Friend, we’ve been talking a lot about overwhelm and anxiety lately, but have you ever considered how much they have to do with your drive to perform?

When our worth is tied to our performance, peace only comes when we’re producing. And where does that take us?
Straight to burnout and exhaustion.

I truly believe if you got curious about what lies underneath your constant busyness and hustle, you’d find a moment when you didn’t feel safe — and staying busy became how you found safety.

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Several years ago I started digging into my own constant fatigue. What I found underneath was years of not feeling safe. My response was striving for my parents’ approval. When I became a Christian at 20, I did the same with God. I attached His love to my performance and built my faith on my ability to get it right.

Maybe you’re walking through a season of complete exhaustion. If so, I want you to know: God is not disappointed that you can’t hold everything together.

I think of Martha in Luke 10. Jesus comes to her home — Scripture says it was her home — and while her sister Mary sits at His feet like a disciple, Martha is, in Luke’s words, “distracted by much serving.”

That phrase has always undone me. Distracted. Pulled in many directions. That’s exactly what overwhelm feels like.

We usually read this as Jesus telling Martha to stop working and be more like Mary. But that’s not what He says.

He doesn’t correct her work.
He names what’s in her heart — worry.

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.”

He names what’s happening inside her, not what she’s doing with her hands.

And listen to what she actually says: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?”

That’s not just a to-do list problem.
That’s a Do you see me?
Do you care that I’m alone in this? problem.

This is where performance always leads us. We start doing good, even God-honoring things, and somewhere along the way it quietly becomes: If I don’t hold it together, it will all fall apart.

Does anyone notice what it’s costing me?

Martha wasn’t just busy.
She felt unseen in her busyness.

And Jesus, against all cultural protocol, says her name twice. Martha, Martha. That’s intimacy. That’s “I see you. I know you. You’re not invisible to me.”

Here’s the twist we often miss: Mary wasn’t just choosing rest over work. In that culture, women didn’t sit at a rabbi’s feet as disciples. Mary took a posture she wasn’t supposed to take.
It looked unproductive and improper.

Both sisters were bold.
Martha boldly led and hosted.
Mary boldly broke the rules to be close to Jesus.
One bold in doing, one bold in being.
But only one was rooted in peace.

Jesus wasn’t asking Martha to be less bold or capable. He was inviting her boldness to come from a different place.

Not, “I have to do more to be cared for.”
But, “I am already cared for, so I can let some things be undone.”

And if you know the rest of their story, you get this full-circle grace.

In John 11, when Lazarus dies, it’s Martha — not Mary — who runs out to meet Jesus on the road while Mary stays inside. The once-anxious host becomes the theologian who looks Him in the eye and declares, “You are the Christ, the Son of God.”

The woman anxious about many things becomes the woman who sees the One Thing most clearly.

God doesn’t want to take your capacity away. He wants to heal what’s underneath that says you have to perform to be loved.

So maybe today the question isn’t, “How do I become a Mary instead of a Martha?”

Maybe it’s, “What would it look like for my Martha heart to do what it does from rest, not for rest?”

You don’t have to hustle for the love you already have.

With you in the in-between,
Ruthann

This has been a full week of conversations with women — women carrying different wounds, but the same ache underneath.

It’s a thread I’ve been hearing for months now.

What stayed with me wasn’t just what had happened to them, but what happened after. What happens after the phone call. After the resignation letter. After the diagnosis. After the thing that changed everything.

That time in-between the day everything changed and whatever comes next.

Have you been there before? Held in a hard season wondering when it will end. We read a lot about ‘the day everything changed’ and what happened on the other side. But not enough about the space in-between. And yet, it’s within this space that so much of our lives is lived.

When I consider my own life, the ones that shaped me the most, they happened not in a span of a day but in the months and years that followed.

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When I lost my mom and dad, the hardest days followed the funeral. Dropping our sons off at college. Watching my husband battle cancer. None of these came with a definitive timeline or a promise of who I might one day become. And it wasn’t until afterwards that I even found my footing and realized I didn’t just survive but I actually came out differently.

God shaped Paul in prison. Hannah in her waiting. Jesus in the garden. Abraham on a mountain. David in a cave.

Friend, you are not in a wasteland wasting away — where you’re at right now is where God is making you into who you were always meant to be.

I am comforted in remembering all the times I thought I would crumble and yet God picked me up. All the times I thought I wouldn’t make it through and God carried me.

Sweet friend, you can rest here. He is carrying you too.

If I had the chance to change anything about how I parented, the one thing I would change is—choosing to heal sooner.

Because I didn’t know my anxiety was just my body’s way of trying to regulate itself. I didn’t know my fear of being attacked came from a real place. I didn’t know my struggle with control came from a fear of being out of control, of trying to steady the chaos.

I didn’t know that when I felt left out, overlooked, or ignored, it was touching an unhealed wound even deeper.

I didn’t know that my brokenness wasn’t because God wouldn’t fix me, or because I was born that way but because life had taken a toll on me growing up.

I think of Hagar in the wilderness.

She didn’t have a name that mattered to anyone else. She was a servant, used for someone else’s plan, and then despised for it. When it got too hard, she ran. And when she was cast out the second time, she wandered in the wilderness with her son until the water ran out. She laid him under a shrub because she couldn’t bear to watch him die.

I’ve felt that wilderness. That place where your body is anxious and your mind is trying to regulate, where you feel out of control and are just trying to steady the chaos. Where you feel left out and overlooked and you wonder if God sees you at all.

But God did see her.
Right there. Not after she got it together. Not after she was less broken.

An angel of the Lord found her by a spring. He called her by name. He saw her son. He opened her eyes to water that was already there.

And Hagar—alone, abandoned, broken by what life had taken out of her—gives God a name: You are the God who sees me. El Roi.

What would healing sooner have changed? Maybe I wouldn’t have been so afraid of what others thought of me. Or so afraid of what our boys might have to go through.

Maybe I would have known myself better. Known sooner that my identity wasn’t in being a good mom, or a together mom, or a mom who had it all figured out but that my identity was already secure in Christ.

Healing isn’t going back to who I was before life took its toll. It’s becoming more fully who God says I already am—seen, known, and not forgotten in the wilderness.

Where do you feel unseen today, friend? Can I remind you—the (living) water is already there. He is El Roi, the God who sees you right there in it.

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Life Update

Our youngest son, Jonah and his wife Jadeyn, have been walking through some hard years. They recently announced their decision to adopt. Since, it’s their story, I am including their words rather than mine. If you feel led to support them in prayer or financially we would be ever so grateful.

“There are moments in life that can shake your world. For us, those moments have consumed our thoughts and prayers for the past few years. We have been hoping to begin our family for quite some time now. What we imagined would be a joyful and exciting chapter of life slowly became a time of confusion and heartache. After many appointments, tests, and conversations with doctors, all we were left with was unexplained infertility. When tempted to be overwhelmed by fear or anxiety, our prayers instead, led us to a clear path. With hopeful hearts, we want to share that path with you. We are beginning the journey to adopt!

