. you don’t need to do more. you just need to stop wandering. stop complaining. and start trusting. really trusting.

it’s that simple. and i know that’s both the most comforting and the most convicting thing you’ve heard today.

so — where do you need to change? where do you need to realign? because that’s the only question that actually matters right now.

6. don’t disqualify yourself

last thing — and i mean this with everything in me:

don’t disqualify yourself.

don’t read all of this and think “this is good… but she doesn’t know what i’ve been through. she doesn’t know what i’m walking through. this works for other people, not me.”

i hear you. and i’m not dismissing your pain, your history, your circumstances. what you’ve been through is real. what you’re walking through right now is real.

but truth is truth. it doesn’t have exceptions. it doesn’t have a clause that says “unless your situation is too complicated” or “unless you’ve made too many mistakes” or “unless you’ve been wandering too long.”

the promised land was still available to the israelites even after forty years of doubt and wandering. the rest. the inheritance. still there.

and it’s still available to you.

your circumstances are not bigger than God. your past is not bigger than God. your doubt, your fear, your wandering heart — none of it disqualifies you from what He has for you.

but you have to choose it.

every single day, you have to choose it.

xx

lindsey eryn

if something in that article moved in you — this is for you.

the thing you’ve been trying to build? it’s still sitting. not because you don’t have what it takes. because you haven’t had the right environment, the right tools, and the right people around you while you build it.

that’s what the creator(s) circle is.

a membership for faith-driven creatives and entrepreneurs where faith and strategy stop competing and start working together. where you don’t just consume ideas about building — you actually build the thing. the brand. the offer. the platform. the body of work God placed inside you.

start with the 14-day shift.

14 days. one prompt a day. but don’t let that fool you.

most people are stuck not because they lack strategy — but because they’re building from the wrong foundation. wrong beliefs about who they are. wrong stories about what’s possible. wrong filters on everything they see. and no amount of new tactics fixes a broken foundation.

that’s what these 14 days actually address. week one gets radically honest about what’s been quietly running the show — the fear, the doubt, the old narrative that keeps you circling the same loop. week two starts replacing it with something true. by day 14, you’ll have more clarity on who you are, what you’re building, and how to move than you’ve had in years.

and that clarity? it changes everything. the decisions get easier. the second-guessing gets quieter. the thing you’ve been trying to build finally starts to feel possible — not because your circumstances changed, but because you did.

join the creator(s) circle and start the 14-day shift.

le sigh.

not a day goes by that my best friend, christa, and i don’t write this to each other and simultaneously let out a massive exhale.

maybe, right now, you just need a little moment to… breathe… to le sigh… to release everything you’re carrying.

take it. wherever you are — sitting in your car in the driveway, standing in line at the grocery store, walking to your car after a long day — just take a deep, deep breath.

i’ve been thinking about a couple things lately… mainly, endurance. a word that i hate. it’s not that i actually hate it — but i hate what it is. enduring.

“endurance is the ability to withstand hardship, pain, or stress, or to maintain a prolonged physical or mental effort without giving up.”

let me tell you how much i don’t love endurance. my dad set a world record when he was 12 years old for the fastest marathon in his age group. my sister followed in his footsteps — enduring 26.2 miles and toenails falling off. me, on the other hand, i’m confident my hips were not made for running.

a couple years ago, my sister convinced me to sign up for the holiday half in san diego. i went along with it… only to get 2.5 miles in and realize — i didn’t want to finish. i didn’t want to endure. i didn’t want to suffer. it was cold out (below 50° — which is terrifying for a san diegan) and the idea of being cold, having shin splints, chafing, and gasping for air felt like pure agony and the opposite of holiday cheer. so, i called my dad, told him i wasn’t in the mood to run, and dropped out of the race. i walked back to my car, threw on a sweatshirt, and went to starbucks for a warm latte. then, terrified of what my sister was going to say when she found out i quit — i decided to delay the inevitable by driving to the finish line, parking my car, and hopping back into the race so i could cross the finish line and let her think i finished. (don’t worry — she knows now.)

but you get my point.

i’d rather hip thrust 475lbs eight times in a row than run 13 miles in the cold. i’m not afraid of hard. i just don’t want hard… for an extended period of time. which — by definition — is endurance.

i’m in an endurance season. and i feel it deeply. and i’ll be honest: i don’t like it.

i don’t mind hard. i don’t mind painful. i don’t mind stress—what i do mind… withstanding hardship for an extended period of time. nope. i don’t like it. unsubscribe me. i don’t want to feel the agony.

part of it is self-induced, in the sense that i could quit. quit dreaming. quit creating. quit trying. quit building. i could settle for a mediocre life, but then i’d be tortured by mediocrity. so i stay. because endurance is the only option.

and then there's the part i can't argue my way out of — every single thing i've ever admired was built through this. there's no version of extraordinary that skips the endurance season.

endurance isn't a detour from the life you want. it is the road.

truthfully, i think many of us are in an endurance season —

working,

waiting,

trusting,

believing,

waiting,

holding out,

staying diligent,

remaining faithful…

and, its hard.

one, because it’s just… hard. and two, because culture doesn’t promote or talk about endurance. no one talks about pain and suffering because, well, it’s not exactly clickbait. it’s not aesthetic. it’s not anyone’s favorite thing — unless you’re the kind of person who runs marathons for fun.

and as a result, when we find ourselves in an endurance season, we think something is wrong— with us, our work, our dreams, our capacity. but it’s not.

we’ve all been there—

where God speaks to us, gives us a dream—

then, walks us through a season that takes us low, where it feels like we’re moving in the direct opposite direction of the dream He has given us. the season we walk through humbles us— not in an instagram way — not the cute, palatable 'i'm learning so much through this' caption you post when things are hard but still manageable. i mean the kind of humbling that strips you down. that takes you to a place where you have nothing left to offer but your willingness to stay.

and it continues. purifying us, refining us, assigning us identity, forming us, preparing us for what’s coming. and yet, almost everything we experience in that season can feel counterproductive and counterintuitive to what we feel God is calling us into.

maybe that’s the point. because if it felt logical, if it felt linear, we’d trust the process instead of the One who’s leading us through it.

so that in this season of endurance, we realize — what happens next has nothing to do with how good, talented, creative, intelligent, or gregarious we are. it has everything to do with whether or not we trust that God knows what He’s doing — even when we can’t see it.

but these conversations aren’t highlighted in culture. they aren’t exactly the kind of content you want to binge… unless you’re walking through a season like this yourself and desperately need to know you’re not alone. that you’re not forgotten. that you’re not an anomaly.

just because endurance isn’t talked about doesn’t mean people aren’t going through it. we’re living in a unique moment in history where social media gives us a curated peek into everyone’s lives — what they want you to see, what they want you to know. and when people do get “authentic” or “vulnerable,” their vulnerability is wrapped up like a package from cartier. pretty. perfectly presentable.

but rarely is it raw, messy, unfiltered — rarely is anyone talking about the 2am where they ugly-cried and questioned everything. the morning they almost quit. the season that nearly broke them.

but, regardless of what someone does or doesn’t show you about their life, journey, work, or art — know this:

everything that is good and beautiful,

everything that is monumental and influential,

everything that is magic —

came from the tension of pain and suffering. from the ability to endure.

we look at the greats with admiration for what they did and created —

beethoven. maya angelou. c.s. lewis. viktor frankl. king david.

but every single one of them endured something that should have taken them out.

and yet — here they are. still being talked about.

as a culture, we do ourselves a disservice by not talking about this — because enduring alone is so much harder than it has to be.

there’s a reason people pay to run the new york marathon — to suffer for 26.2 miles across five boroughs. but they don’t suffer alone. they suffer together, and the whole way through, strangers cheer for them. because shared pain is the closest thing to pure connection. it makes them feel part of something larger than themselves. it makes them feel alive. on the other side of the pain is the beauty of humanity — the people who showed up. for you. a stranger.

and that bizarre, beautiful experience of choosing to suffer across new york city tells me two things — to endure, you need community. and you need beauty.

community

community makes it bearable. when you see the people next to you, dripping with sweat, breathing heavy, and moving along — even if it’s at a deathly slow pace, with a slight limp from the shin splits that started at mile 18 — it gives you the strength to keep going. it infuses you with the belief that “if they can do it, i can do it too.”

and we need that.

we promote self-employment and remote working like it’s a gift to the modern creator — and, don’t get me wrong, as someone who has been self-employed my entire career, i enjoy being able to take a random tuesday off to get my hair done, grab lunch with a friend, or take two weeks to travel around japan. but along with the freedom comes isolation, if we are not careful and intentional about centering ourselves in community.

there’s a reason i live with my family — unmarried, self-employed — you couldn’t pay me enough money to live alone. the isolation would take me out. and for many, it does.

isolation will kill your creativity. it’ll kill your belief. it’ll kill your ability to endure.

and the truth is, you can’t afford that. none of us can.

because to do anything meaningful means going through seasons where endurance isn’t optional — it’s the only way through.

and just like the marathoners — community didn’t take away their suffering. it didn’t take away the pain as they ran toward their goal, or the agony of realizing they still had 9 more miles to go with the sun beating on their backs. it didn’t silence the whisper in their head — “am i going to be able to finish this?” — but it made it bearable. and that’s the point.

no one is exempt from pain and suffering as they work and create. we all experience it. the question is — will it be unbearable alone? or bearable, because you’re surrounded by people who are still running their own race?

beauty

a couple days ago, i had a really hard day. the weight of life — and everything that comes with it — felt overwhelming. unbearable.

i cried myself to sleep, woke up still crying, then spent the whole day icing my face because my eyes were swollen shut.

in the afternoon, i told myself: ‘lindsey, you can stay home and cry all day or you can do something else. you're in control of what happens next.’

so i took a shower, curled my hair, put on some makeup, threw on a dress, and headed to the beach with a book.

i spent the afternoon on a rooftop, with the primavera and ocean air whispering through my hair. every few pages, i’d lift my gaze and just stare at the palm trees and the waves crashing on the rocks. right before golden hour, i packed up my things and walked down to the beach. there was a street musician playing bob dylan on the boardwalk. i sat there for a while — eyes closed, letting the sun hit my face — just listening. then i walked down to the water.

no music. nobody but me and the seagulls.

i watched the waves. listened to their rhythm. and as the sun began to set, i watched the sky turn the perfect shade of golden orange.

and while nothing about my circumstances changed— the beauty around me made the weight i was carrying bearable. it made it easier to endure the day.

and i think that’s exactly why beauty exists.

