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Okay, confession before anything else: it’s late. Like WAY later than I ever want these to go out. I sat here for a second feeling kinda bad about it, and then I actually laughed out l…

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It’s 2am and I’m rocking my daughter in the dark.

The house is quiet in that heavy, middle-of-the-night way, and I am running on absolutely nothing. I’m sick. She’s sick. Everybody in this house is sick. My eyes are burning, my arms are aching, and I’m whispering along to a worship playlist I threw together out of pure desperation, just trying to keep my heart from spiraling while I hold this feverish little body against my chest.

And somewhere in that dark room, in that bone-deep exhaustion, something happens that I was not expecting. I feel closer to God than I have ever felt with my highlighted Bible, my color-coded devotional, and my picture-perfect morning routine. Closer than I felt in any 5am quiet time I ever forced myself through. Closer than I felt in church pews.

I need to tell you how I got there. Because for a LONG time, friend, I walked around feeling like a failing Christian. And if you’ve ever felt that quiet, nagging guilt of “I’m not doing enough for God,” this one’s for you. Grab your coffee or tea sis.

I was raised on “make sure you put God first.” Which, yes, amen, absolutely, I will teach my babies the same thing. But somewhere along the way, “putting God first” got translated into a very specific schedule. And I don’t even think anyone sat me down and said it out loud, it was just... in the air, you know? Bible reading FIRST thing in the morning, before your feet even hit the floor practically. Church every single week, no exceptions, front row if you’re really holy. Devotion before anything else touches your day, before the coffee, before the emails, before the children who are literally calling your name from their playroom.

And if you didn’t do it in that order, in that way, at that time... were you even a real Christian?!? Like, girl, was your salvation buffering??

Then I became a mom.

And listen. LISTEN. The schedule I got handed as a new mama did not care one bit about my quiet time. Not one bit. There were entire seasons where I could not get up before the kids no matter how hard I tried, because those kids apparently had a sixth sense for the exact moment my eyes opened. Sometimes it was my own time management, I’ll own that fully, I’m the kind of gal who thinks she can squeeze 36 hours out of 24. But sometimes? It was literally, physically impossible. I was up three times a night. There was no “before the kids wake up.” There was only the kids, awake.

And every single time I missed the mark, that wave of guilt would roll in. Heavy and familiar. Like I was failing God because my faith didn’t LOOK the way I’d been taught faith was supposed to look (or how I interpreted it).

But here’s what I’ve come to believe, and it would’ve made younger me clutch her pearls all the way to the altar:

whatever you’re doing to try to “earn” your way into heaven, or earn God’s love and favor, the 5am quiet time, the perfect attendance, the unbroken devotional streak you’re low-key proud of, that is not the thing that gets you into heaven. It never was. It was NEVER going to be.

And honestly? That checklist can actually pull you AWAY from Jesus, even though everyone and their mama says the checklist is how you put Him first. Because you get so busy grading the routine that you miss the One the routine was supposed to be about.

Church was the hardest one for me, and I want to be really honest about this part.

I WANTED to be there religiously. Like, deep in my heart wanted it. I had this whole vision of my kids growing up inside the life of the church, always part of what’s happening there, serving, belonging, knowing everybody. And honestly, I still think that matters, I haven’t let go of that dream. But have you ever tried sitting through a service with two under two?? Between the diaper blowout, the snack negotiations, and the toddler who chose THIS moment to discover her outside voice, I was stepping out of the sanctuary so many times I’d catch maybe a third of the message on a good week. I’d get back to the car and think, I’m not even kidding, I would hear more of the Word sitting in my living room in my pajamas watching the livestream on the TV.

And can I be extra honest? I wasn’t feeling connected to the people either. You know those big churches with 3 or 4 back-to-back services, where the worship ends and you can basically feel yourself being shuttled toward the exits so the next crowd can file in? Nobody lingering, nobody really knowing you, just a polite little “good to see you!” in the lobby traffic. Yea. I wasn’t loving that. It was a whole thing in my heart for months.

So one day I’m on the phone with my mom, venting ALL of this, frustrated and honestly a little ashamed to even say it out loud, because who complains about church, right?!? And she said something that made me exhale for what felt like the first time in months.