God has clearly led us to an agency called Texas Christian Adoptions. This is a time of hope and anticipation as we are looking to raise $47,000. These funds in full will allow us to become a waiting family and allow us to adopt when the opportunity arises. We are asking that you consider partnering with us through these three prayers:

(1) Pray for our future baby and their birth mother. We don’t know her name or her story yet, but God does and our prayer is that she would see the love that her Father in Heaven has for her. We don’t know when we may meet our baby but please pray for their safety, their health, and their life even now.

(2) Pray that through generous donations we would be fully funded by the end of 2026. As you pray about potentially giving, we are asking that you would reach out so that we may thank you for your generosity. You can give here .

(3) Pray that as we wait and watch God work, that our marriage would grow stronger by the day as God prepares our hearts to become future parents.

Thank you for loving us, supporting us, and walking beside us in this chapter of our story. Your prayers, encouragement, and kindness mean more to us than we could ever put into words. And one day — hopefully sooner than we can imagine — we cannot wait to introduce you to the little miracle who made us a family.

Please share this post!”🤍

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I don’t think people abandon their dreams because they’ve failed too many times.

I used to think that. I used to think there was a threshold — enough closed doors, enough not yet’s, enough disappointment — and once you crossed it, you were allowed to quit. Like failure itself was a permission slip.

But I don’t believe that anymore.

I think people abandon their dreams long before the failures pile up high enough to justify it. I think it happens quietly, in a moment nobody names out loud — the moment they stop believing God is actually good. And that He actually wants good for them.

Not an easy life. Not a comfortable one. I’m not talking about the version of faith that promises smooth roads if you just believe hard enough — I stopped believing that a long time ago, and it nearly cost me more than the disappointments themselves did. I’m talking about something quieter, and harder to hold onto: the belief that even on the roads that aren’t smooth, He is still for you. Still working. Still shaping something in you that the easy road never could have.

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Here’s what I keep coming back to.

Somewhere in the middle of my own story — the parts I didn’t order, the parts that looked nothing like what I’d prayed for — I had to answer a question I didn’t know I was even being asked.

Is God still good, even now?

Not “is my life good.” Not “did this turn out the way I wanted.” Just — is He good. Because everything else hangs on that one answer.

If He is good, the unclosed door isn’t proof I misheard Him.
If He is good, the delay isn’t denial.
If He is good, then whatever this is I’m walking through right now isn’t the end of who I was always meant to become — it might be how I actually get there.

I think that’s the real reason so many of us quietly set our dreams down. Not because we ran out of strength. Because we stopped trusting the character of the One who placed the dream inside us in the first place.

So if you’re standing right now where it would be easier to just let go — can I ask you gently?

Because friend, if that’s you — hear me: He is fighting for you, and He won’t give up, even if you do. Even here. Even now, in this version of the story you didn’t order. Especially here.

There have been so many seasons I believed God was for everyone else, but not for me. And I’ve since learned — it wasn’t Him who put that belief in me. It was something else entirely. I grew up believing love was like everything else I’d known: conditional. That if I could just be perfect, do everything right, hold it all together — then my life would be too.

But friend, that is the furthest thing from the truth. That is not how God works. He is so much better than the world’s economy of earning.

You see — God’s purpose was never to give us the life we always wanted. It’s always been to give us the life we never thought we could have.

This past week, I sat on a cliff at the edge of the ocean — the same cliff I’ve sat on more times than I can count — and I remembered every version of myself who had sat there before, certain she was invisible to God. Certain He didn’t see the brokenness eating her from the inside out. Certain she was barely holding on, wondering if her life mattered at all.

But this time was different.

I felt that old hopelessness rise up — faint now, like a scar more than a wound — and instead of drowning in it, I thanked God. For carrying me through that season. For giving me a life so different than the one I’d imagined, and somehow, impossibly, so much better. Even with all the loss. Even with the pain still tucked into the folds of me. Underneath all of it, He’d been there the whole time — making me into who I was always meant to be, one wave at a time.

Have you ever been there, friend? In a place of hopelessness, wondering if God had anything good stored up for you at all?

If so — you are not alone. Not even a little.

The deeper I go into His word, the more I find women and men who stood exactly where you’re standing.

Naomi said God had made her life bitter, after burying her husband and both her sons.
David asked, over and over in the Psalms, where God had gone — and why He’d forgotten him.
Jonah believed God’s call was a punishment, not a purpose.
Job sat in his suffering and dared to ask God why, out loud, unafraid.

And not one of them was abandoned for asking.

Naomi came home empty and left with a grandson in her arms who would be counted in the line of Christ Himself. David’s most honest, unraveling psalms became the prayers the whole world still prays. Jonah’s detour became the very story that taught mercy to a nation. Job’s suffering ended not with an explanation, but with God Himself — showing up, closer than Job had ever known Him to be.

Maybe that’s the thread through all of it, and through this letter, and through your story too: God was never asking you to feel certain. He was only ever asking you to keep bringing Him the question.

So bring it to Him, friend. Whatever you’re standing in front of right now — the dream you’re tempted to fold up and put away, the door that hasn’t opened, the version of your life you’re still grieving. Bring Him the honest question instead of the quiet surrender.

Are You still good? Are You still for me, in this?

He can hold that question. He’s been holding it since Naomi. Since David. Since Job sat in the ashes and refused to look away from God even when God felt far away.

And He’s holding it now, with you — on whatever cliff you’re standing on, in whatever chapter you didn’t order, becoming who you were always meant to be.

What’s the question you keep bringing Him lately? I’d love to hear it in the comments — you never have to say it alone.

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With you in it,
Ruthann xo

P.S. If my words are resonating with you — would you be so kind to share them with others who they could minister to? Thank you for being here, I couldn’t do what I do without your love and support.

And as always, I’d love to hear from you!

Early on, I asked my father-in-law how he knew God was real.

He didn’t quote me a verse. He used a word picture that has stuck in my mind ever since.

“If I choose to follow Jesus and live by His teachings,” he said, “and the world is a better place because of the way I live — and then I die, and there isn’t a God — I haven’t lost anything. But if I follow Him, and live by His teachings, and there is a God — I’ve gained everything.”

I thought I understood but I didn’t. Not really anyway and not yet.

Because there was a version of my life I used to pray for. I could see it so clearly I could almost touch it. A marriage that wouldn’t cost this much. A ministry that gave back more than it took. Years that added up to ease instead of endurance.

Can I be honest with you? God didn’t give me that life.

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And I’ve had to sit with this, friend, really sit with it: if He had given me that life, I don’t think I would have ever truly been fulfilled. That life had no eternal purpose written into it. It was ordered for comfort with my name embroidered on it.

What He gave me instead was a life I could never have built on my own. Not in a million tries. Thirty-eight years into this, I can finally see it — this isn’t the life I always wanted. It’s the life I gained by remaining, long before I understood what “everything” was going to cost, or what it was going to give me.

That’s the part nobody warns you about going in.

They got the life they gained by abiding in Christ. And that’s the life Scripture still can’t stop talking about.

So, friend, can we talk about your story for a minute?