you see it in the artists. the ones who created their most breathtaking work out of their deepest pain. the art they made, the beauty they chased — it gave them the strength to keep going. it was never decorative. it was survival.

we’ve reduced beauty to something vain. something surface-level. something you’re almost embarrassed to admit you need — like caring about beautiful things makes you shallow, frivolous, or out of touch with what really matters.

but that’s not beauty. that’s decoration.

real beauty — the kind that stops you mid-stride, the kind that makes you put the book down and just stare — that’s not cute. that’s not aesthetic. that’s not a nice-to-have.

it’s strength.

you cannot endure hard seasons if you’re not actively paying attention to what’s beautiful around you.

beauty and pain aren’t opposites — they’re partners. every single thing worth creating was built inside that tension.

the most breathtaking things in the world came from someone who kept going when they had every reason to stop. not because they were motivated. not because they were disciplined. but because they stayed connected to something beautiful.

and here’s what i’ve come to believe — we weren’t just made to receive beauty. we were made to make it.

we’re given the gift of creation so that we can make beauty too — beauty that gives us strength, and infuses strength into the people around us.

this is why we need beautiful things. it’s why you go to paris and feel inexplicably revived — beauty is literally built into the architecture, the streets, the light. it’s why people travel thousands of miles to stand under the cherry blossoms in japan and feel something shift inside them. it’s why you stand at the edge of new zealand and stare at mountains so vast and ancient they make your problems feel small — and somehow, that’s a relief.

we need beautiful buildings. we need to be in nature. we need to take care of ourselves. we need art and music and good food and open skies.

more than we give ourselves credit for. more than we’ve been told we’re allowed to need.

beauty isn’t frivolous. it isn’t indulgent. it isn’t a reward you get to enjoy once you’ve earned it.

it’s what allows us to endure.

the finish line

so, wherever you are in your endurance season —

if you’re in the thick of it, barely breathing, wondering how much longer you can hold on. if you’re just entering it, feeling the weight of it settle on your shoulders for the first time. if you’re almost through, tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix —

i want you to know: you’re not alone.

there are other people in this endurance race with you —

we’re sweating. we feel the sun beating down on us, too. we feel the pain of being at mile 18 and knowing we still have a few hills to climb.

i won’t pretend i can see what’s on the other side. but i believe something is going to shift. we’re going to experience the reward of our endurance.

but as we wait, as we run our race — may we intentionally place ourselves in community. the ones you can call when you’re 2.5 miles in and you want to quit. the ones who will sit with you in it — not to fix it, not to rush you through it, but to remind you that they’re still running too.

and may we keep our eyes open — not letting the weight of what we’re experiencing blind us to what’s still good and still beautiful around us. to the light coming through the window. to the song that hits different on a hard day. to the ocean, the mountains, the cherry blossoms, the golden hour. to the street musician playing bob dylan on the boardwalk when you needed it most.

beauty is everywhere. even here. even now. even in this.

i am confident that on the other side of every endurance season is something that could not have existed without it. something good. something beautiful. something that will make someone else feel less alone.

and maybe that’s the whole point.

so take a deep breath.

find your people.

notice beauty. chase it. protect it.

and keep going.

le sigh.

xx lindsey eryn

you’re invited to the creator(s) circle.

this is the community i built for people exactly like you.

the place where you don’t have to endure alone. where the people next to you are still running their own race — sweating, pressing, building — and they’ll remind you to keep going when you forget why you started.

because isolation will kill your creativity before anything else does. and you can’t afford that. not when what you’re carrying actually matters.

the creator(s) circle is a membership for faith-driven creatives and entrepreneurs where faith and strategy stop competing and start working together. where you don’t just consume ideas about building — you actually build the thing. the brand. the offer. the art. the body of work. the system that carries what God placed inside you.

this is for the person who is done waiting to become who they already are. the one carrying an idea that won’t leave them alone — because it was never just their idea to begin with.

if anything in this resonated — the community, the beauty, the not-wanting-to-endure-alone — that’s exactly what the creator(s) circle was built for.

→ join the creator(s) circle.

p.s. what stuck out to you? leave a comment and let me know. we're in this together.

motion.

if i had to choose one word for this season, that’s it.

being in motion.
creating in motion.
thinking in motion.
refining in motion.

the other day, the next draft of my peptalks™ book arrived. i finally decided the cover should be red. bold. alive. i couldn’t wait to see it printed. i had two lines on the back that felt like the heartbeat of the whole thing — hope and joy wrapped into something tangible.

i’ve never designed a book before. i’ve designed websites for over a decade. i’ve written online for years. but this — this is different. this one is close to my heart. i’ve wanted to be a published author since i was eighteen. and i didn’t wait for permission. i gave it to myself.

so yes— i obsessed over the file.

i measured the margins.
re-measured them.
convinced myself everything was precise.

when the book arrived, i almost threw it across the room.

it was nothing like i imagined.

i was on the phone with a friend and had to hang up because the disappointment hit so fast and so hard.

the next day she asked, “do you think you need to take a break and pray about what to do next?”

i answered immediately: “no.”

not because i don’t believe in prayer.

but because i already know God called me to write this book.

there’s nothing new to discern.
this isn’t a calling issue.
it’s a refinement issue.

prayer isn’t going to fix my design file.
iteration will.

so i kept moving.
i adjusted.
i tested again.
i asked the Holy Spirit for help — and then i kept building.

this week there have been other moments of friction.

building out visuals for the creator(s) membership.
staring at a blank canvas.

i had inspiration. screenshots saved. notes everywhere.
but actually building it felt heavy.

i didn’t want to make decisions.
i didn’t want to think that hard.

i wanted brainless work.
organizing files. answering emails. something safe.

anything but starting.

i felt stuck.

and everything in me wanted to stop.
to close the laptop.
to go sit outside in the sun and read something that didn’t require anything from me.

my computer was overheating.
the scratch disk was full.
my shoulders were sore from my workout that morning.

it felt like the universe was gently suggesting, “maybe not today.”

and for a second, that sounded really appealing.

i could come back to it tomorrow.
i could tell myself i needed “space.”
i could spiritualize it and call it rest.

but if i’m honest — i’ve done that before.

and most of the time, nothing magical happens in the pause.
the clarity doesn’t descend from the clouds.
the idea doesn’t assemble itself while i’m gone.

it waits.

so instead of walking away, i stayed.

i cleared space on my computer.
i stretched.
i refilled my water.

and i went back to the canvas.

slowly at first. annoyed, if i’m honest.

but a few hours later, something clicked.

i made something i actually loved.

and it would not exist if i had left when it felt inconvenient.

and here’s what i’m realizing —

i think sometimes we treat ourselves like we’re fragile.

like discomfort is a signal to retreat.
like frustration means we’re not ready.
like resistance means stop.

but we were not created to collapse at the first obstacle. we were created to build.

so often the solution isn’t found in stepping away.
it’s found mid-attempt.
mid-conversation.
mid-revision.

and the more i’ve thought about it, the more i’ve realized this isn’t just about design files or book margins.

it’s about everything.

it’s about the conversation you don’t want to finish because it’s getting uncomfortable.

it’s about the healing process that suddenly feels too exposing.

it’s about the business idea that was exciting in theory but feels heavy once it requires real decisions.

it’s about the draft that isn’t working.
the workout you want to quit halfway through.
the apology that catches in your throat.

there’s always a moment where retreat feels intelligent.

where walking away feels mature.
self-aware.
healthy.

and sometimes it is.

but sometimes it’s just avoidance dressed up in softer language.

i’ve noticed something:

clarity rarely meets you on the couch after you quit.

it meets you mid-sentence.
mid-revision.
mid-conversation.
mid-attempt.

resolution doesn’t reveal itself in retreat. it unfolds while you’re still inside the thing.

maybe this is less about effort and more about staying connected.

when i left that draft open and stayed with it, something shifted. not because i forced brilliance out of myself. but because i didn’t close the loop.

there’s something about remaining — even in slow, imperfect motion — that keeps the current open.

when you walk away too quickly, the flow stops.

when you stay, even awkwardly, something begins to move.

it’s subtle.

an idea threads itself together.
a sentence finds its shape.
a bit of clarity passes through.

not because you manufactured it. but because you stayed long enough for it to.

sometimes we’re less of a creator and more of a conduit.

ideas don’t always come from grinding harder. sometimes they pass to us, in us, and through us — but only if we’re still there.

flow requires presence. it doesn’t follow what leaves.

i’m about to close this substack tab
and open my book file again.

the margins still aren’t perfect.
the cover design still needs work.

but i’m staying with it.

before i go, i’ll leave you with this:

what felt hard this week?
where did friction show up?
where did you step back instead of lean in?

what would it look like to stay with it — instead of retreating?

name it.

then go back.

not to force it.
not to hustle your way through it.

just to remain present.
to let grace meet you there.

flow doesn’t come to what’s abandoned. it comes to what stays in the current.

xx lindsey eryn

p.s. if this resonated, you should probably subscribe.

it’s free.
which feels illegal, honestly.

or go paid —
because supporting writers you like is wildly attractive behavior.

p.p.s. i want to know what line stayed with you.

leave a comment and tell me—or come find me on instagram @lindseyeryn and send me a dm.

Leave a comment

i’m not here to publish thoughts and disappear.
this is a conversation.

ily, mean it

something shifted. you’re not sure exactly when — but the version of you that was okay with playing small isn’t okay with it anymore.

you’ve been shrinking your ideas before you even say them out loud. qualifying your calling before anyone even questions it. building inside a box that stopped fitting a long time ago but felt safer than admitting what you actually carry.

you know what you carry. you’ve always known. you just haven’t built from it yet.

that’s not a confidence problem. that’s an identity problem. and the shift is where it gets solved.

the shift is a 14-day identity challenge that moves you through identity, filters, embodiment, and vision — so that what you’ve always known about yourself becomes the foundation you actually build on. not someday. in 14 days. you get immediate access the moment you join creator(s) circle. along with every month after: a formation challenge, live teaching, real business tools, studio hours to implement, and a private community of builders who refuse to stay small either.

all of it for less than one hour of coaching.

$97/month. what you carry is too important to keep shrinking.