She reminded me that church, the way you and I experience it right now, is what North America has made it. Not inherently bad! Hear me. But it’s been shaped for the masses, commercialized in its rhythms and its programs and its production, and that changes what church looks like and what’s expected of you inside of it. Then she said: take a step back, baby. Find a close group of believers you can actually DO LIFE with. Meet every couple of weeks in someone’s home. Sing together. Open the Word together. Eat together. Truly fellowship. Acts 2:42 type behavior, the breaking bread house to house kind.

And then she said the part that completely undid me: this may just be a season where God is calling you to serve at home, in your own family, in the needs of your own children, instead of serving formally in the church.

And I sat there like, wait a minute. WAIT a minute. Because earlier that year, when I’d been all fired up wanting to lead a small group, there was this one phrase I could not shake, that I believe with everything in me the Holy Spirit kept pressing into my spirit: “do not abandon your children for the sake of doing good.”

My mom didn’t know about that. She had no idea. That, my friend, was confirmation. My service, in this season, is first at home. In the sippy cups and the bedtime battles and the 2am rocking chair.

Now HOLD ON, because I can hear somebody warming up to misquote me. I am NOT saying the practices don’t matter, and I am absolutely not telling you to quit church. God’s commands are there because He loves us and wants us living righteously, and I will never, ever undermine that. Gathering with believers matters. Reading the Word matters. These things feed us. But notice, actually notice, what God says about HOW His Word is supposed to live in us:

“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts... Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-8)

“Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Proverbs 3:3)

“Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Proverbs 7:3)

“Meditate on it day and night.” (Joshua 1:8)

Do you see it? Day AND night. On your heart. On your hands. Around your neck. On your fingers.

God didn’t hand us a time slot. He described a LIFE.

Scripture is supposed to be wrapped around us, carried into every single hour, woven into the folding of laundry and the driving to run errands and the rocking of babies. Not locked in a tidy 20-minute box that expires the second the baby wakes up early and leaves you feeling like you already failed the day by 6:15am.

Which brings me back to that playlist...

Back in January, all my kids got sick. And I don’t mean a sniffle. I mean SIX WEEKS of sick, one kid after another after another, round and round like the world’s worst carousel. I was back to sleepless nights like a newborn mama, and then, because of course, I went down too. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I made a worship playlist. Not for content. Not to build a habit or check a box. Just to soothe my youngest to sleep and to keep my own tired heart fixed on God’s goodness instead of spiraling with worry over my babies at 3 in the morning.

And in those wee hours, rocking her in the dark, my only strength was coming from Him. I mean that literally. I had nothing left of my own. And that, right there, was communion. That was the Holy Spirit leading. That was meditating on His Word and His goodness in the middle of the night, EXACTLY like He said.

It’s been almost seven months now, and I still use that playlist to put Gigi down every single day. And every single time, I catch myself thinking, this is it. This IS my time with God. Daily. Faithful. Real. It just doesn’t look like anyone else’s, and it was never supposed to.

So here’s your reset for this week, friend: God is ever present.

He is not standing at the end of your bed at 5am with a clipboard, wondering why you’re late. He’s in the nursery at 2am. He’s in the car line. He’s in the livestream and the living room and the laundry pile. He’s in the playlist.

Salvation was never about your routine performing well. It’s about Jesus. It was finished on the cross, past tense, done, and no missed devotional, no missed service, no season of survival mode can undo it.

So stop grading yourself with someone else’s rubric. Wrap His Word around your actual life. Meditate on Him day and night, in whatever hours this season actually gives you.

That counts. It always counted.

And because I couldn’t write this whole thing and then keep it to myself... here’s the playlist. The actual one. The songs that carried me through those multiple wakes and still carry me through bedtime with Gigi almost 7 months later. Put it on during nap time, in the car line, while you fold that laundry mountain. Let it turn your ordinary hours into time with Him.

🎵 Oh How I Love Jesus

And if this lifted something heavy off your shoulders today, would you tap that restack button and share it? Somewhere out there is a mama apologizing to God for missing her devotion again, and she needs to know she was never failing. Send this her way.