You had a life picked out too. You could see it. The marriage that wouldn’t cost you this much. The calling that would give back more than it took. The season that was supposed to be over by now.

But what if God had handed you that life exactly as you pictured it?

I don’t think it would have satisfied you either. Because it has no eternal weight to it. It’s just the life you thought would fill you.

What you have instead — the life you didn’t order, didn’t ask for, would have never chosen off a shelf — this is what you’ve gained by staying faithful the whole time, whether you had words for it or not.

Look again at what the ache has actually been doing in you.

What if it’s not evidence you were left to fend for yourself? What if it’s evidence of the exact opposite?

Not the life you always wanted but the one you gained.

So if you’re sitting in a life you didn’t plan for — a marriage that looks nothing like the wedding day, a calling that’s cost more than it’s given back, a body or a season that never delivered what it promised —

I’m not going to tell you it’s about to turn into the life you always wanted.

I think you’ve already gained everything. You just haven’t recognized it as that.

Friend, you haven’t missed out on God’s best.
You are still becoming it.

Friend,

Can we talk about the guilt nobody warned you about?

Not the guilt that comes from doing something wrong.

The other kind.

The one that shows up the moment you consider investing in yourself. Spending time or energy on something that involves you—your health, your dreams, the calling God has placed on your life before anyone ever called you Mom.

That guilt isn’t conviction. Conviction points you toward God. This points you away from the woman He’s made you to be.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand, and what I wish someone had told me when I was neck-deep in littles and ministry and everyone else’s needs: guilt and love are not the same thing, even though they can feel the same in the moment.

Love says I want to pour into you. Guilt says I’m not allowed to have needs of my own while I do. One is worship. The other is fear pretending to be worship.

And it makes sense why we confuse them.

We have a family to feed, kids to play with, train and encourage. A household that demands our attention. And somewhere in the noise of all those legitimate needs, it starts to feel like our health, our growth, our God-given giftedness is selfish.

And as if we are stealing from the people we love most.

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But friend, what if investing in yourself is actually one of the ways you love them?

He didn’t place your giftedness, your dreams, your particular calling on your heart to confuse or torment you. He placed it there because there is a woman He created you to be, and He is still inviting you to become her—not instead of your family, but in front of them.

I know it can feel confusing to hold both.

It can even make you doubt yourself—wondering which one you’ll have to cheat in order to walk in the other. But that calling, that dream to build something and invest in what God put inside of you—He gave you that to steward, the same way He gave you your family to steward. Your giftedness was never a sign that you love your people less. It’s the unique way He designed you.

Your calling as a woman of God and your calling as a mother or even a wife, were never meant to be in competition with one another.

Becoming who He made you to be is how you show up for them—not the thing that costs them.

I’m telling you this because no one ever told me this. And somewhere along the way—I lost myself in the good, faithful, exhausting work of caring for everyone else, and I didn’t even notice it was happening until one day I looked up and didn’t recognize the woman staring back.

And I don’t want that for you.

So today, if there’s a dream you’ve been quietly starving so everyone else could eat first—I want you to hear this what I needed to hear back then:

Tending to yourself was never you putting yourself before God.

It’s you finally trusting Him enough to become who He said you already are. It’s Him reminding you, that He will always provide you with what you need to walk in it.

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I wasted so much of my life chasing after something that wasn’t ever attainable.

Have you ever done this?
Maybe it was a career, a relationship, a lifestyle you imagined one day becoming, and then something happened that changed you. And you were faced with a shift you didn’t plan for. The version of you that you used to be is now standing next to the one you are actually living.

I know that feeling from more times than just once.

I know it as a bride who thought marriage would look one way, and found herself learning to love a life that looked entirely different. I know it as a mother who watched her sons grow into men and leave the house that used to be full of their happenings. I know it as a minister’s wife who said yes to God before she knew the cost, and has spent almost forty years discovering what that yes actually required.

But if I’m honest, the deepest shift I ever went through had nothing to do with a wedding ring or an empty nest.

It was the day I stopped being who I used to be, and became a child of God.

We all have a “her.”
A line in the sand moment of who we used to be and who we are now.

Some of you know exactly who I mean. She’s the woman you were before. Before the career, before marriage, before the diagnosis, before the loss, before the calling, before Christ. Maybe she’s someone you miss. Maybe she’s someone you’re ashamed of. Maybe she’s someone you spend a lot of energy running from, hoping no one asks too many questions about who she used to be.

I don’t have a past I’m proud of either. There are versions of me I wish I could edit out of the manuscript. And for a long time, I thought that meant I had to keep running— that the only way forward was to put enough distance between who I was and who I am now that nobody would ever connect the two.

I strived for perfection, an appearance of having it all together, free from mistakes and poor choices. Free from a past full of hurt, neglect and abuse.

But here’s what I’ve had to learn, slowly, over decades: I was already a child of God— even back then. Before I knew Him. Before I understood the cost of saying yes to Him. Before I had done a single thing to deserve it.

He died for me while I was still her.

I didn’t become worthy of that love by cleaning myself up first. I became His the moment I accepted Him as my Father and the Savior of my life and everything that came before that moment didn’t disqualify me. It just became part of the story He was already writing.

God has always used a name change to mark this kind of transformation.

It happens over and over in Scripture. Abram becomes Abraham. Sarai becomes Sarah. Jacob becomes Israel. And Saul, a man who spent his life hunting down Christians, dragging them off to be killed for believing in Jesus becomes Paul, the man who wrote most of the New Testament.

God didn’t just forgive Saul.

He renamed him.

He marked the moment a murderer became a new creation, and let the new name carry the proof that the old one no longer told the truth about who Saul was.

That’s what a name change does.

It doesn’t erase what happened.

It declares that it’s no longer who you are.

I think some of us are still walking around answering to a name God already changed.

Someone reading this is holding on to who she used to be—replaying what she used to accomplish, what she used to have, who she used to be able to be and it’s the very thing keeping her from starting the legacy she’s actually here for now.

But not every renaming in Scripture moves us forward. Naomi teaches us the opposite side of this. Her husband and sons died, and she felt stripped of her identity. So when she returned to her homeland, she renamed herself. Call me Mara, she said, which means “bitter.”

“Don’t call me Naomi,” she responded. “Instead, call me Mara, for the Almighty has made life very bitter for me.” (Ruth 1:20, NLT)

Naomi wasn’t renamed by God. She named herself out of her own grief — and in doing so, she let her deepest loss become her identity instead of waiting to see who God still intended her to be.

I understand why it’s hard to let her go. She’s the version of you that you’ve known the longest. You don’t know yet what this new one is capable of. But you will never find out if you can’t let her go. That means you stop revisiting that season. Stop romanticizing it. Stop forgetting what it actually cost you to live there.

I understand this in my own life, too.

When my parents died one after another, I remember feeling, for the first time, some sense of being an orphan. I had no home to return to. That became even more real the following year, when my husband was diagnosed with an aggressive and rare cancer. I wondered—if he died, where would I go? I had no home to return to. But it was during that season that God showed me who I was as His child. I had always been His. I just hadn’t accepted it until then.

So what do you do with the woman you used to be?

