Have you ever been in a negative loop and just needed to hit the reset button and say, okay, enough of this?

With it being September 1st, it feels like a good moment to check in. How are we actually feeling heading into the end of the year? Leave me a comment letting me know if you’re feeling energized, needing rest, or what you are focusing on for the year!

If I’m being honest, I found myself in a bit of an off week last week. One of those times where there was nothing particularly wrong, but nothing particularly great either. Creativity was low, negative self talk was high (a pattern I am majorly inviting my faith into).

Even though I typically have a lot of contentment and trust in the season I’m in, I had this feeling that I should be further along in some areas and was basically judging myself for the (very incomplete) season I’m in now. Some sort of guilt or shame crept over me like I haven’t been doing what I need to be doing or the days have gone by way too fast.

I could tell I was reverting back into an old negative loop.

The interesting thing I started observing was that I could actually kind of see my thoughts clearly. It’s wild when the Lord has been actually changing your heart and you can see your old patterns, kind of like they’re being projected on a screen in your brain, and you can now think hmm... I don’t think this is actually true or helpful. But even with awareness, sometimes we just have these off days and I couldn’t shake it.

If you ever find yourself falling off track or in a bit of a rut, you are absolutely not alone in that. Some days make perfect sense, while others just... well, don’t. And that is very very much okay!

One of my favourite things my mom always says when I’m sharing about these kind of days is, “That’s why God makes new days.”

I know tomorrow is never promised but I have always loved the heart behind that.

It reminds me of Lamentations 3:22-23:

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Sigh... this verse feels like when you step outside in the morning and feel the morning sun on your face. His grace each day is a gift I don’t like to take for granted.

So if you find yourself needing to press the reset button, this is the exact process I’ve used to let go of the negative spiral and come back to truth and clarity!

1. Start with the Heart

The first thing I need when my thoughts aren’t being particularly helpful is to get them OUT. For me, that means pen to paper.

But instead of immediately making a giant list of everything I’m behind on and complaining about, let’s start with the opposite:

Start With a Win :)

Before we write what we think we’re behind on, I think it’s more helpful to start with the things we HAVE done. Even if the list is simple and short.

You can make this list completely your own. It could be the things you did do in the last week. It could be the things you did do in the last few months. It could be a list of life accomplishments to remind yourself who you are!

Sometimes we need to stop and remember what God has already brought us through, what has grown, what we followed through on, and what’s actually going well.

Sometimes you need actual evidence in front of you before your mind will stop pretending none of it happened haha.

Once you’ve done that, move into the second question:

What is Actually Going On Here?

Once we have interrupted the mind running wild and free, we can take a look at what’s actually up. That takes a bit of honesty, and I think self-honesty is one of the best gifts that we can give ourselves.

ffThis is a big change that has occurred for me since leaving new age spirituality. There was a lot of bypassing what I actually felt and the human part of my experience in the name of “raising your vibration”. I think when we are being honest this helps us actually break through things and lay it all at the feet of Jesus.

A few questions to start circling what’s really up:

• What is actually bothering me right now?

• What am I afraid this season says about me?

• Is there something I genuinely know I’ve been avoiding?

• Am I disappointed because I haven’t followed through on something?

• Am I comparing my timeline to someone else’s or to societal expectations and pressures?

• Is this just a bad day, which I am allowed to have sometimes? (valid)

The thing is, whatever the reason has been, it’s something I like to call “work-with-able”. You don’t need to bypass being disappointed, frustrated, disheartened or confused. Once we identify something, that’s when we can change it.

2. Reset With Truth

Now that we have our honest heart forward, this is what I love… the ability to bring it to God and to Scripture and to lean into truth and speak that over ourselves.

The past few months I’ve started to rewrite certain narratives with Scripture, and when the Lord asks us to renew our minds, I really think this can be part of the process.

Take the main issues you might have already journaled on and simplify it into a few core statements that you might have been telling yourself like:

• I am behind

• I have wasted too much time

• I should have figured this out by now

Next, think of what is objectively true about this situation. This isn’t an exercise in forcing yourself to be positive. The goal is just to take the extra embellishment and the shame out of the sentence.

For example:

I am behind starts to become: My life is in a different season than I expected it to be.

Root It In Scripture

I then like to search for Scripture to help me rewrite what God has actually said about a certain feeling or situation.

This matters because it’s not just swapping a bad thought for a nicer one. Sometimes Scripture comforts you. Sometimes it corrects you (ummm... not always what I want to hear). Sometimes there’s a thing to repent of or a habit that actually needs to go.

I encourage you to make a table on your paper with these three columns:

1. What I’m telling myself

2. What is actually true

3. What Scripture says

Then read it out loud. Yes, out loud. Speak it over yourself and take the whole table to prayer.

3. Reset With One Action

And now that we’re back in truth with a bit of a heart reset... the final thing to get things moving is... small action.

I’ve had a bad habit of thinking I need a master life rebrand or a massive overhaul of my entire life after just a few off days haha. But when we do this, we set unrealistic pressure on ourselves and end up in the same fatigue and disappointment we started with.