→ join creator(s) circle

now, a couple hours later, a few distractions later—
that motivation is *GONE LIKE THE WIND*.

non-existent.

i’ve been debating if i should take a twenty-three minute nap to reset (being self-employed, i do that often— and it really does help with creativity).

but here’s the thing.

i’m at the point in my day where i have to start doing the things that aren’t fun— not scribbling a fresh to-do list on a hot pink post-it, but actually rolling up my sleeves and doing the hard stuff. the stuff i don’t want to do, but need to do if i want to move the needle.

for me, today that looks like:

• batching marketing emails for third story apartment

• updating my service page

• creating a freebie and marketing funnel

• batching instagram content

it’s all… sigh… necessary, but not fun.

it’s not creating, it’s maintaining.
it’s not exhilarating, it’s predictable.

however, without it— what i’ve built becomes neglected. and momentum doesn’t explode… it erodes.

i actually think the hardest part of anything is not starting, but choosing to be consistent.

choosing to be consistent when it feels boring.
choosing to be consistent when something else feels more exciting.
choosing to be consistent when you don’t see how it’s moving the needle.

and this, my friend, is the theme i’ve been feeling:

discipline.

many of us walked into this year with expectation, believing we were entering some type of promise land. a land filled with “milk and honey” of our own definition.

and instead— this year has been hard.
in many ways, it feels louder. heavier. more exhausting.

and it’s really easy, at this point, to begin to check out and say:

“i’m not feeling it. i’ll skip today.”
“i’ll do it tomorrow.”
“this isn’t that important right now.”

slowly, we begin to neglect the very things we once said mattered.

it’s not dramatic. it’s subtle. barely detectable.

because we just put it off— one day… one week… one month.

with the promise we’ll come back to it.

but slowly, the things we said we wanted—

• getting stronger at the gym

• finding a new job

• healing in a specific area

• starting that passive income idea

• launching the brand

• applying for the opportunity

• finishing the book

they never get done.

not because they were impossible.
but because we chose comfort over discipline.

convenient over consistent.

then months later, when we’re still circling the same mountain, still writing down the same goals, still praying the same prayers— we ask God, “where are you?”

we blame not being where we want to be on “the season,” the “obstacle,” or “an attack of the enemy.”

and listen— sometimes there are real obstacles and spiritual battles.

but sometimes?

sometimes the “attack” is nothing more than our own inconsistency.

instead of taking ownership, we overspiritualize something incredibly simple:

we didn’t do our part.
we didn’t show up faithfully.
we didn’t exercise discipline.

the enemy doesn’t have to do much to block our future if we’re blocking it ourselves.

choosing comfort over discipline.
distraction over focus.
avoidance over obedience.

sometimes the sabotage is self-inflicted.

a moment of brutal honesty

i’ll get honest.

i’ve wanted to be a published author for as long as i can remember.
but it hasn’t happened yet.

sure, i could blame grief. time. transitions.

but the reason it hasn’t happened yet isn’t spiritual.
it’s discipline.

i’ve been actively working on a book since 2022. the book could have been done in six months had i opened the design file for thirty minutes a day when i first started.

being brutally transparent with you—
when the process stopped feeling glamorous or exciting, i started putting it off.

one day.
one week.
one month.

and here we are… years later.

the book is still a design file, not a published book.

*embarrassing to admit*— but maybe you relate.

maybe your version isn’t a book.

maybe it’s the course you’ve outlined but never recorded.
the therapy appointment you meant to schedule months ago.
the boundary you keep postponing.
the gym membership you pay for but don’t use.
the debt you keep promising yourself you’ll tackle “next month.”
the resume sitting half-updated on your laptop.
the habit you swore you’d break this year.
the prayer life you said you’d rebuild.
the business idea you keep researching but never launching.

the mechanism is the same:

when the glamour fades, so does our discipline— unless we choose otherwise.

and that’s the truth— publishing a book isn’t glamorous anymore.
the dopamine left when things got technical and tedious.

but my dream of being a published author will never happen without discipline.

in order to move forward, i’ve had to confront something uncomfortable:

i’m not behind because of a season.
i’m not delayed because of outside forces.

i’m behind because i haven’t been as disciplined as this dream requires.

this isn’t about shame.
it’s about honesty.

because sometimes we hand ourselves grace
when what we really need
is accountability.

sometimes the kindest thing we can do for ourselves
is refuse to let ourselves drift.

and that’s what i’ve had to come to terms with:

i need to stop offering myself “grace” as if i’m too fragile and start holding myself accountable.

so this is what i’m doing—

taking ownership.
choosing otherwise.
choosing discipline over comfort.

opening my computer every day for thirty minutes.
writing. curating. designing.
sitting with the discomfort of not knowing how to use indesign and learning it as i go.
figuring out margins, spine width, isbn numbers— all the uncreative details required to publish.

i’ve created a rhythm that supports discipline.
set boundaries that protect my goals.
given myself assignments, set timers, and built practical systems that ensure follow-through.

because discipline is required to see the dream fulfilled.

and that applies to everything you’re walking through, too.

what the tony robbins of fitness told me at the gym

after eight months away from the gym, i started going back. and it’s been painful. the kind of sore where walking downstairs feels like a slow waddle.

i’ve been waking up at 5:30 am— pure torture for a night owl.

tristin, the 6:15 am coach at sweat circuit, said something as we headed into february:

“february is when people start giving up on their goals. this is a separation season.”

and he’s right.

january is powered by emotion.
february is powered by discipline.

the dopamine fades.
the soreness lingers.
the results aren’t obvious.

this is where people quietly opt out.

sound familiar? that quiet opting out — it’s not loud quitting; it’s the slow fade we tell ourselves ‘doesn’t count.’ but it does. every skipped day is a vote for the version of you that stays circling the same mountain.

when a gardener plants a seed, there’s a long stretch where nothing appears to be happening.

no sprout.
no bloom.
no visible proof.

just soil.

that’s the separation.

not between talented and untalented.
not between favored and unfavored.

but between those who keep watering
and those who stop because they don’t see movement.

a seed that is dug up every week to “check on it”
never takes root.

february feels like that.

it’s the underground month.
the root-building month.
the discipline-without-applause month.

sowing and reaping do not happen in the same season.

God does not override your neglect

i love the Word of God.
i love the promises we can hold onto—

that God leads us through fire and water into abundance. (psalm 66:12)

that He gives us immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. (ephesians 3:20)

that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what He has prepared for those who love Him. (1 corinthians 2:9)

but here’s the sobering reality: those promises were never an invitation to passivity.

they were never permission to disengage.

they do not mean we get to stop doing our part because we weren’t “feeling it.”

God is faithful to fulfill His promises. but He does not override our neglect.

from the beginning of the Bible, we see partnership.

God created.
then He gave Adam something to tend.

not because God needed help—
but because partnership is part of the design.

yes, everything is spiritual.
but everything is not magic.

God will do His part.
He will handle outcomes and results.

but we are responsible for tending what we’ve been given.

so what does discipline actually look like?

not theory.
real life.

here’s what i’m implementing in my own life:

1. do the hard thing first.
before the scrolling. before the easy wins.
if you win the first hour, you win the tone of the day.

2. set a 30-minute timer and confront it.
if 30 minutes is all you can give, give 30.
most dreams don’t die from incapability. they die from avoidance.
thirty focused minutes compounds. so does thirty avoided ones.

3. predetermine your rhythm — and never skip twice.
decide how often you’re showing up.
three times a week? two? daily?
make the decision once so you don’t renegotiate every morning.
missing once is life.
missing twice is a pattern.

4. say no to distractions without apologizing.
just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
if it pulls you away from your assignment, that’s reason enough to decline.

5. keep the vision visible.

write it down.
print it out.
put it somewhere you can’t ignore it.

discipline weakens when the vision gets fuzzy.

“write the vision and make it plain.” (habakkuk 2:2)

not so you can admire it—
but so you can run toward it.

if you forget what you’re building,
you’ll default to what’s comfortable.

i truly believe this can be a breakthrough year.

but it will cost comfort.

it will require choosing discipline over dopamine.
doing the boring things long enough for them to compound.
saying no to distractions.
showing up when you don’t feel like it.

six months from now, you will either be standing in a harvest
or standing in the same field wondering why nothing changed.

and the difference will not be luck.

it will not be the season.
it will not be whether God came through.

it will be whether you kept watering.

so i’m getting honest with myself—
and i want you to do the same.

1. what have you been avoiding that you know you need to confront?

2. where has your inconsistency quietly delayed what you’re praying for?

3. what are you calling “the season” that might actually be your hesitation?

4. if you kept showing up exactly as you have been for the next six months— where would you end up?

5. what rhythm can you commit to starting today— and refuse to renegotiate tomorrow?

this is a separation season.

not of potential.

of participation.

no one is coming to enforce your discipline for you.

not your coach.
not your pastor.
not your audience.
not even God.

He will empower you.
He will give grace.
He will provide opportunity.

but He will not override your willingness to show up.

xx lindsey eryn

p.s. i’m going to be printing off my third draft of the book today ;) i cannot wait for you to have this book in your hands this spring. it’s been a long time coming.

i’m documenting the process of creating and building. you’re welcome to join me — as a free subscriber, or as a paid one so i can justify a better buzz coffee after this level of honesty.

there’s a version of you that has the idea, the calling, the thing that won’t leave you alone — and is still not building it. not because you’re not capable. But because every time you sit down to work, something feels off. the strategy doesn’t quite fit. The words don’t come. the momentum you had last week is gone again.

so you consume more. learn more. plan more. and the thing still sits there, waiting.

that’s not a you problem. that’s a foundation problem. and it doesn’t get solved by more information — it gets solved by building with God instead of for Him.

creator(s) circle is for the entrepreneur, the writer, the artist, the speaker, the leader — anyone carrying a divine assignment they’re done letting sit unbuilt. inside, faith and strategy aren’t competing. they’re the same work. and when they finally are, you stop spinning and start building things that actually last.

every member starts with the shift — a 14-day identity challenge designed to close the gap between knowing who you are and actually building from that place. most people live in that gap for years. you don’t have to.

then every month after: a formation challenge, live teaching, business tools, studio hours to implement, and a private community of builders who take their assignment as seriously as you do.

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$97/month. whatever has been sitting unbuilt — it’s time to go get it.

→ join creator(s) circle

p.s. i want to know what line stayed with you.

leave a comment and tell me—or come find me on instagram @lindseyeryn and send me a dm.