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I think the shift happens when you stop missing her and start thanking her.

Thank her for what she went through, even the parts you wouldn’t choose again. Thank her for the lessons she had no choice but to learn. For carrying you here. She is not a mistake to hide from God—she’s a chapter He was already writing before you ever picked up the pen.

So many times we confuse our calling with what we do and not who we are.

God calls you to take on your new identity as daughter, beloved, forgiven, and His — not with shame that you needed it, but with gratitude and honor. Recognize it for what it actually is: a clean slate, and a blessing you didn’t earn and never could have.

That’s what it means to fully embrace who God is calling you to be in this season. He’s not erasing the old version of you. He’s thanking her. And then walking you forward as the one thing about you that was never up for negotiation in the first place—being known as a child of God, who you were before you even knew it and who you are now.

If you’re in a season where your life looks nothing like the one you thought you’d be living, I want you to hear this: your identity was never actually in the life. It was always in Whose you are.

Or perhaps you are in the middle of a shift you didn’t choose, and you’re still figuring out what to do with the woman you used to be—I’d love to hear about it. Hit reply. I read every one.

We manipulate, persuade, and manuever. But no matter how much we try—we really can’t. And what’s even worse is most of the time it worsens the situation.

I know because I lived this life.

We want the job, not the interview.
The healing, not the work it takes.
Deep faith, not the obedience.

So we hold on tighter.
We try harder.
We negotiate with God instead of surrender.

I’ve done this in a lot of ways but especially with my family. I cared more about what it looked like from the outside than what God was doing inside it.

It’s so easy to let the noise of others crowd out God’s voice.

Fear was at the heart of it for me. Fear of not being enough…fear of what others thought…and the fear of missing out. But the truth is—the outcome was really never mine. It’s always been God’s.

My job was never to make it happen. It was to stay faithful in the waiting and let Him do what only He can do with the ending.

Friend, you can’t control the outcome. But you can trust the One who’s writing it.

So what do we do with our hands when we are tempted to grip?

We open them.

Not because we stop caring. Not because we stop hoping. But because open hands are the only kind God can actually fill.

I still catch myself negotiating sometimes. I still catch myself trying to engineer an ending I have no business writing. But every time I let go a little more, I find the same thing waiting on the other side: God is already there.
Already working. And He didn’t need my help—He just needed my trust.

So today, if you’re holding on tighter to something you were never meant to hold—a uncertain diagnosis, a wandering child, a failing marriage, a dream that hasn’t happened yet—I’m not asking you to stop caring.

I’m asking you to open your hands and let God carry what He’s been carrying all along. You see, that’s the irony in it all. Even with all of our manipulating and interfering, God is still working, still writing our story.

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He doesn’t stand still or stop just because we get in the way—we just end up missing what He was doing all along.

What have you been trying to control and need to let God hold?

Some mornings I sit outside on my patio with my coffee and just watch the backyard as the rabbits are nibbling on the same grass we’ve spent hours and pennies to grow. The light comes through the trees the same way it did the day before. A neighbor’s dog barks twice and then it stops. Joe will walk through a few minutes later as he’s headed to the gym.

Nothing about this morning is remarkable.

And yet…

I have been thinking lately about how much of my life I have spent waiting for the moments that felt worthy of paying attention to. For what’s next. The answered prayers. The breakthroughs. The turning point you can point to later and say, that’s when things changed. I built my faith around these moments—the burning bush kind, the Red Sea kind.
I was always searching for the better life.

What I didn’t know though was that God was out on the porch with me. He knew every dream I had. Every miracle I was praying for and every ache of my heart.

For a long time I confused spiritual attentiveness with spiritual performance. I thought noticing was something you did once the prayer was answered, a reward for the woman who had finally arrived at the life she’d been begging God for. After all the spiritually mature would have noticed. Women with uncluttered lives and uncluttered souls also would’ve also noticed.
But the rest of us we are just trying to get through the week.

But here’s what I’ve come to believe, slowly but not without grief.

It’s the decision to look at everyday moments and believe that God is already there.

I think of all the seasons I’ve moved through—the years of young children underfoot, the ministry seasons where there was always somewhere else we needed to be, the hurt I didn’t ask for, the losses that changed everything. I spent so much of it looking ahead…longing for something better and looking for when things would just settle down. When life would finally feel like the one I’d imagined.

But those were my days…

The laundry piled on the chair that never quite made it to the closet. The Tuesday dinners that nobody photographed. The conversation with Joe on the back porch when neither of us was saying anything profound, just being in the same place at the same time felt sacred.

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There is a woman in Scripture who understood this, I think of Hannah—before the prayer, before the miracle, before Samuel—she sat in the middle of a life she didn’t choose and ached, and yet she worshipped anyway. She didn’t wait until God answered her aching emptiness to believe He was working. No, instead she faithfully showed up and brought her whole ordinary, shattered dreams to the temple and poured them out to God.

I don’t think Hannah stumbled into God’s presence. I think she intentionally practiced it. I think her noticing was her way of praying.

Our wellness world has borrowed our language and have returned it hollowed out.
Be present.
Practice mindfulness.
Notice the small things.

I don’t say that with any contempt because there’s something true in it. But when noticing is only about you and your inner self, it eventually runs dry and needs to be filled again. It becomes another thing on our self-improvement list.

But when noticing is an act of faith—when we look at the ordinary moments of a day and believe that the God who numbers your hairs is also in that moment—it becomes something else entirely. It becomes a sacred way we can worship.

So here is what I’m practicing lately:

I am trying to pay attention to the moments that don’t just get my attention but don't announce themselves either.

The morning coffee.
The familiar voice in the next room.
The way a friendship holds even after years of long distance.
The section of Scripture I’ve read a dozen times that suddenly lands differently.
The ache that surprises me, and the quiet that always follows.

I am trying to receive these things not as a person who is stuck in-between, but as the actual sacred moments I’ve waited a lifetime for. Not as the waiting room before the real story begins, but as the story itself—the very one God has been writing all along, in ink I just didn’t know how to read.

Friend, you don’t have to manufacture meaning from your days. You don’t have to dress up the ordinary and make it seem spiritually significant. You don’t have to have arrived at anything.
You just have to be willing to pay attention and notice.

To see the life you are already living—the ordinary, unfinished, sometimes repetitive life—as the very place God is meeting you.
Where….

faith is recognizing He is here.

faith is acknowledging it matters.

faith is the life you didn’t order but knowing it’s deeply yours.

What are the unremarkable moments in your week that you’ve almost missed because you were too preoccupied to see them?

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I’d love to hear what noticing looks like for you right now.

For the past three months my routines and rhythms have drastically changed as I began caring for myself. Not self-care in the way the world sells it—but the deep, quiet work of soul care.

As a woman in ministry it’s so easy to take on the burdens of an entire church. To carry them as if they’re mine to carry. But friend, they aren’t. And learning to put them down has been some of the hardest and holiest work of my life.

The deeper work actually began years ago—when I realized just how much of my brokenness came from unhealed wounds I was trying to live whole from. No amount of striving, fixing, or control could heal them. I had to stop performing wholeness and start allowing God to actually build it in me.