Love you, see you next Sunday.

Jo.

I don’t do it all.

I literally don’t. And every single time I’ve tried, God has lovingly, and I mean LOVINGLY, let it fall apart right in my hands.

Just the other day I was talking with my girl, and she asked me THAT question. You know the one. “But how are you able to work and run everything with three kids, a home and a husband? How do you do it all?” And I looked at her and told her the truth: girl, I just don’t. I get LOTS of help. Because every single time I try to do it all myself, I don’t end up superwoman. I end up completely burnt out and over it. Over the business, over the laundry, over everything I prayed for.

I could tell my answer surprised her, probably because we’re all secretly waiting for the answer to be a morning routine or a planner or some app, not “I stopped trying.”

Which brings me to March. A high-rise hotel room in Toronto. Actual firefighters standing in it. Girl, let me tell you about this trip…

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Grab that coffee and come sit with me, because this week’s Reset is coming to you from the middle of a season, not the other side of one.

Real talk: there’s a shift happening in my life right now, in the business and at home. It’s exciting, like genuinely exciting, but it has me squeezing education and research into a life that was already full, mothering my babies to the max, and building something new on a timeline I can’t even fully lay out yet.

And you know what a stretching season does, right? It sends you running back to the Word for wisdom you know you don’t have on your own.

So I’ve been re-reading Proverbs. All of it. And this week, chapter 4 really hit me differently this time (that’s usually what happens when I re-read passages that I recently read).

The Word

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.” Proverbs 4:23-27

Okay so let’s talk about verse 23 first, because “keep your heart with ALL vigilance” is not casual language. That’s guard-at-the-gate language. And here’s what I’ve had to get honest about this week: I’ve been letting some things past the gate.

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Welcome to our very first Sunday Reset. Grab your coffee (or your tea, matcha, or hot chocolate, whatever puts that pep in your step) and let’s take a breath together before Monday comes knocking.

Real talk about the last few months: I have been in full-on “what’s next” mode with my business. Safari browser open, ideas flying, me googling things at 11pm that have NOTHING to do with anything I actually do. It was a lot, a lot of confusion and just searching with no real structure. And the Holy Spirit met me right in the middle of that chaos, which is exactly what I want to share with you today.

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Okay so, full honesty, I imagined writing this first post to you from somewhere cute. A coffee shop maybe. Instead, I’m writing it on a plane to Toronto, heading home to Canada for a family emergency. (Keeping the details close for now, but I would genuinely love your prayers.)

Leaving this evening was a whole thing. My six year old was absolutely heartbroken that I had to go. Amaiah, my two and a half year old, expressed her feelings by giving me a goodbye bite on the leg. OUCH! I’m not quite sure if this is her new way of saying “I love you”, but ill take it. And Gigi, my one year old, is teething and in her velcro era, so peeling her off of me at the door just about did me in.

And here’s the part that tells you everything about my life: before I even got to the airport today, I worked on contracts for a new business I’m building, got a workout edited for my weekly YouTube drop, made edits to two weeks of social content, filmed some short form videos, and still got my 10k steps in. No workout filmed today, which for me is basically a national holiday.

Sad mom and CEO, trying to stay productive while holding it all together. Welcome to my life. I’m so glad you’re here.

If you’re new to me, hi, I’m Jo. For years now, my whole thing has been helping women find their confidence again through movement, right at home, right in their living rooms. No intimidating gym floor, no waiting for the “right time,” no needing to already be fit to start getting fit. Just you, some floor space, and me mouthing encouraging things at you through a screen (with a HUGE smile on my face so you have 0 excuse to tell me you hated it). It became a YouTube channel (which is somehow closing in on 9 MILLION of you, what?!). Then it became an app (growwithjo home app, where I have a more intimate relationship and a tighter bond with the women who want to dig deep). And most importantly, it all became a community of women I genuinely think about all the time.

There’s a funny bit of symmetry in this Toronto trip, actually. I grew up in Canada, and six years ago, almost to the day, I moved to Florida with my first baby when he was just four months old. New country, new baby, new everything. So flying home right now, with that same baby Kaizen (now six years old) heartbroken at the door, has me feeling all kinds of things about how much can change and how faithful God has been through every single season of it.