Leave a comment

i’m not here to publish thoughts and disappear.
this is a conversation.

ily, mean it

everything else this week feels heavy.

i am currently eating my breakfast parfait and i can feel a tear start to trickle down my face, with more welling up behind my eyes. not good, not good. i’m telling myself “lindsey, take a deep breath. just go write and talk yourself out of this.”

downstairs, i hear my four-year-old niece yelling,
“TIIIIIIA! T, do you want to play with me?”

the anxiety of disappointing myself and a four-year-old in the same breath hits hard.

every time she asks to play and i say “i cant, i have to work”, something in me breaks.

the week started with me feeling some type of way about building things nobody can see yet—my books, my membership, and everything else that’s been forming in secret. i have irons in the fire, but they aren’t released. they’re still being built in private.

and that’s both exhausting and scary.

because as humans, living in a modern world, we’re conditioned for a dopamine hit every fifteen seconds. and right now, i’m building without any.

no visible wins.
no visible progress.
no visible victories.
no reward.

and sometimes, let’s be honest, you just want that.

you want a reward so you can keep giving yourself to your ideas. but there are seasons where there is no reward—there’s just obedience. there’s just pouring yourself into something with no guarantee you’ll receive anything back.

i’d be lying if i said i wasn’t questioning myself and what i’m working on this week—

questioning my creativity.
questioning my ability to build something—again.
questioning my strength to endure.
questioning what i’m even building, and whether it’s any good.
questioning myself.

it all started on monday night…

monday night, after a heavy day, feeling some type of way about myself and my work, grieving with a friend who said goodbye to her dad one last time, and navigating relationship stuff with another—i was trying to wrap up work while going back and forth via text with a friend/client.

we were talking about how much the day left us wanting to run away.

as we went back and forth, we unloaded everything we were carrying that day—
grief.
the weight of entrepreneurship.
the craving for a dopamine hit.
along with real and symbolic fires in her business.
seriously, a neon sign lit on fire at her business. major yikes.

at some point, i texted, “i think i’m having a galatians 6:9 moment—lol ‘don’t grow weary in doing good.’”

she replied, “ooo. i should’ve had that verse at the forefront today.”

somewhere between venting and joking, she named what we were experiencing as long-suffering—then laughed and said, “isn’t that a fruit of the spirit?”

and honestly, yes, i feel that. this season is a season of long-suffering.

if that doesn’t immediately resonate, here’s what it means: patient endurance under prolonged difficulty.

i’ll be the first to raise my hand and say—yes.
that’s the season i’m in.

i’ve left an old season, but i’m not in the new one yet.
i feel like the children of israel.
i’ve left egypt—but i haven’t stepped into the promised land.

and dear God, please hear me when i say this: i do not want to wander the desert for forty years because i complained, carved my own path, or tried to control what You are forming.

the reminder i need hourly

despite my current roller coaster of emotions, i am confident that what God wants to do next—in me, in you, and in the collective—is going to require trust. it’s going to require obedience.

i say that not just because i feel it, but because God works in patterns. and this has always been His pattern.

with that in mind, this week, i’ve been clinging to galatians 6:9:

“let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

and i keep reminding myself, sometimes hourly:

you know you’re working on what you’re supposed to be working on.
you know you’re moving in alignment.
you know that going backward—choosing what feels easier, safer, more comfortable—would be wrong.

it would be familiar, yes.
but it wouldn’t be faithful.

so don’t grow weary in doing good.
don’t grow weary in building what God assigned to you.
don’t grow weary in the process just because the results are delayed.

because there will be a harvest.

i don’t know about you, but i need that reminder hourly right now.

there are moments where giving up sounds tempting—where throwing in the towel and choosing a “regular” life feels appealing. i don’t even know what that would look like, but a life without the weight of conviction, without the responsibility to build, release, and communicate something meaningful sounds simple. nice. quaint.

and yet, i know that life would leave me deeply misaligned. painfully bored. quietly unfulfilled.

so even though it sounds nice, it isn’t an option.
it would be like choosing a life without oxygen.

the dream that foreshadowed everything

as i was writing and journaling this week, i decided to do a deeper dive into galatians 6:9. i scribbled raw, honest thoughts in the margins. i highlighted words like patient endurance. i wrote truths like, you’ve been consistent longer than your emotions can keep up.

as i broke the verse down line by line, a few things became clear. but i got stuck on one phrase: if we do not lose heart.

what stood out to me was this—the danger isn’t failure. it’s emotionally abandoning the work before the harvest arrives.

in my journal, i wrote:

do not let delayed results convince you that obedience is pointless. what you are sowing is working, even if it’s underground. stay aligned long enough for the season to produce.

immediately, after writing, i underlined underground.

and that’s when i remembered a dream i had last summer.

maybe i’ve told you about it before. but if i haven’t…

i dreamed that i checked into a school—but instead of staying on campus, i wandered alone into the desert.

i wasn’t lost.
i was separate.

somewhere in the desert, i became connected to a hidden group—builders working on something ahead of its time, out of sight, unconcerned with visibility.

on my way back, i stopped walking and began flying—hovering unseen above others.

before returning to campus, i was intercepted by two people and invited onto a mission.

we boarded a boat filled with machines and systems designed to move with the waves, not resist them.

suddenly, the boat began to capsize and sink, but i wasn’t afraid.

we didn’t panic.
we didn’t scramble.

we calmly abandoned ship and swam through an underwater portal—something i couldn’t see until i was already submerged.

on the other side, we reached a hidden base.
oxygen tanks were already waiting.

nothing had to be rushed.
nothing had to be rescued.
everything had been prepared in advance.

from inside the base, i watched people try to enter. i closed the curtains, flipped the sign on the door to “closed,” and most of them left. one woman was let in—but she couldn’t see us or what we were working on. everything was invisible to her.

this dream was months ago. when i first had it, it stirred something in me—but not in the way it does now.

looking at it now, i notice:

• being in the desert.

• moving forward, but not quite here or there.

• saying yes to an assignment.

• sinking—without fear.

• being underwater.

• building something others can’t see yet.

and that’s exactly what this season feels like.

the dream wasn’t random. it was foreshadowing.

but here’s the part that gets me, the part that’s currently steadying me:

the sinking wasn’t bad. it was planned for.
it wasn’t destruction or failure, it was positioning.
positioning so i could swim through a portal underwater.
and at the destination, there was provision waiting.

so, i could build in private before public visibility.

while i didn’t plan the journey or know what was coming, nothing surprised the crew who invited me on the mission. every part of it had been anticipated and prepared for.

this part of the journey

i’ll be honest—i resonate with this dream now more than ever. and, in many ways, it’s reassuring.

in the last two years, i’ve lived through a desert season.
i was in it. i waited in it. i was commissioned in it.

and now, i’m walking out of it—but i’m not at the destination yet.

i’ve said yes to an assignment.
i have what i need to carry it out.

but right now, it does feel like a sinking is happening.

i’m not afraid.
i’m not nervous.
i’m just tired.

after being in the desert for so long, the weariness has finally caught up to me.

and still—i know quitting isn’t actually an option. the conviction to build is too strong. but conviction doesn’t cancel exhaustion.

and i think God knows that.
otherwise “do not grow weary in doing good” wouldn’t be in the Bible.

what’s striking to me now is how closely the dream mirrors this season—not symbolically, but structurally.

in the dream, the sinking wasn’t a surprise.
no one panicked.
no one scrambled.
no one questioned what was happening.

the boat capsized because it was always going to.
this wasn’t failure—it was part of the route.

and that’s why this season feels so disorienting.

because everything in us has been trained to believe that progress should look obvious. upward. visible. affirming. rewarded.

but what if that assumption is the problem?

what if God doesn’t move us forward through obvious routes—but through non-obvious ones?

what if what feels like capsizing isn’t regression, but repositioning?

the sinking feels unnatural because it contradicts the world’s logic.
the world tells us that success ascends.
that clarity comes before movement.
that safety is confirmation.

but God often does the opposite.

He leads people through descent before authority.
through obscurity before influence.
through trust before explanation.

so maybe this season doesn’t feel like progress—not because it isn’t—but because it doesn’t operate by the world’s rules.

if any part of this feels familiar—
the tiredness without fear,
the obedience without clarity,
the sense of descent without panic—

then this isn’t just my story.

maybe we aren’t sinking into oblivion.
maybe we’re being carried somewhere we couldn’t access any other way.

what keeps you when you can’t leave

when i look back at the details of the dream, one thing stands out—
the oxygen.

pulling on that thread, i realize the oxygen wasn’t there to make the work easier.
it was there to make it possible.

and, here’s the revelation i had:

oxygen keeps you alive in an environment that would otherwise kill you.
it doesn’t help you escape the pressure—it allows you to remain.

the oxygen was provision for a new atmosphere.

the oxygen is trust.

not because it feels obvious, but because nothing else sustains you here.

trust in God doesn’t remove the environment.
it changes how you survive inside it.

it’s what allows you to endure seasons you weren’t meant to escape—
and build in places where human strength alone would never last.

isaiah 40:31 says,

“but those who trust in the LORD will find new strength.
they will soar high on wings like eagles.
they will run and not grow weary.”

built for the descent

and there’s something else to remember:

the boat in the dream was built differently.

it wasn’t designed to fight the waves—it was designed to move with them.
the sinking wasn’t failure. it was part of the plan.

it was transportation.
not destruction—relocation.

which means this kind of journey requires a different posture.

not striving.
not bracing.
not forcing stability where flexibility is required.

the boat had to go under so something sacred could happen—
so something could be built without interference,
without spectators,
without pressure to explain itself too soon.

and that posture inevitably leads to private work before public visibility.

when the vessel is built differently and the posture is different—so is the work it carries.

this is wildly countercultural to the world’s systems and expert advice.

we’re told over and over again to build in public.

social media has trained us to expect constant visibility. it gives us direct access to creators, and over time, that access has turned into entitlement—to see, to know, to preview. as creators, we feel the pressure to show our work so people know we’re still relevant, still doing something, still here.

but heaven operates differently.

it isn’t performative.
it isn’t governed by trends or metrics.
it isn’t rushed by visibility.

heaven asks us to move differently.
to think differently.
to create differently.

because heaven has a different process—one that isn’t interested in quick fixes, but in work that carries presence and power. work that lasts. work built on truth, not trends. work that echoes the heartbeat of heaven.

and that explains why building in hidden spaces isn’t optional—
it’s necessary.

we’re not just building something to compete with what the world has already produced. we’re building something meant to reflect the Divine and impact generations.

and often, when we’re building differently, the people we’re building for won’t understand the work until it’s finished.

building in public too soon—
collecting opinions, feedback, validation—
can dilute what we were meant to create.

applause has a way of convincing us this was our doing.
metrics can quietly shape the message.
likes and clicks can tempt us to perform instead of steward.

and so, sometimes obscurity isn’t a delay—
it’s protection.

protection of the work while it’s still forming.

and the longer something is protected from view, the deeper it has to go.

when protection becomes burial

as i sat with all of this and kept pulling threads, one word kept resurfacing: underground.