I came back to social media recently after a week long fast and felt immediately overwhelmed. Every woman was talking about her weight, her workout routine, or the secret mixture that finally helped her become the woman she always wanted to be.

And I understand the pull. I really do.

But here’s what I’ve been sitting with lately…

What if the version of ourselves we’re chasing isn’t actually who we were made to be?

What if all the striving—the wellness plans, the routines, the self-improvement cycles —is one more way we stay distracted from the deeper question God has been asking us all along?

Who did I make you to be, and are you becoming her?

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On my journey toward genuine soul care one verse has found me over and over again:

“Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28

This isn’t God dismissing our health—physical or mental. He cares deeply about both. But when anything becomes our primary point of focus over Him that’s what He gently redirects. Not because He is demanding but because He loves us. He knows that chasing after another version of ourselves will only leave us more exhausted and more empty than when we started.

He came to give our bodies rest. Our minds rest. And our souls something the wellness industry will never be able to offer…

A complete and total cleansing.

Friend this isn’t a free pass to stop caring for yourself. Today I will take a walk. I will move my body. I will eat things I love that fuel my healing. But I will also feed my soul from His Word. And I will rest in who He says I am — not who the algorithm says I should become.

Because here is what I know after years of striving and fixing and controlling and coming up empty:

She was always there—underneath the striving, underneath the performing, underneath the life you’ve been trying to curate into something worthy.

God has been making her all along.

And the rest He offers isn’t just physical. It’s the rest of finally stopping the chase and discovering that who you were always meant to be has been here the whole time.

This will be my prayer for you and for me this week.

Not that we become better versions of ourselves.

But that we become more fully who He made us to be.

I would love to hear your thoughts or struggles about your personal journey with this or ways you rest in who He has created you to be.
Your story and voice just might be what someone else needs to hear.

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We were all asked what we wanted to be when we grew up.
None of us were asked if we wanted the life we’re now living.

You had a picture in your mind.

Maybe you’ve had it since you were a little girl. Maybe it formed slowly over years of hoping and praying and believing. Maybe you’ve never said it out loud because saying it makes the gap between that picture and your actual life feel even wider.

But it’s there.

The life you thought you’d be living by now.

And this isn’t it.

Maybe you’re still waiting for him—the one you’ve prayed for, believed for, saved yourself for. And the waiting has started to feel less like faith and more like foolishness.

Maybe you’ve been trying to have a baby and every month feels like another small grief you don’t have words for.

Maybe you’re in the middle of raising your family—buried in the beautiful, exhausting dailiness of it and somewhere underneath the laundry and the lunches and the logistics you’re quietly wondering if this is all there is.

Maybe you lost your husband too soon. And the life you built together is still everywhere around you but he isn’t.

Maybe you’re carrying a child who is struggling. A diagnosis you didn’t see coming. A weight that has quietly reshaped everything you thought motherhood would be.

Maybe the house is empty now and so are your days and you are standing in the silence wondering who you are without the role that defined you for so long.

Maybe you’re just lonely. And the loneliness has a specific kind of ache because it’s not just the absence of people, it’s the absence of the life you believed was coming.

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Different circumstances. Same feeling.

This isn’t the life I planned.

Esther knew that feeling.

Orphaned. Displaced. Living in a land that was never supposed to be hers. If she had a picture of her life it certainly didn’t include exile.

And then suddenly—she was chosen. Brought into the palace. Made queen.

And I wonder if she did what we all do. Looked around at where she had landed and thought…

This is it. This is why I’m here. This is my purpose.

The palace. The position. The role she never expected but had finally arrived in.

Until Mordecai found her.

And what he said wasn’t a celebration. It was a correction.

Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this.

He was saying: Esther, the palace was never your purpose. It was God’s positioning. And He didn’t put you here for your own comfort. He put you here because He has something for you to do that only you in this position, in this moment can do.

She thought the palace was the whole point. The pinnacle of her purpose but it was God working all along, positioning for her to accomplish His purpose.

And here friend, is what I want you to hear, really hear:

So is yours.

The waiting isn’t punishment. It’s His positioning. The chaos of raising your family isn’t a detour from your purpose. It is your purpose right now, in this season, for these people this is who you were always meant to be. The grief you are carrying isn’t evidence that God forgot you. It is the very place He is meeting you. The quiet house isn’t the end of your story. It might be the beginning of the one you were always meant to live.

Every heartache. Every hard season. Every role that has cost you more than you expected. Every dream that hasn’t come yet or came and looked different than you hoped.

That is not your life going wrong.

That is your position.

And God doesn’t waste positions.

Esther almost missed hers. She was comfortable in the palace. Safe. And when Mordecai called her forward she was afraid.

Sound familiar?

Because stepping into the life God actually has for us, the one hiding inside the one we have can sometimes be uncomfortable or even terrifying. It asks us to release the picture we’ve been holding onto. To stop waiting for the life we ordered and start showing up fully in the one we have.

But here is what Esther found on the other side of her fear:

Not a better life somewhere out ahead of you when things finally look like you planned.

But eyes to see the one you’re already living.

Because you didn’t end up here by accident.
This is your position. And somewhere hidden inside it is exactly the woman you were always meant to be.

For such a time as this. Not someday. Not when it looks different.
But right now.

Have you ever caught yourself doing something as a parent that you swore you would never do?

Truth is—we all do it.

I spent years trying to say and do the right things as a mom, only to feel like a failure when I couldn’t live up to my own expectations. So I’d push harder. Try to do better. But no matter how hard I tried, I kept repeating the very patterns I swore I never would.

I over-protected. I over-parented. I held tightly to control, convinced that if I just tried hard enough, it would all pay off.

But parenting isn’t a formula.

When I finally accepted that, I stopped trying to control outcomes and started looking at what was happening inside of me. And what I found changed everything.

My problem wasn’t that I was destined to repeat a cycle—I was carrying old wounds that had never healed.

When I began the real work of healing, I saw it clearly. Every overreaction had something deeper behind it. My need to over-protect my sons came from fear—the fear that they would experience the trauma I did as a child. My need to be perfect was really a fear of rejection and criticism.

Everything kept leading back to the same place—an unattended wound.

And every wound has a story of origin. A moment, a season, a person — something that placed it there and left it unattended in your heart.

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I remember one Sunday morning when our son came home from college. He had gotten a large tattoo.

My husband is a pastor. And the moment I saw it, I felt it—that familiar fear. Not of the tattoo. Of what people would think. Of what they would think of me.

We sat down on the pew and I noticed the woman behind us. She was never quiet with her opinions. And before I even realized what I was doing, I caught myself shifting—angling just enough to block her view.

Protecting him. Or so I told myself.

But something stopped me.

I wasn’t protecting him at all. I was protecting appearances. I was letting my fear of what others thought control how I was seeing this young man sitting right beside me — this son I dearly loved and was so proud of.

I’d been doing the real work of healing—healing from toxic thinking, from performing, from needing to appear perfect rather than real. And right there on that pew, God let me see it clearly.