So instead... ask “what is ONE thing I could complete today that would make me feel like I moved my life forward?”

Why only one?

If you’ve read any of my philosophy on action taking, you’ll know I’m big on small baby actions. A small action feels doable. Doable gets done. Done builds a little confidence, and confidence does the next thing.

These small actions are where the reset becomes real and how we actually move THROUGH it. I hate to say the cheesy line here, but remember, nothing changes if nothing changes.

Heart Reset Checklist

1. Start With A Win

2. Write Out What’s Actually Up

3. Build the Truth Table

4. Speak It Out Loud

5. Choose Your One Action

I encourage you to give this process a try if you ever feel yourself in a rut, and please let me know if you already do something similar or what works for you! Would love to build a toolkit of resources to help us not feel so alone in this walk.

Remember that God’s grace is with you through it all, and also... that’s why God makes new days. 🤍

Right now as I write this I am set up in the library, and I was just looking at the neighboring bookshelves, an entire room that is full of authors and creatives who had an idea and believed in it enough to see it through. An entire room, full of the evidence of the human nature to dream, and create and write and pursue knowledge and to have a physical product of that process.

I actually often nerd out on the fact that everything I use and consume in a day, the things that I love, they are all products of a human bringing an idea to life. Whether that be content that has touched my heart, my favorite mug, even the shirt I am wearing right now.

This is not just things or media we consume, but conversations, lessons, knowledge, kindness, emotional connections and small moments that we have throughout our days.

I am sure you can think of a person, artist, creative, teacher, mentor who has had some impact on you.

Lately I have shared a lot about my faith and how God is leading me into so much courage and action into creating and sharing things without the full plan in place. God has really been illuminating the fact that when we lean into what He is asking us, this creates ripples of impact (big and small).

And the thing that is making more and more sense to me is the more we understand who God created us to be, the more naturally our lives ripple outward and impact others.

Let’s get into some field notes that I am learning about this…

Be Yourself? Or Be Like Christ?

The title of this article came to me randomly, before I even knew exactly what I wanted to share. And when I first wrote it I thought.. wait.. be yourself? Is that pointing people away from their identity in Christ? But this is something I am actively understanding.

I think many of us, especially those new in their faith.. think that surrendering our lives to God means we lose a bit of our fun or the quirks of our personality. It may seem like we might be signing up for some strict program that is low key kind of leading us into a boring life or something (Sorry this is just me being honest, because I kind of thought this in the beginning.. Almost like I was going to lose the “fun parts” of myself)

But knowing Christ has been doing the opposite in me. It is actually making me more me and more confident in who I am than I have EVER felt.

My relationship with God has been unwiring years of conditioning, all the versions of myself I learned to be and was influenced to be, that were never me to be anyways. And underneath all of that, God has been introducing me to the person He had in mind all along.

The one who did not need anyone else’s approval, the one who kept a lot of my personality hidden from most people, the one that thought she needed to become less introverted and more like other people.

The closer I grow in my faith, the more me I become, because now I have a direct relationship with my Creator. I can actually hear and understand the truth of who I am and the intention I was created with instead of a version of me that is easily influenced or molded by others’ opinions.

C.S. Lewis says it perfectly in Mere Christianity:

“The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.”

There is so much truth in this quote. I am now seeing how much intention God has created me with, and my identity was never supposed to be separate from Him. Yes we are called to deny our sinful nature and pick up our crosses daily. However, I am understanding that we are not called to deny our God-given gifts, our essence, or our personality.

The more I walk with God, the more I uncover the whole point of my story, from my childhood to the fully lived adventures that were my 20s to my natural personality and my walk with faith.

We all have a story and a uniqueness, and we get to know the truth of that with full confidence, because as Scripture reminds us, even each hair on our head is known by God and everything is created with intention.

What we don’t always recognize or fully sit with is the actual ripple effect when we start to share those experiences with others.

A Little Wave

Speaking of fully lived adventures in my 20’s, the term ripple effect will actually always remind me of a really interesting time in my life. I was living in Nicaragua at the time, I had ended a contract position in Canada, and I had a crazy dream to start a coffee shop with a marketplace in it. My dream was to be able to help the women I was connecting with through entrepreneurship workshops, and the market would be a place where they could come learn, sell their items and create some financial and developmental opportunity for themselves.

The name of this first business idea was Olita. Olita in Spanish means little or small wave. The name came from the desire for this space to create small waves or ripples in the community, where one woman sharing her gifts could help another, and the financial and personal growth could keep spreading.

The coffee shop never opened due to the country going into political unrest at the time, and I decided to return to Canada (this is a whole story for another day haha), but I recognize the lesson that God is having me revisit now with my new projects, is the same one my 24 year old self had already kind of figured out.

When we believe in our dreams, we share our gifts and expertise with others, we get to impact others, help them, support them and they in turn are able to help their families, friends and communities.

It makes me look at the interconnectedness of us all and see that God has a design of connection between us that I don’t really think I fully understood before.