we often associate it with formation.
with protection.
with preparation.

but it also carries something else: death.

not dramatic, sudden death—but the slow kind.
the kind that shows up as fatigue.
as disinterest in what used to matter.
as resistance to noise, visibility, and explaining yourself.

the kind that makes you want to pull back, simplify, go quiet—
not because you’re giving up,
but because something old no longer fits.

and for some of you, the hardest part isn’t the work—it’s the invisibility.

you thought you’d have more influence by now.
more traction.
more relevance.
more evidence that what you’re carrying actually matters.

instead, it feels like you’ve been hidden.
like a seed buried underground—alive, full of potential, but unseen.

not growing outwardly.
not producing fruit yet.
just waiting.

and that waiting can feel humiliating.
disorienting.
even disappointing—especially when you know you’re called to more.

but seeds aren’t buried because they’re forgotten.
they’re buried because growth requires darkness first.

roots form underground long before anything breaks the surface. and the depth of what eventually grows is determined by how long—and how deeply—it was hidden.

so if a part of you feels like it’s dying in this season,
the part that’s tired of striving, performing, proving—
it probably is.

not your calling.
not your obedience.

but the things that would eventually weigh you down.

the need for validation.
the craving for applause.
the dependence on outside opinions.
the demand for clarity before obedience.
the insistence on an obvious path.
the timeline you thought you were owed.
the illusion of control.
the attachment to safety.

and maybe that’s not the problem.
maybe that’s the point.

maybe those things have to die—so they don’t determine what comes next.

because if they stay alive,
they shape what we build.
they limit how far we can go.
they quietly pull us off assignment without ever announcing it.

every resurrection story passes through the ground first.
what comes up isn’t just alive—it emerges with authority.

so let your heart be still.
you will emerge lighter, clearer,
carrying authority you couldn’t have held before.

when obedience doesn’t feel safe

this is where we often get it wrong.

we assume obedience is the safe choice—
that choosing God’s way will feel secure, stabilizing, confirming, rewarding.

but scripture tells a different story.

God doesn’t rush outcomes, He forms people.

and formation, especially at the beginning, rarely feels safe.

obedience is often risky.
it’s uncomfortable.
it creates disruption.

first, it disrupts our own lives—
our expectations, our timelines, our sense of control.

and then, in time, it disrupts the world around us.

so maybe right now you’re wondering:
if i’m being obedient to God’s call on my life, why does everything feel unsettled?

scripture is filled with people who obeyed long before they saw fruit.

moses obeyed God—and was sent into the wilderness for decades.
not into leadership.
not into momentum.
but into obscurity, tending sheep, far from the promise he was carrying.

joseph obeyed—and it cost him everything familiar.
sold by his brothers.
faithful in hidden places.
imprisoned after doing the right thing.
forgotten for years before elevation ever came.

david was anointed king—and then sent back to the field.
later hunted by the very man he was serving.
living in caves, carrying a calling that hadn’t caught up to his reality yet.

paul obeyed—and disappeared.
the platform vanished.
the certainty vanished.
years passed in silence before his authority was ever recognized.

none of them were rewarded immediately.
all of them were formed invisibly.

and when the reward finally came, it wasn’t just success—
it was authority they could actually sustain.

obedience doesn’t usually offer immediate confirmation.
it asks for endurance first.

and that’s why so many people quit too early—
not because they weren’t called,
but because they mistook the lack of reward for the absence of purpose.

that’s why galatians 6:9 says,

“let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

notice the language—due season.
not immediate.
not convenient.
not on demand.

we’ve grown accustomed to instant feedback—
instant affirmation, instant clarity, instant reward.

but that isn’t how formation works.
and it isn’t how obedience works either.

much of what feels exhausting right now
isn’t because the work is wrong—
it’s because we’re trying to measure eternal processes with the world’s system—
a system trained on dopamine hits.

scripture assumes endurance.
culture trains impatience.

and when those two collide,
obedience can feel harder than it actually is—
simply because the reward hasn’t arrived yet.

but the promise was never speed.
it was harvest—
in the right season,
for those who stay.

rest in the storm

this week, in the middle of the exhaustion,
i’ve been sleeping more.
letting myself come home from the gym and take a nap at 8:30 am.

i laughed when i wrote in my journal:
”even Jesus slept in the storm.”

if you’re not familiar with the story, in the gospels,
Jesus is on a boat with His disciples.

a violent storm breaks out.
waves crash.
water fills the boat.
it’s actively sinking.

and Jesus is asleep.

not pacing.
not bracing.
not panicking.
sleeping.

the disciples wake Him in terror and ask,

“teacher, don’t you care that we’re about to drown?”

Jesus stands, rebukes the wind and the sea,
and everything goes still.

then He asks a question that feels almost startling in its calm:

“why are you so afraid?”

what strikes me now isn’t just His authority over the storm—
but His posture inside it.

Jesus wasn’t worried because He wasn’t confused about the boat.
He wasn’t anxious because the storm wasn’t a surprise.
He wasn’t rushing because nothing was out of control.

even the storm was within the scope of the mission.

and maybe that’s the invitation for us, too.

not to pretend the waves aren’t real.
not to deny the pressure.

but to remember who’s in the boat—
and that the journey we’re on was designed
with this stretch in mind.

maybe the goal isn’t to stop the storm prematurely.
maybe it’s to learn how to rest while it’s still raging.

pressing on to abundance

scripture says in psalms 66:12,

“we went through fire and water,
but You brought us to a place of abundance.”

and that’s what i’m declaring—
for me, and for you.

you might feel in the desert.
not where you used to be,
and not yet where you want to be.

you might feel like you’re sinking.
like pressure is coming from every direction.
like obedience has been heavier and riskier
than you expected.

you might feel emotionally exhausted from the journey.
delayed.
hidden.
forgotten.

no matter what you feel—
do not lose heart.
do not give up.
do not grow weary in doing good.
do not emotionally abandon the work you were given.

press on.
continue.

you are not doing this alone.
God is with you.

He is not surprised by your journey.
He has anticipated this season
and prepared what you need in advance.

what you need for this moment
is already here.

what you need next
will meet you at the right time.

when the environment feels suffocating,
trust God—He will be your sustenance.

follow the unfolding without fear.
trust that every detour,
every uncomfortable descent,
has already been accounted for by God.

nothing you’re experiencing is taking Him off guard.

when it feels like you’re sinking, remember: you are being positioned.

your obedience is not pointless. what you are sowing is working—even if it’s underground.

stay aligned long enough for the season to produce and for the harvest to come.

remember this:
God does His most decisive work
when no one can interfere,
rush it,
or take credit for it.

this moment, this season is not a test to see if you’ll quit; it’s forming you, your work, and the authority you’ll carry into what comes next.

God is leading you through the fire and the water
and bringing you to abundance.

you can trust that.

xx lindsey eryn

p.s. i want to know what line stayed with you.

leave a comment and tell me—or come find me on instagram @lindseyeryn and send me a dm.

Leave a comment

i’m not here to publish thoughts and disappear.
this is a conversation.

ily, mean it

if you’re honest, part of what makes building feel so heavy right now
isn’t the work.
it’s the quiet pressure to make it all work.

to provide.
to sustain.
to not fail.
to not need help.

here’s the truth we forget when we’re responsible and capable and tired:
provision is not your job. it’s God’s.

i made a free resource for the builders who feel the weight of that responsibility sitting on their chest.

provision is not your job is a short, grounding reset—
→ scripture
→ reflection
→ a gentle financial and mental re-alignment
→ a closing prayer to help you release what you were never meant to carry

this isn’t about doing less or trying harder.
it’s about breaking agreement with panic and returning to partnership.

if you’re building something meaningful and need to breathe again,
this is for you.

get the free resource here →

somehow, i reliably find myself in places i was never aiming for—having conversations i did not anticipate—doing things that make me pause and think.

they’re not bad situations. just comically absurd ones.

last week is a perfect example.

instead of spending the week writing substack pieces, preparing for the launch of my membership, or designing websites for clients, i was at the PGA show in orlando.

if you’ve never been, picture 50,000 golfers under one roof. khaki pants that don’t quite fit. blue blazers worn with absolute confidence. an atmosphere that says, this is very serious business, even when it absolutely isn’t.

and then there was me.

one of maybe a hundred women. in a blue tennis skirt. zero golf experience—unless you count the one week of lessons i took when i was fourteen.

plus a personality the golf world was deeply unprepared for.

why?
still unclear.

technically, i was there to demo new virtual reality software.

this detail matters, because i have used VR exactly twice in my life.

once with my best friend’s teenage son.

and once the week before—when the company i was traveling with brought me into their office to teach me how to use the VR system i would soon be demoing to people who actually run golf companies.

i’m not qualified in the traditional sense. but i am now trained enough to speak with a concerning amount of confidence to people who are very important.

anyway.

the week before the PGA show, i went in for a “quick walkthrough” on the VR program.

it was a small conference room. my friend. two of her coworkers. a VR headset that felt heavier than it needed to be.

they put the headset on me. handed me the controllers.

immediately, i was lost.

“press A,” someone said.

there were five buttons.

“no—down. yeah. okay. a little to the left.”

they kept explaining.
i kept guessing.

here’s the problem: i couldn’t see my hands. i could see the screen inside the goggles—a completely different world—but i had no idea what was happening physically around me.

at some point, we realized the issue wasn’t the software.
it was me.
i was holding the controller wrong.
which i didn’t know, because i couldn’t see.

so i had to trust the people in the room who could see what i couldn’t—and adjust based on their instructions, even when it felt counterintuitive.

once i figured it out, everything changed.

suddenly, i was standing on a golf course in pebble beach. every tree. every slope. every detail looked real. eerily real.

i could change the time of day. the lighting. the conditions.

and somewhere between standing there — wearing a clunky headset, probably looking ridiculous, audibly reacting to virtual scenery —

it hit me.

the unseen world is more real than the seen world.

phrases i’d heard my whole life.
scriptures i could quote without thinking.
stories i’d grown up around.

truths i believed —
suddenly illuminated in a fresh way.

we’re limited by what we can see.
constrained by a partial view.
interpreting reality through a narrow interface.

God isn’t.

He is omnipresent and omniscient —
present in the room we’re in
and already ahead of us in the one we can’t see.