So I leaned back.

I let the tattoo show. All of it. And something in me exhaled.

It felt like drawing a line in the sand. Like standing up and saying—this is us—and I love us.

That wound had been there all along. It just took a Sunday morning pew to show me what it was doing — making me react instead of respond. Making me parent the child I once was instead of the child sitting right in front of me.

The wound doesn’t just live inside you. It shows up at the dinner table. It’s in the way you raise your voice over something small. It’s in the way you can’t let your child fail — because somewhere inside, you are the child who always felt like a failure. It’s in the way you need them to be okay so that you can be okay.

And that is not a condemnation—it’s an invitation.

The wound that shaped you does not have to define them. The cycle that was handed to you can stop in your hands. Healing isn’t just for you, it’s one of the greatest gifts you will ever give your children.

You don’t have to have it all figured out.

You just have to be willing to search below the surface and invite God to heal what is broken.

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I used to think I needed to be further along before God could use me.
More healed.
More whole.
More ready.

I thought I needed to wait until I could tie my story up in a bow and present the finished version of myself to the world.

But God had other plans.

I remember standing in front of my mirror getting ready for church when we found out Joe had cancer.

And in that quiet moment, I heard God whisper something that changed everything.

I want you to live this in front of others.

I wanted to be private about it. I wanted to wait until we really knew what it was and I had something hopeful to say. Until I could offer people a tidier version of what we were walking through.

But God was calling me to something harder and more honest than that.
He was calling me to be real before I was ready.

It was out of that season—not after it, but right in the middle of it—worship over worry was born. Not a concept to stay positive. But a desperate daily choice. We decided that was how we were going to get through it. We were going to choose worship over worry every single day. Little did I know it would be what got us through every sleepless night, and every dark fear too.

God used that unfinished, unwrapped, still-in-process story to minister to more people than we could have ever imagined.

I’ve been sitting with Philippians 1 this week.

Where Paul is writing a letter to the church in Philippi from prison. Chained. Suffering. Far from free. And yet he says the palace guards and everyone around him knows he is in chains for the advancement of the gospel.

God had gathered a crowd around Paul’s suffering, not his success.
Not his polished testimony.
Not his finished story.
But—His chains.

I think about that a lot.

Because I think we often have it backwards. We think God can use us most when we finally have it all together. When the hard season is behind us. When we can look back and explain what it all meant.

But what if the most useful version of you for God is the one you’re still in the middle of? What if your chains are exactly what someone else needs to see right now?

Not because suffering is beautiful. But because when someone watches you worship in the middle of what should break you—they find out that God is real in a way no one’s polished testimony could ever show them.

When I first began writing, I wrote down my story. I was in the first chapters of it while I was still in counseling. Still doing the hard work. Still figuring out what my own wounds even were.

I didn’t know anyone would ever read it.

But my father did. And sitting with those unfinished, still-healing chapters he opened up about something from his own past that he’d never shared. And healing came to him through the unwrapped version of my own story.
Not the finished version.
But the honest one.

Friend, what are you waiting to be before you let God use you?
What story are you holding back until you can tie it up neatly?
What part of your journey are you keeping private because you think it needs to be further along first?

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God doesn’t need a bow—He needs your yes.

The most powerful thing you can offer someone isn’t your finished story—it’s your honest one.

You don’t have to have it all together for God to use you.
You just have to be willing to live it out in front of others.
To take the broken pieces and offer them up to God.

Paul didn’t wait until he was free to write.
Esther didn’t wait until she felt brave to go before the king.
And God didn’t wait until I was healed to use me.

He just needed my yes and He just needs yours too. 💛

If this found its way inside you today share it with a friend who is waiting to hear this too.💌

I was torn between missing the string cheese days and feeling the ache of a quiet house waiting for someone to stop by.

That’s where Hannah Harper’s song found me. Right in the middle of that torn place.

And maybe that’s exactly where it found you too.

Because here’s what I’ve been sitting with—the song names the ache perfectly. But it stops at the missing. And I keep wondering what comes after the missing.

Friend, God was shaping you all along.

Maybe for you it wasn’t the string cheese years.

Maybe it was the years of being single when you thought you’d be chosen by now. The marriage that broke you open. The loss that took something you can never get back. The dream you buried so deep you’ve almost forgotten it was ever there. The season of just surviving when everyone else seemed to be living.

Whatever your quiet house looks like—whatever the season was that shaped you without your permission—this is for you too.

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Every sleepless night. Every season of chaos. Every moment of guilt. That wasn’t you breaking. That was God building something within you that you couldn’t yet see.

And this week the story of Esther has been sitting with me in a new way.

Esther didn’t know she was being prepared either. Orphaned young, taken into a foreign land, made queen in a kingdom that wasn’t her own—she was just living her days. Just surviving her circumstances. Just like you were just raising your kids. Just like you are now just sitting in the quiet wondering what it was all for.

And then Mordecai said something that changed everything.

He reminded her that every hard thing, every displacement, every season she didn’t choose, it was all positioning her for something she couldn’t yet see. Who knows, he said, but that you have come to your position for such a time as this.

Friend, those weren’t empty words. They were a courageous call to rise.

And I want to say the same thing to you today.

The years you spent wiping noses and opening string cheese weren’t wasted. The chaos, the guilt, the beautiful—all of it was God positioning you. Shaping you. Building in you exactly what this next season requires.

And if your season looked different — if it was loss or loneliness or years of waiting — none of that was wasted either. Not one hard day. Not one quiet moment. Not one season that felt like it was going nowhere.

Such a time as this, friend.

Such a time as this…

If this found you today forward it to a friend in your life who is sitting in her own quiet house. She needs to hear it too. 💌

Because some of you have been asking for this: Get your tissues

Yesterday I shared the weird things I do when I feel too sensitive.

And if you’re anything like me, you recognized yourself in at least one of them.

• Shutting down

• Bottling up

• Over-explaining yourself

• Replaying what happened over and over

Honestly? I did all of it.

What would you add to this list? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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But here’s what I finally found underneath all of that—it was never just about that moment.

It was about something hidden inside me. Something that existed long before ministry. Before I ever became a momma. And before any of the people who hurt me ever knew my name.

There were wounds I’d never named.
Never cared for.
And never healed.

So, every new hurt—every criticism, every moment of feeling unseen, every time I felt like I wasn’t enough—wasn’t a fresh wound. It was an old wound reopening.

That’s what I kept calling sensitivity. Because I didn’t yet have the words for what it really was.

There’s a woman in Mark 5, I think about often. She had been bleeding for twelve years and spent everything she had trying to fix it. More doctors. More hiding. But more of herself poured out. And still, she got worse. She kept treating the symptom. Until she stopped coping and she reached for the One who could heal her.

She pressed through the crowd, touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, and immediately the bleeding stopped. But what strikes me most is what he did next, he asked her to come forward and named what she’d been carrying in secret all those years.

He didn’t expose her, He saw her.

She came trembling. And told him everything.
And he called her daughter. Mark 5:34

Friend, a lot of us are that woman. We’ve been managing the bleeding for years, calling it sensitivity, calling it anger, calling it just the way we are. Her healing didn’t come until she stopped hiding and brought it to Jesus.