But here’s the thing I don’t talk about as much: before all of that, before the channel and the app and the three tiny humans who bite me out of love, I was a woman with a very clear calling and a very real fear.

The calling: show women how to get strong, get confident, get HOT, honestly. That was it. That was the dream. I lived in the gym and I wanted to bring every woman in there with me. And deep down, I always believed that pull toward helping women wasn’t random. God put it there. It was mine to steward, not just mine to hustle.

The fear: I always knew I wanted to be a mom. Always. But somewhere in the back of my mind lived this quiet, nagging little voice that said, okay, but when that happens... what happens to the rest of you?

Because that’s the story we get told, right? Maybe not out loud, but it’s everywhere. That ambition and motherhood are mutually exclusive. That when the babies arrive, the dream simply packs its bags. That you can be a great mom or you can be a woman building something, and picking both means you’re doing a bad job at both.

I believed some version of that for longer than I’d like to admit. I’d picture my future kids and feel this wave of love, and then, a wave of but what about everything I’m building? Like I was pre-grieving a version of myself I hadn’t even lost yet. Looking back, that fear was really a trust issue. I was gripping my calling so tight instead of trusting the One who gave it to me in the first place.

So can I tell you what actually happened?

Motherhood didn’t cancel my calling. It revamped it.

The woman who wanted to show you how to get hot in the gym? She’s still very much here (and she still wants you to feel HOT, for the record). But she got handed three kids in six years and a whole new understanding of what women are actually up against. I realized we’re not missing motivation or discipline, our lives just got FULL, beautifully, chaotically full, and nobody redesigned the plan around that.

So I redesigned it. Living room workouts, because that’s where we actually are. Movement that fits into real life instead of demanding you build your life around it. Confidence that doesn’t wait for the “after” photo.

And here’s the plot twist I didn’t see coming: the babies didn’t shrink my ambition. They multiplied it. Every business decision I make now, I make as a mother. Every workout I program, I program knowing exactly what it feels like to be touched-out and tired and still wanting something for yourself.

Motherhood didn’t water down my work. It made it matter more.

Turns out Jesus wasn’t asking me to choose between the babies and the calling. He was weaving them together into something I never could have designed on my own. He knew. He always knew.

Which brings me to why we’re here, in this shiny new corner of the internet.

Over the past couple of years, I kept having the same conversation over and over. With friends, with women in my community, with strangers who’d message me at 11pm. And it was never really about workouts. It was: how are you doing all of this? How are you raising kids AND raising a business? Does the guilt ever quiet down? Do you ever feel like you’re failing both? (Yes. Constantly. We’ll get into it. Spoiler: a lot of my answer involves prayer and letting go of the fantasy that I’m the one holding it all together.)

And every time, I’d think, someone should be writing this down. The real version. Not the girl-boss highlight reel and not the martyrdom either. The messy, funny, sometimes-crying-in-the-pantry, genuinely-so-fulfilling middle of it.

So... hi. I’m writing it down. That’s what Raising Both is.

This is where I’m going to talk about the stuff that doesn’t fit in a workout video. Building businesses with a baby on your hip. The identity whiplash. Where my faith holds me up when the juggle feels impossible. The wins nobody claps for and the failures that taught me more about myself than any successes ever did. And yes, I said businesses, plural, because there is something new brewing behind the scenes right now that I am DYING to tell you about and absolutely will not yet. (Those contracts I mentioned working on this morning? That’s the one. I’m sorry. (not sorry)… It’s going to be worth it, I promise.)

If you’re a mom building something, a business, a side hustle, a dream you keep tucked in your back pocket, this is for you. If you’re not a mom but you love a woman who’s doing both, this is for you too. And if you’re just here because you’re nosy about the secret project? Honestly, valid. Stay.

I’ll be showing up here regularly with stories, lessons, probably some chaos, and eventually... the big reveal. Subscribe so you don’t miss it, and come say hi in the chat. Tell me what you’re raising right now. I mean it. I read everything.

Thank you BEYOND for being here from day one. This is going to be so fun.

Talk very, very soon!! LOVE YOU GUYS!

Jo