He sees the room we’re sitting in
and the path ahead — all at once.

meanwhile, we react to what’s loud, visible, and immediate —
mistaking proximity for reality.

but like my friends in the room, God responds from full sight.

when proverbs says,

“trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding,”

it’s naming a reality:
our understanding is incomplete, because our vision is limited.

in that headset, the virtual course felt utterly convincing —
every blade of grass, every shadow, every slope.
immersive. real.

but it wasn’t reality.
it was a limited interface.

the reality was the chair i was sitting on.
the desk my arms were resting on.
the people in the room whose voices i could hear — but couldn’t see.

they had the full view.
i had a partial one.

if i’d kept trusting what i could see —
and my own instincts while holding the controllers wrong —
i would’ve stayed stuck.

that’s what Proverbs is naming.

it isn’t calling us to blind obedience or suspended thinking.
it’s calling us to rightly ordered trust —
to defer to God’s perspective over our own
because He sees what we cannot.

we aren’t incapable of acting.
we’re limited in what we can see.
and effort, no matter how sincere, can’t compensate for incomplete sight.

NOT A POETIC SUGGESTION

we know the verses.
we believe the truth.

we believe the unseen world is more real than what is seen.

“so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” — 2 Corinthians 4:18

and still,
when life tightens—
we default to what we can see.

the bills.
the timelines.
the loneliness.
the unmet prayer.
the doctor’s reports.

the pressure to have clarity by now.
the decision you keep delaying.
the fear that you’re behind.

and we try to navigate all of it alone —
with limited sight, limited understanding, and limited resources.

i’ll be the first to raise my hand and admit —
there have been days when i treated “walk by faith, not by sight” like a poetic suggestion.
inspirational. optional.
easy to agree with on a good day —
impossible on a bad one.

and days when “my ways are higher than your ways” became less of a truth i lived by
and more of a spiritual comfort blanket —
something i reached for when i was stressed, exhausted, and quietly accumulating gray hairs.

it was like:

yes, God. i trust You.
Your ways are higher than my ways…

but also —

please allow me a full meltdown over the fact that i have $3.72 in my bank account and zero client inquiries.

or, the quieter panic of being thirty-five and single while people casually suggest freezing my eggs.

or, the heavier fear that grief derailed my life and i somehow missed my moment while everyone else kept moving.

fully trusting You,
and still panicking —
because surely there is a way i’m supposed to fix this myself, right?

that instinct runs deep.

it’s human nature to let what we can see override what we can’t—
even when we know the unseen is more real.

that’s why God repeats Himself so often in Scripture—
not because He forgot, because we forget what reality we’re meant to live from and we keep drifting back to what we can see.

THIS IS WHERE IT GETS UNCOMFORTABLE

scripture doesn’t merely tell us to walk by faith.
it stages moments where sight and trust collide —

abraham is one of the clearest examples.

in genesis 22, God says to him:

“take your son, your only son, whom you love — isaac — and go to the region of moriah. sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

God doesn’t ask abraham to understand.
He asks him to obey.

and abraham goes.

the journey takes three days.

three days knowing exactly what obedience would cost —
without knowing how God would intervene.

this isn’t a symbolic request.
this is everything abraham loves placed on the altar —
with no explanation.

along the way, isaac notices what can’t be avoided.

the fire.
the wood.
and no sacrifice.

“the fire and the wood are here,” isaac says.
“but where is the lamb?”

abraham answers with a sentence that only makes sense
if trust has already overridden sight:

“God Himself will provide the lamb.”

and they keep walking.

up the mountain.
toward the altar.
toward a moment abraham cannot control.

abraham binds his son.
lays him on the wood.
lifts the knife.

and only then —
provision appears.

a ram.
caught in a thicket.
right there.

the test was never about isaac.
it was about trust without proof.

abraham didn’t move in obedience because he felt certain.
he moved because he trusted God’s sight more than his own.

BEING LED STEP BY STEP

and then there’s Moses.

not wandering alone in the desert, but leading millions of people who are already tired, frustrated, and questioning him.

egypt is behind them.
freedom has begun.

clarity has not.

and moses is following— not a map,
not a timeline,
not a destination he can explain—

but a towering pillar of cloud.

when the cloud moved, they moved.
when it stayed, they stayed.

that was the instruction.

it was visible— but only one step at a time.

they didn’t know where they’d sleep weeks from now.
they didn’t know how long the journey would last.
they didn’t know when they’d arrive.

they just knew this: the cloud was still there.

and that was the trust.

not knowing the destination,
but recognizing the Presence.

they didn’t follow because the path made sense.
they followed because God was still leading.

trust didn’t mean having answers.
it meant moving when He moved—
and stopping when He stopped.

THIS IS THE PATTERN

trust with God has always worked like this.

“a person’s steps are directed by the Lord.
how then can anyone understand their own way?”
— proverbs 20:24

that verse isn’t poetic.
it’s honest.

God sees the whole picture —
where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going.
the path we need to take.
the roads we need to avoid.
the detours that will equip us.

we don’t.

we see what’s right in front of us.
we feel what’s loud.
we react to what feels urgent.

so we pray for certainty.
a full plan.
a timeline.
some reassurance that we’re not about to ruin everything.

yet, even still, we don’t have full visibility.

not because He’s withholding —
but because the reality we’re navigating is limited,
and God sees from outside the constraints we live within.

that’s why Scripture doesn’t say, understand first, then move.
it says, trust Me.

not in a vague or mystical way —
but in the same practical way Moses followed the cloud.

step by step.
day by day.

move when He moves.
stop when He stops.

no map.
no five-year plan.
just presence.
just intimacy.

AND THIS IS WHERE IT STARTS TO SHOW UP

because when we don’t have the full picture,
we don’t become passive.

we become managerial.

we start scanning for variables we can control.

we stare at our bank account.
we replay conversations.
we draft texts we never send.

we overthink decisions that suddenly feel heavier than they should.

we wonder if we’re behind.
if we missed something.
if everyone else got a memo we didn’t.

and slowly — almost imperceptibly —
the weight shifts.

what once felt guided
starts to feel self-managed.

not all at once.
just enough to feel tired.

so we scramble.
we overcorrect.
we panic.

not because we stopped believing —
but because we started carrying responsibility
we were never meant to hold alone.

we’re navigating a partial view
as if it’s the full one.

and God keeps inviting us back to the same posture:

pause.
listen.
trust Me.

not the noise in front of you.
not the pressure in your body.
not the urgency in your thoughts.

listen to My voice —
because I can see what you can’t.

BRINGING THIS BACK TO YOU

and i want to bring this back to you —
to the prayer you’ve been praying,
the clarity you’ve been asking for,
the thing you’ve been trying to reason your way through.

whether you’ve named it or not,
there’s something in your life right now
that you’re trying to understand
before you’re willing to move.

so let me encourage you.

get still enough to listen.

quiet the noise.
stop reacting to what you see and what you feel —
and listen.

God is not silent.
He never has been.

you are not required to figure out
how to get yourself from here to there.

in fact, you can’t.

you will never out-think, out-plan, or out-strategize
a God who sees everything at once.

when you trust God, His promise is simple and steady:
He will guide you.
step by step.
decision by decision.

your responsibility isn’t clarity.
it’s alignment.

you don’t need the full plan.
you don’t need certainty.
you don’t need proof.

you need obedience.

when He says move — move.
when He says stop — stop.
when His Spirit nudges you — follow.

even if the step feels small.
even if it feels incomplete.

He isn’t waiting for you to figure this out alone.
He’s waiting for you to trust Him enough to move —
even when you don’t have the full view.

if you’re exhausted from circling the same mountain,
if the grief and the delays have worn you thin,
if you’re tired of pretending you can control
what only He sees —

this is the moment it changes.

not with more answers.
with obedience.

what’s the one step you already know to take —
the one you keep delaying
because uncertainty feels safer than surrender?

take it.
today.

when you move,
He guides.

not because you finally understood —
but because you finally obeyed.

“trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight.”
— Proverbs 3:5

xx lindsey eryn

p.s. i want to know what line stayed with you.

leave a comment and tell me—or come find me on instagram @lindseyeryn and send me a dm.

Leave a comment

i’m not here to publish thoughts and disappear.
this is a conversation.

ily, mean it

if you’re honest, part of what makes building feel so heavy right now
isn’t the work.
it’s the quiet pressure to make it all work.

to provide.
to sustain.
to not fail.
to not need help.

here’s the truth we forget when we’re responsible and capable and tired:
provision is not your job. it’s God’s.

i made a free resource for the builders who feel the weight of that responsibility sitting on their chest.

provision is not your job is a short, grounding reset—
→ scripture
→ reflection
→ a gentle financial and mental re-alignment
→ a closing prayer to help you release what you were never meant to carry

this isn’t about doing less or trying harder.
it’s about breaking agreement with panic and returning to partnership.

if you’re building something meaningful and need to breathe again,
this is for you.

get the free resource here →

it fell hard enough that my body lifted out of the seat before the seatbelt caught me.

one moment, the flight was smooth.
the next, everything shifted.

no warning from the captain.
no slow buildup.
just sudden, violent turbulence.

this was during the weeks when every headline seemed to be about planes malfunctioning, systems failing, disasters no one saw coming. and for a split second, the thought crossed my mind: oh God. not like this.

i didn’t know what else to do, so i started praying in the Spirit.

a few minutes later — after the shaking had already begun — the captain came on and said, calmly, “ladies and gentlemen, we’re experiencing some turbulence.”

which felt… unnecessary.
we knew.

but here’s the strange thing: even while my hands were clenched around the armrests, i wasn’t afraid we were going to crash.

i knew something the turbulence couldn’t override.

the pilots knew what they were doing.
planes don’t fall out of the sky because of turbulence.
and whatever was happening in the cabin wasn’t a sign that something had gone wrong in the cockpit.

the shaking we can’t explain

over the past few weeks, i’ve felt that same drop — not on a plane, but everywhere else.

we turned the calendar to a new year expecting relief. closure. answers.

instead, what arrived was turbulence.
in finances.
in relationships.
in creativity.
in focus.
in hope.

and it’s tempting to ask the same question everyone asks when things start shaking without warning:

God, where are you? what is happening?
did i miss something?

over the past few weeks, i’ve been having quiet conversations with friends and people in my community in dms. everyone is feeling it.

not panic.
not collapse.
just… shaking. a low-grade instability that’s hard to name but impossible to ignore.

a familiar story, heard differently

last night, we were sitting around the dinner table when my four-year-old niece suddenly looked up and said,

“did you see my new angel?”

she’d gotten it at costco.

“i think it’s a girl,” she added. “she has long hair.”

this somehow turned into a theological discussion that was wildly inappropriate for a four-year-old, but i answered her anyway.