That’s what I finally had to do too.

Here’s something I’ve learned—hurt doesn’t always show up as hurt. Sometimes it shows up as anger. And I know that feeling well.

I had bottled hard and unthinkable things up for so long that when the pain finally made its way out, it bled onto the people closest to me, especially Joe.

I knew I needed help.
So, I prayed.
And prayed.
And for a long time, nothing changed, it just kept showing up.

Then one day, while I was praying, something happened. A quiet thought came into my mind—Pour out what you’re feeling to God.

So, that’s what I did.
And for the first time, I could name it—I felt overlooked. Left out. Uncared for.
I wasn’t overly-sensitive, I was unhealed and hurting.

Then the question that guided me to the root of that hurt finally came…

When did I first feel this way?

That question took me all the way back to a four-year-old eyes of a little girl. To a girl who was sexually abused while the adults around her never even noticed.
Never even saw that something in her had changed.

So, she did what she knew to do.

She carried it alone.
She stuffed it away and pretended she was okay.

That little girl was me. And for years, I never stopped carrying it.
I just got older and got called overly sensitive.

But friend, I wasn’t sensitive—I was unhealed.
I was carrying something too heavy for me to carry alone.

And sweet friend, that wound you’re carrying won’t heal on its own either.
It needs your attention.

And if you can find that thread and follow it back, you’ll begin to understand yourself in ways that will set you free.

So, the next time you feel that familiar sting—that urge to shut down, disappear, or go searching for someone to tell you you’re okay—sweet one, pause.

Find a quiet space.
And ask yourself honestly that same question…

“When have I felt this before?”

Write down whatever comes.
Don’t edit it. Don’t judge it. Just let it surface.

Then go one layer deeper:

“When was the very first time I felt this way

and never truly healed from it?”

That’s not just a memory.
That’s the root of your hurt.

And roots, once they’re finally named, lose their power over you and can finally heal.

This is the beautiful work of healing.
Not the loud, dramatic kind but the quiet, honest kind.
The kind that happens in a journal at your kitchen table.
The kind that asks hard questions and waits for the truth to rise.

I know because I have lived it.
I was the woman who prayed and got no relief.
Who bled on the people she loved most.
Who kept calling it sensitivity because naming the real thing felt too heavy to hold.

But the day I finally followed that thread all the way back—back to a four-year-old girl who learned that no one was coming—I found the place my heart first broke.

That’s when things began to shift.
Not because the past changed.
But because I finally stopped pretending it didn’t happen.

That little girl finally got to hand God what she had been carrying alone.

And friend, so can you.

You don’t have to keep going.
You don’t have to keep coping.
You don’t have to keep calling it sensitivity when what it really is—a wound that has been waiting, patiently and faithfully, for you to come back for it.

"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit".
Psalm 34:18

If this found you right where you needed it, pass it on.
Someone in your life is carrying an old wound and calling it something else.

This might be exactly what she needs to read today.

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Last week I did something that doesn’t always come easily to me.

I asked for help.

Not in a group text. Individually, one by one, I reached out to five people I trust and said something like this:

It wasn’t edited. And I wasn’t holding it together. It was just an honest, desperate need reaching toward people I knew would actually pray.

I have been dealing with internal shingles—no rash, no visible evidence. Just real pain living beneath the surface where no one could see them—not even me.

This morning, I was reading about Elijah standing before 450 Baal prophets completely outnumbered, alone, carrying God’s name into a moment with everything at stake. When it was Elijah’s turn to call out to His God, he didn’t whisper. He called out to Him openly, in front of everyone, and asked Him to show up so that every person standing there would know He was the only true God. He was desperate and he was public about it.

And God answered with fire.

When I sat with my doctor last Friday she paused in the middle of our conversation and asked me something I almost dismissed.

“Are you sure you don’t have the shingles?”

I told her I didn’t have a rash. She nodded and then told me about a patient she’d recently treated with the same hidden presentation. No rash. No visible symptoms. Just internal pain that didn’t look like what everyone expected the shingles to look like. She had given that patient the antiviral medication and she had indeed had the shingles all along.

My doctor looked past what was visible. She asked a deeper question. And healing began the moment what was hidden was finally named.

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At the end of my appointment she looked at me and said something I wasn’t expecting.

“I am sorry you have been in so much pain.”

In that moment I felt seen.

Heard.

Understood.

I kept thinking about how many women are carrying something just like this.

Church hurt that goes unnamed doesn’t heal. It goes internal. No visible rash. No outward evidence. Just real, significant pain living beneath the surface—hidden beneath shame, beneath the pressure to be okay, beneath the fear that naming it out loud will cost too much.

She still shows up. She still serves. But underneath it all she is carrying something that has never been named. Something that has been causing real pain for longer than she wants to admit.

So friend, let me ask you what my doctor asked me.

Are you doing okay? You’ve been carrying a lot lately.

And like she said to me:

I am sorry you have been in so much pain.

He saw her. And friend, He sees you too.

You are not alone in what you are walking through, sweet friend. And you are not beyond healing.

God sees you and deeply cares for you.

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” —1 Peter 5:7, NIV

There is a quiet fear many mothers carry that we rarely say out loud.

If my child is struggling…
If they are distant…
If they are making choices I wouldn’t choose…

Somewhere deep inside, it feels like a verdict on me.

On my motherhood.
On my faith.
On whether I did this right.

And if we’re not careful, that fear slowly turns into something that looks like love but is actually control.

We check in too often.
We offer advice that wasn’t asked for.
We replay conversations in our head.
We try to manage outcomes that were never ours to carry.

Not because we’re manipulative.

Because we’re afraid…

Afraid of failing.
Afraid of losing them.
Afraid of watching them hurt.

But here’s the hard, freeing truth:

You were called to love your child.
You were never called to control their story.

At some point in motherhood, especially with adult children, God gently invites us into a new kind of healing. Where we stop parenting from our wounds. Because what’s often driving us towards control isn’t wisdom.

It’s old pain.

Pain from how we were parented.
Pain from feeling powerless in our own life.
Pain from believing that if things go wrong, it must be our fault.
Pain from a desire for perfection and that we are enough.

So we hold on tighter.

But holding tighter doesn’t bring peace.
It only makes us more anxious… and them more distant.

Real healing begins when we can say:

“Their life is not a reflection on my worth.”
“Their choices are not proof that I failed.”
“I can love them deeply without trying to manage a specific outcome.”

This is where Scripture meets us gently.

Philippians 1:6 gives us a promise we forget to apply to our children:
He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.

God is still working in them.
And He never asked you to take His place.

That kind of freedom doesn’t come from a parenting strategy. It comes from letting God heal the places in us that are still afraid.

Because when those places heal, something beautiful happens.

Not because you figured out the right method.
But because you are no longer parenting from a place of fear.
You are parenting from wholeness.

And that is a gift to both of you.

A gentle invitation…

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Some people say they’ve seen their lives flash before their eyes. That’s never happened to me.