“there are no female angels mentioned in the bible. every angel named is male. gabriel. michael.”

she asked who michael was.

before i could answer, my mom jumped in and started telling the story of michael the archangel stepping in for daniel — a story i’ve heard more times than i can count. she quoted it from memory:

“don’t be afraid, daniel. from the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your prayer was heard in heaven. i have come in answer to your prayer.”

and something about that moment — that sentence, spoken casually over dinner — landed differently.

i’ve read that passage before.
i’ve underlined it and scribbled notes in the margins of my bible.

but this time, it didn’t feel like a story.
it felt like a disclosure.

still living inside the same story

a lot of us right now are waiting for God to move.
and it feels like silence.
like heaven is unresponsive.
like prayers are hitting the ceiling and falling back down unanswered.

but daniel’s story suggests something far more clarifying is going on.

we tend to read scripture as if it belongs to a different era.
as if what daniel faced has nothing to do with what we’re navigating now.

but the truth is simpler — and more confronting:
we’re still living inside the same story.

the battles in scripture didn’t disappear when the ink dried. the same spiritual dynamics are still at work — just with different names, faces, and pressure points.

what daniel experienced wasn’t ancient drama.
it was exposure.

obedience without evidence

before the angel ever appeared, something important had already been unfolding — quietly, faithfully, without feedback.

daniel had been praying and fasting for three weeks.

not out of desperation.
not to force God’s hand.
but to seek understanding.

no emotional climax.
no reassurance anything was working.

just obedience in the absence of evidence.

when the angel finally arrives, he doesn’t correct daniel.

he doesn’t tell him to pray harder.
he doesn’t imply God was waiting to see if he was serious.
he doesn’t suggest the delay was daniel’s fault.

instead, he gives him information:

“from the first day you began to pray, your words were heard.”

that single sentence reframes everything.

the prayer was answered immediately.

silence did not mean inactivity.
the delay wasn’t because God hesitated — it was because opposition intervened.

what was happening in the unseen

most of us assume delay means God paused. or reconsidered. or decided to wait and see how we’d handle the pressure.

did He hear me and choose not to act?
am i doing something wrong?
is this delay correction… or silence?

those questions don’t come from doubt.
they come from interpreting delay as absence.

daniel’s story dismantles that assumption entirely.

God did not hesitate.
He did not delay out of indifference.
He responded immediately.

so the real question emerges — the same one many of us are asking now:

if God responded immediately, why does it still feel like nothing is moving?

spiritual warfare, named plainly

this is where daniel 10 breaks the fourth wall.

the angel explains he was dispatched immediately, but delayed for twenty-one days by resistance from a ruling spiritual authority connected to persia. michael the archangel intervened so the assignment could continue, though the conflict itself was still ongoing.

this wasn’t symbolic.
it wasn’t metaphor.
it was real resistance in the unseen realm.

the resistance came after the answer was released.

which means the gap between prayer and fulfillment had nothing to do with God’s willingness — or Daniel’s effort.

it was spiritual warfare.

the kind scripture names plainly in ephesians 6:12—

“we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

when scripture gives us data

this reframes everything.

when things start shaking, we assume something is wrong—with us, with God, with the path we’re on.

we scan for mistakes.
we replay decisions.
we wonder if we misheard him.

but daniel’s story doesn’t let us stay in speculation—

it gives us answers and data about what’s happening in the spirit realm.

the delay is measured. twenty-one days.

real. observable. not random.

daniel fasts for three weeks.
the resistance lasts three weeks.

what was happening in heaven mirrored what daniel was living on earth.

heaven and earth weren’t disconnected.
they were moving at the same time.

delay didn’t mean nothing was happening.
it meant something was unfolding beyond view.

if there is resistance, it’s because what you’re carrying matters.

resistance doesn’t show up where nothing is happening.

so when things start shaking, it doesn’t mean you’re crashing.
it means something valuable is in motion.

tightening things up

right now, many of us feel that shaking.

and the instinct is to react — to fix, explain, fight the wrong battle.

but scripture keeps pointing us in a different direction.

all week, the same phrase has surfaced again and again:
“tighten things up.”

not externally.
internally.

tighten your focus.
tighten your thought life.
tighten what you’re giving your attention to.

daniel was grieving.
he was fasting.
he was confused.

and yet — his heart was undivided.

he set his heart to understand.
he humbled himself before God.
he fixed his attention on God’s character, truth, and word. not his circumstances.

his prayers weren’t about performance.
they were about posture.

and heaven responded.

heaven responds immediately (twice)

and, here’s what i found interesting:
this wasn’t the first time heaven responded to daniel this way.

in fact, daniel 10 is the second time daniel is visited by an angel.

in the chapter before, in daniel 9:21–23, daniel is visited by gabriel:

“while i was praying, gabriel, whom i had seen in the earlier vision, came swiftly to me at the time of the evening sacrifice. he explained to me, ‘daniel, i have come to give you insight and understanding. the moment you began praying, a command was given. and now i am here to tell you what it was, for you are very precious to God.’”

that language should sound familiar.
it sets the pattern for what happens again in the next chapter.

first, scripture establishes this without ambiguity:
heaven moves the moment prayer begins.

notice the consistency:

“the moment you began praying, a command was given.”

heaven doesn’t wait.
it responds.

identity before explanation

then scripture names something else entirely — not about timing, but about identity.

both times daniel is visited by an angel, he’s told the same thing:

you are very precious to God.

the hebrew word used is ḥamudot — meaning to delight in, to treasure, to desire deeply.

this word isn’t casual.
it’s used for covenantal delight.
for something God chooses to protect.

this isn’t:
“God likes you.”

it’s this:
“you are marked as someone God values — and therefore defends.”

and that matters, because delay has a way of raising the most destabilizing question of all: do i even matter to God?

when prayers stretch on unanswered…
when confusion lingers…
when nothing seems to be moving…

it’s easy to assume significance is tied to speed.

but daniel’s story dismantles that assumption.

before daniel is told why there was resistance, he is told who he is to God.
before heaven explains the delay, it confirms his value.

which explains why heaven mobilizes so decisively in daniel 10.

repetition as confirmation

and here’s why it matters that both of these things are said twice — and preserved for us thousands of years later: in hebrew thought, repetition is never accidental.

it’s not emphasis for effect.
it’s confirmation.

repetition functions as witness.

to say something twice is to establish it as true, reliable, and settled.

it’s how scripture signals: this isn’t coincidence — this is how reality works.
not because God needs redundancy — but because humans need certainty.

so when daniel is told twice that heaven moved the moment he prayed, that’s not reassurance. it’s disclosure.

and when he’s told twice that he is precious to God, that’s not sentiment.
it’s covenantal confirmation.

scripture isn’t just affirming daniel’s identity. it’s revealing God’s pattern — that he moves swiftly toward those who set their hearts to seek him and humble themselves before him.

this is how God responds to prayer.
this is how God views the one praying.

this is how heaven moves when someone positions their heart toward him.

the repetition tells us this wasn’t a one-time exception.
it was a revealed mechanism.

not just who daniel was —
but how God moves.

the blueprint

which means tightening things up was never about control.

it was about posture.

when daniel experienced confusion, delay, and turbulence, he didn’t escalate his effort — he clarified his attention. he set his heart. he humbled himself. he stayed aligned.

that’s the blueprint.

not frantic prayer.
not louder faith.
not trying to force movement.

but steady alignment when things start shaking.

because turbulence doesn’t call for theatrics. it calls for posture. and scripture shows us — again and again — that God responds to that.

the invitation

if you’ve been waiting on God to answer your prayers,
if this year has felt more turbulent than you expected —
you’re not alone.

you’re not praying into emptiness. you’re praying to the living God — the One who hears you, even when you don’t know how to explain what you’re feeling.

and when words run out, God doesn’t.

according to romans 8, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us — even through sighs, even through groans we can’t translate. which means God is already involved long before we can make sense of what’s happening.

so you don’t have to analyze every disruption.
you don’t have to obsess over the shaking.

you can let your attention return to who God is.
you can let truth steady you — even while things are still unsettled.

daniel didn’t fight the battle.
he stayed aligned while God fought it.

and that’s the invitation many of us are standing in right now.

it’s not your responsibility to fix everything.
it’s not even your job to understand the unseen.

your role is to be faithful in what’s right in front of you —
to keep your eyes fixed on God.

not to do more.
not to pray harder.
not to manufacture faith.

but to release control.

to stop trying to manage what God has already taken responsibility for.
to trust that silence is not stagnation.
and that turbulence is not failure.

nothing happening right now has the authority to undo what God is already doing.

just because things are shaking doesn’t mean the system is compromised. just because you don’t hear the cockpit doesn’t mean no one is flying the plane.

heaven heard you the first day.
God responded before you felt anything change.

you don’t have to fight this battle.
you just have to stop trying to take it back.

stay close.
God is fighting for you.

xx lindsey eryn

p.s. i want to know what line stayed with you.

leave a comment and tell me—or come find me on instagram @lindseyeryn and send me a dm.

Leave a comment

i’m not here to publish thoughts and disappear.
this is a conversation.

ily, mean it

if you’re honest, part of what makes building feel so heavy right now
isn’t the work.
it’s the quiet pressure to make it all work.

to provide.
to sustain.
to not fail.
to not need help.

here’s the truth we forget when we’re responsible and capable and tired:
provision is not your job. it’s God’s.

i made a free resource for the builders who feel the weight of that responsibility sitting on their chest.

provision is not your job is a short, grounding reset—
→ scripture
→ reflection
→ a gentle financial and mental re-alignment
→ a closing prayer to help you release what you were never meant to carry

this isn’t about doing less or trying harder.
it’s about breaking agreement with panic and returning to partnership.

if you’re building something meaningful and need to breathe again,
this is for you.

get the free resource here →

which makes sense. spotify wrapped told me it was my most-played song of 2025.

the lyrics are simple:

on-time God
You love the impossible
on-time God
You love doing miracles

over the past few years, i’ve written about the collapse that unfolded in the summer of 2024—a season that ended in a kind of revolution. a purge. a decision to choose joy, to walk back up the proverbial mountain to meet God again and pray, hope, and believe for more time.

a few weeks ago, i wrote that the mountain changed me.

and it did.

in the months that followed—during that slow internal revolution—God took me on a healing journey. something in me came back online. i got my fire back.

what i didn’t say then is this:

my external circumstances didn’t improve.

in fact, they’re undeniably worse than they were when i was in that summer depression.

if someone looked only at the facts of my life—the timelines, the outcomes, the unanswered prayers—they wouldn’t call this an upswing. they’d probably question whether i was misreading things altogether.

and yet, despite that—despite the sense that time is pressing in on multiple areas of my life—this song has become my mantra.

i’m choosing to carry it instead of the whispers fear offers me all day long.

not because anything is resolved.
not because the path is clear.

but because something in me keeps repeating it—
a quiet resistance to panic.

when God intervenes and things get worse

last night, i was watching superbook with clark, my four-year-old niece—the story of moses and the israelites escaping egypt. it’s easy to treat these stories like children’s tales. animated characters. familiar endings. we know how it turns out, so we forget how it felt while it was happening.

but if you actually stay inside the story, it’s unbearable.

the israelites had been enslaved for four hundred years. generations born into suffering, praying for deliverance they would never see. and when God finally raises up moses—when someone finally starts advocating for their freedom—their situation doesn’t improve.

it collapses.

pharaoh tightens the workload.
straw is taken away.
the pressure increases.
what little margin they had disappears.