But I can say this: God has used His footprints in my past to show me where He’s been with me—even when I didn’t see Him.

And friend, He’s been with you too.

How do I know?

Because His footprints have shown up in places and seasons when I was wandering and far from God.

“If we are faithless, He remains faithful…” — 2 Timothy 2:13

Do you need to hear this?

I sure do.

Even as someone who calls herself a Christian, my faith can falter. I’m sure yours does too. We are human. God knew this. And still, He gives us this promise: He will always remain faithful.

When the world fails us.
When people let us down.
When the Church feels complicated.

God is still faithful.

Last night, I took an unexpected walk down memory lane. I went to a concert by Michael W. Smith, an artist who has played a significant role in my life for more than four decades. He first showed up on my Walkman (for those too young to know—that was music on the go by way of a cassette tape).

I didn’t grow up with access to Christian music on the radio. If I wanted to hear it, I needed a cassette. I don’t even remember how I got that first tape—maybe one of my older sisters gave it to me. But on it was Michael W. Smith.

His music changed me.

There was something about his lyrics and the stories they told that sparked a curiosity about God in me. When I felt low or troubled from the abuse I was enduring, his music gave me hope.

Fast forward to when my husband Joe and I were leading worship on Sunday nights with babies underfoot, singing Michael W. Smith songs. His music carried me through difficult years in ministry and shaped my heart and faith.

Then six years ago, his song Surrounded (This Is How I Fight My Battles) became our anthem as Joe fought Burkitt lymphoma. That song carried us through dark nights and unending treatments. It became how we chose worship over worry.

Last night, as I sang along to songs he wrote decades ago—songs written without any knowledge of what I would one day face—I was reminded:

But God knew.

God knew about the diagnoses.
The hurt within the church.
The betrayals.
The strain on our marriage and family.
The long days and nights wondering if Joe would survive.

He saw every tear.
He saw the moments I felt desperate and tempted to give up.

But God never gave up on me.

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I’m reminded of how many times the Israelites gave up on God in the wilderness—when the food wasn’t what they expected, when the place wasn’t what they expected, and when God didn’t seem like who they expected Him to be.

They gave up.

Yet God never gave up on them.

Friend, I don’t stop trusting, believing, or praying for your rescue and your healing.

“The righteous person faces many troubles, but the Lord comes to the rescue each time.” — Psalms 34:19

Did you catch that?

Each time.

The timing is often where it gets hardest to hold on. He may not come through on our timeline—but His Word says He will come through every time.

I don’t know if you’re waiting for a physical rescue, a mental or spiritual breakthrough, or for God’s justice to be revealed. But I do know this:

I hope this finds you in a place where you can trust Him today, right in the middle of whatever trial you’re walking through.

Gentle, natural call to subscribe

If this encouraged you, these letters are where I share reminders like this each week—honest reflections, Scripture, and hope for the hard places.
Subscribe to Love Notes, so you don’t miss the next one.

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Just try harder. Work harder. Push yourself more. Because if you don’t, no one else will. I hear it again and again, loud and clear.

It was only 9 a.m. and I had already gotten the older boys off to school, picked up the house, and settled into the chair to breastfeed my baby. Ahead of me was a full day of meeting with students, doing laundry, cooking dinner, and caring for the two little ones still at home.

I was overwhelmed and exhausted.

What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just push through this? I wondered.

A quieter thought rose up: What if I asked for some help today?

The message felt both familiar and foreign.

I had thought these words before, but every time I pushed them aside. I always found an excuse for why I couldn’t ask. Asking for help meant I was weak. Incapable. Failing.

The truth was, I didn’t know how to ask for help.

I had been a self-sufficient child who learned early how to fend for herself. I did what I had to do to survive things no child should ever have to endure. But I didn’t know that at the time.

All I knew was this: if you wanted to be safe and loved, you did more, worked harder, and tried your best. And if your best was exceptionally good, you were loved.

So I went the extra mile.

At twelve years old, when my older sister got married and left home, she handed me the responsibility of keeping the house clean. I had always done what she asked, but now it was mine to carry.

Back then, pushing myself didn’t wear me out. It made me feel strong. That became a title I clung to tightly.

Later, when I married a minister, had children, and was faithfully serving as a Christian woman, I still pushed myself to find love and approval. I was always trying to outrun the quiet lie that I wasn’t enough.

But years of living this way don’t make you stronger. Eventually, they weaken your body and your spirit. And before you realize it, you are paying the price.

Those were the days I desperately needed help but didn’t know how to ask for it without feeling like I was failing.

Then it all began to catch up with me.

My nervous system revolted. The anxiety I had ignored for years rose to the surface. My body developed chronic pain. Everything felt out of control.

I had no other option but to reach out.

These days, that young mom speaks to this older version of me more often than I expected.

Slow down. Breathe. Rest. Say yes when someone offers to help. You are not their Savior. That is not yours to carry. Put that down. Someone else can do it.

I am finding peace now, even when my nervous system becomes dysregulated from the consequences of years spent carrying the weight of having to do more.

Listening to our bodies and noticing when we need help invites others into our lives. It allows God to work through them.

Friend, I am slowly learning to remind that younger version of me to work with me instead of against me.

I have so much more peace when I listen to my body, my spirit, and the voice of God that reminds me I am loved—not because of how much or how little I do, but because I am His daughter.

We need each other.

We were never meant to do this alone...

5 Ways to Remember That You Are Dearly Loved

1. Pay attention to your body.
Your body often knows you need help before your mind is willing to admit it. Fatigue, tension, irritability, and pain are not signs of failure. They are invitations to slow down and receive care.

2. Practice saying “yes” when help is offered.
You don’t have to earn rest. You don’t have to deserve support. Let someone pick up the groceries, watch the kids, or sit with you. This is not weakness; this is how we were designed to live.

3. Notice the voice that drives you.
Is it gentle or demanding? Loving or harsh? The voice of God does not sound like a taskmaster. Learn to recognize when you are being led by fear instead of love.

4. Remember that your worth is not measured by productivity.
You are not more valuable on the days you accomplish everything. And you are not less valuable on the days you accomplish very little. Your worth was settled long before today began.

5. Let yourself be cared for.
Let others pray for you. Cook for you. Show up for you. God often sends His care through the hands of other people.

Friend, you are already loved.

Not because you pushed through.
Not because you held it all together.
Not because you did more.

But because you are His!

Before you close this tab and move on with your day, pause for just a moment and ask yourself:

• Where in my life am I trying to earn love by doing more?

• What is my body trying to tell me that I’ve been ignoring?

• When was the last time I allowed someone to help me without apologizing for it?

• What would it look like to believe I am already loved today—without proving it?

• Who could I say “yes” to this week when they offer support?

You don’t have to answer all of these. Just notice which one makes you exhale. That’s the place to begin.

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You just read a story about a counseling appointment I almost canceled and a question from Jesus I could not ignore:

Do you want to get well?

This is where we slow down.

Not to rush past the discomfort of that question, but to sit with it long enough for the Holy Spirit to gently uncover what we may still be clutching to like a familiar mat.

A Deeper Look

So…

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