God’s intervention doesn’t bring relief first—it brings resistance.

and the people don’t celebrate moses.
they turn on him.

scripture says their spirits were crushed, and they would no longer listen to him.

that line matters more than we admit.

they didn’t stop listening because moses was wrong.
they stopped listening because hope had become too expensive.

freedom sounded beautiful—until it made life harder than bondage.

slavery was brutal, but it was predictable.

deliverance was uncertain, humiliating, and required trust they no longer had emotional capacity for.

so they did what humans do under pressure:
they decided they didn’t want it anymore.

when even leaders lose heart

and then there’s moses.

we like to imagine him as steady and confident, but he wasn’t. when everything starts going sideways, moses gets discouraged too. he goes back to God in exodus 6 and essentially says: this isn’t working.

“they don’t listen to me.”
“pharaoh won’t listen to me.”
“and besides, i stutter.”

notice what happens here.

moses doesn’t just feel tired—he starts using circumstances to reinterpret his calling.

he resurrects old insecurities.
he disqualifies himself.
he subtly suggests that if God were really in this, it wouldn’t look like this.

which is exactly what we do.

when the thing we prayed for starts costing us comfort, we don’t usually say, “i’m afraid.” we say, “maybe this wasn’t God after all.”

the israelites wanted moses to stop advocating.
moses wanted God to stop insisting.

both were trying to reduce discomfort.
both were tempted to take control back.

the modern mirror

and this is where the story becomes uncomfortably modern and familiar.

how often do we pray for clarity, provision, healing, or freedom—and when the process gets harder instead of easier, we quietly withdraw the request?

it’s the job search that stretches on longer than expected, until hope feels embarrassing.
the healing work that opens old wounds instead of closing them.
the calling that demands more patience, exposure, or risk than we thought we agreed to.

it’s the relationship we thought would exist by now.
the family we assumed we’d be building already—until time kept moving and nothing did.

we don’t renounce the prayer.
we just stop expecting anything to come from it.

we don’t say it out loud, but we think it:
“i’d rather live with what’s manageable, predictable, and known than keep hoping for something that keeps disappointing me.”

or we do what moses did.

when it’s not going as planned, we start questioning ourselves and God. we renegotiate timelines. we lower expectations. we grasp for control—not because we don’t believe in God, but because waiting feels riskier than settling.

God does not renegotiate

here’s the part that undoes me every time:

God does not back down.

despite crushed spirits.
despite leadership insecurity.
despite worsening conditions.

God reiterates the same promise: redemption, deliverance, intervention.

not because morale is high.
not because conditions are favorable.

but because God does not renegotiate what He said based on human discomfort. God’s promises are not dependent on our emotional capacity to hold them.

the red sea moment

as the story continues, it becomes even more unsettling.

eventually, pharaoh agrees to let the israelites go.
but once they finally leave egypt, they immediately want to go back.

freedom doesn’t feel like freedom yet.
it feels like exposure.

pharaoh changes his mind. his army is chasing them. the red sea is in front of them. the wilderness stretches behind them. and suddenly, under the weight of pressure, the people say the thing we all say when fear closes in:

“at least egypt was predictable.”

they accuse moses of bringing them out to die. they rehearse worst-case outcomes. they panic out loud. they try to regain control with their words.

and God does something unexpected.

He doesn’t soothe them first.
He doesn’t explain the plan.
He draws a line.

in exodus 14:14, God says something that’s often softened in english translations.

the hebrew is blunt:

“the LORD will fight for you — and you will be silent.”

not be calm.
not feel peaceful.

the verb used here—taḥărishūn—means to stop speaking. to go mute. to cease voicing protest, accusation, or argument.

in other words:
stop narrating this.
stop managing it with your mouth.
stop trying to interpret what i’m doing mid-process.

this is not a gentle invitation into stillness.

it’s a command that removes israel—and even moses—from the role of interpreter and fixer.

“the LORD will fight for you.”
“and you — be silent.”

God takes the role of warrior.
humans are reduced to witnesses.

this silence is not passivity—it’s restrained trust. no panic-prayers. no accusations. no instructions to God.

why?

because this battle is not participatory.
it’s revelatory.

God is not asking for help.
He is revealing who He is.

obedience without commentary

and here’s the detail most people miss:

silence did not mean inactivity.

and that obedience is where the miracle happens.

the sea parts.
israel walks through on dry ground.
what looked like an ending becomes a path.

and when they finish crossing, the sea closes behind them.
pharaoh’s army is swallowed up.

so this isn’t about freezing.

it’s about obeying without commentary.
acting without narrating.
moving without trying to control the story.

God is not saying, do nothing.
He’s saying, “you don’t get the microphone in this moment.”

making room for the miracle

which reframes everything.

what if worsening conditions aren’t evidence that God isn’t moving—but proof that He is? what if God doesn’t compete with human capability, but waits for it to run out?

most miracles don’t happen when we still have options.
they happen when self-rescue is no longer possible.

the red sea didn’t split when israel still had choices.
it split when they had none.

and here’s the harder implication:

what if our worry, our complaining, our constant narrating isn’t neutral?
what if it’s actually interfering with the process?

in exodus 14, God doesn’t ask israel to feel better.

He tells them to stop.

not as punishment.
as protection.

because fear-speech tries to take control.
it fills the silence God intends to occupy.

silence here isn’t passivity—it’s restraint.
it’s stepping out of the role of interpreter, defender, and fixer.

and maybe the hardest part of faith isn’t waiting.
maybe it’s knowing when to stop talking long enough to let God show who He is.

why miracles are missed

which is why so many miracles are missed—not because God doesn’t show up, but because we move first.

we rush.
we force.
we build substitutes that work just well enough to keep us from ever seeing what God intended to do.

and later we ask, where was God?

but maybe the better question is: why didn’t we wait?

God doesn’t want to be good to us in small, survivable ways.
being “good” isn’t just easing pressure, covering a bill, or fixing a moment.

it isn’t just relief that keeps us functioning.
it isn’t help that lets us stay the same.
it isn’t mercy that makes life tolerable without ever making it new.

God wants to be unmistakably good.

the kind of good that can’t be explained away.
the kind that rewrites stories.
the kind that splits seas.

if God feels late right now, it may be because He’s not interested in being temporarily helpful—He’s interested in being undeniable.

God is not late.
He is exact.
And He refuses to undershoot His own promises.

you are not abandoned.

you are exactly where miracles are formed.

He is still an on-time God.
He is still a God of the impossible.

and He has not backed down from what He said.

even here.

the full circle moment

and this is where it comes back full circle for me.

that song keeps looping in my head not because my circumstances are good—but because it would be easy to spend every day narrating to God how bad they are.

it would be easy to fill the space with fear.
with explanations.
with reminders of how impossible this feels.

but i don’t want to get in His way.
i don’t want to occupy the space He’s trying to fill.

i don’t want to stare so long at what feels impossible that i start believing slavery in egypt sounds safer than freedom i can’t yet see. that a manageable, predictable life is better than the dream God placed in my heart.

so i’m choosing a different posture.

one fixed on who God is—
not one glaring endlessly at what isn’t working yet.

and maybe today, that’s where you are too.

discouraged.
worn down.
questioning yourself.
questioning what God said.
feeling crushed in spirit and pressed on every side.

if so, i believe God would say this to you today:

trust Me.

i did not bring you this far to abandon you.
i see exactly where you are.

i am creating a path forward where you see no way.
i am fighting battles you cannot fight yourself.

stay close enough to hear My voice above the noise.

when i tell you to move—move.

and don’t narrate this moment.

if you can’t speak from faith, be silent.

your words shape atmosphere.
the miracle you’re waiting for isn’t dependent on you filling space—

it’s dependent on you making room for Me.

so give Him room.

in your spirit.
in your mind.
in your body.
in your work.

let Him take the lead.
He is the Good Shepherd.

you can trust Him.

His plan is to give you a hope and a future.
to do immeasurably more than you could ask or imagine.
to provide, redeem, restore, renew, rebuild, and defend.

stretch out your hands—
move when He says move.

let Him show you who He is.
let Him move in His power.
let Him split the red seas in your life on your behalf.

you don’t have to rescue yourself out of this place.

and when it’s done—
His goodness in your life will be undeniable.

you won’t need to explain it.
you’ll stand in reverent awe.

because He is who He says He is.

xx lindsey eryn

p.s. i want to know what line stayed with you.

leave a comment and tell me—or come find me on instagram @lindseyeryn and send me a dm.

Leave a comment

i’m not here to publish thoughts and disappear.
this is a conversation.

ily, mean it

there’s a version of you that has the idea, the calling, the thing that won’t leave you alone — and is still not building it. not because you’re not capable. but because every time you sit down to work, something feels off. the strategy doesn’t quite fit. the words don’t come. the momentum you had last week is gone again.

so you consume more. learn more. plan more. and the thing still sits there, waiting.

that’s not a you problem. that’s a foundation problem. and it doesn’t get solved by more information — it gets solved by building with God instead of for Him.

creator(s) circle is for the entrepreneur, the writer, the artist, the speaker, the leader — anyone carrying a divine assignment they’re done letting sit unbuilt. Inside, faith and strategy aren’t competing. they’re the same work. and when they finally are, you stop spinning and start building things that actually last.

every member starts with the shift — a 14-day identity challenge designed to close the gap between knowing who you are and actually building from that place. most people live in that gap for years. you don’t have to. then every month after: a formation challenge, live teaching, business tools, studio hours to implement, and a private community of builders who take their assignment as seriously as you do.

all of it for less than one hour of coaching.

$97/month. whatever has been sitting unbuilt — it’s time to go get it.

→ join creator(s) circle