The Realness We Are All Craving

The main point of me writing this article today is to speak to anyone who keeps their heart, their authenticity, parts of their story or their dreams toned down. We have been a bit conditioned in our society right now to only show the put together parts. With the combination of influencer perfection and now artificial intelligence giving people what to say, scripting their messages, I think we all crave connection and realness more than ever.

I am a big believer that not every single thing deserves a spot on the internet and parts of our story and our convictions are personal, however I do believe there is great benefit when we share things we are ready to share with authenticity, realness and heart.

I am learning this myself and God is certainly showing me this in my micro actions, even within this platform, that whenever I trust or share a bit of myself I don’t usually share, I am met with the best heartfelt comment knowing someone else completely relates, and then that leads to a mini heart explosion and confirmation that something in my experience can help someone else or vice versa with the stories I get to learn from.

Where Does Your Own Ripple Start?

I think there are a lot of ways we can create impact with us just being us but here are a few to start to consider.

Your Story: Sometimes we want to push a lot of our real life experiences to the side. But they made us who we are and usually have a reason to how we can support others, guide others and connect deeper with others. Our stories are what connects us the deepest and I think what has the greatest impact.

Your Testimony: I guess this is a big part of what goes under your story. But sharing your own testimony, the one that is unique to you, is how we can have great impact, bring people closer to God, show how He has worked in our life and really create the ripple we are meant to create here on the planet.

Your Creativity: Whether it is a traditional creative project, a business idea, a product, a ministry idea, any sort of something being brought to life, you know I am a big believer that our ideas are there for a reason and I talk a lot about how much impact we can have when we take small actions in sharing our creativity or our ideas with the world.

Your Presence: This is where we have some of the biggest ripple effects. In our presence, our kindness, our patience, our small good deeds. Sharing our fruit of the Spirit with the ones that need it most, this is also how we leave the greatest impact and can create everlasting changes and ripples in the hearts of those we interact with.

Who Is Already In Your Radius?

If you visualize a ripple coming from the center, there are rings and layers of how that initial drop into the water starts. We have different ways we touch others, and it is important to kind of pause and think about who you reach or the potential of your influence when you lean into your story, testimony, creativity or presence.

YOUR INNER CIRCLE: The ones closest to you, we often don’t realize how much of a ripple effect we are having on our inner circle, well actually I am pretty sure this has a big barrel wave of impact hahah. But how can we have intention on how we are actually impacting those closest to us with how we are being ourselves around them.

MID CIRCLE: This is your community, your church, your coworkers. These are the people who see you often but usually only get the surface level version of you.

BIGGER PICTURE: I think it is really beautiful to pause and think of the bigger picture circle that you get to have connection and impact when you start leaning into who you really are and sharing that with the world. A person in a different country, someone in the same one but a different walk of life. This is really where the beauty of our interconnectedness and the potential to share and connect is possible. This is your OLITA circle, I think it is cool to dream or even just meditate on the ability to impact or serve just one person in the bigger picture circle.

Questions To Sit With:

• How do I already create a ripple? (Celebrate this one, big or small, it all counts.)

• What has actually impacted me in this season that I can have gratitude for? A person, a conversation, someone’s realness, someone’s creativity?

• How has my identity been shifting as I draw closer to God?

• Is there something right now asking to be seen a bit more, or something God has been nudging me towards?

  • A part of my story I’ve been keeping covered?

  • A piece of my testimony I haven’t shared honestly that could help someone?

  • Some creativity I’ve been sitting on?

  • Or just more of my real presence in my everyday places?

• How can I lean into being ME with my inner, mid and bigger circle?

And if all of this feels like a lot, remember it was never about making some huge wave overnight. My 24 year old self knew it when she named a little dream Olita. One small wave. That’s all a ripple ever starts as, and you truly never know how far God will carry it.

I hope these questions help you ponder a bit on the impact that you already have in your exact being right now, and inspire the belief that you really are here to create your own ripples no matter how big or small.

If you like reading more about real authentic faith, creativity that honors God or taking action on our gifts, I invite you to subscribe to Heartmade where I am sharing articles each Tuesday! Thanks for reading, kind heart! <3

If there is something on your heart: a business plan, an idea, any sort of dream God has been nudging you on, but you get caught up in a loop of researching, overthinking, planning and never acting.. this article is for you!

I recently shared in Sunday’s first heart letter about my last position, and the feeling that, while I was working in it, God was asking me to make some moves.

The funny thing is, looking back, I technically WAS “moving.” I was moving in thinking about ideas. I was moving in creating business plans, and if you look back at my journaling or the notes in my phone, I really did have great ideas. But that was it. I had plans.. and not much to show for them.

For a long time, I was caught in a very big procrastination loop that was disguised as movement but really was just me staying in fear and lack of real tangible action.

While I was on my prayer walk this morning, I was reflecting on all the small blessings and moments God has given me since I’ve been taking my small baby steps in messy action in the last few months, and what I’m learning more and more as I do.

I keep understanding that God will never somehow mail us a big master map with a detailed explanation of His plans for us. This is not how life works unfortunately.. ha!

But what I find really cool with this walk is that He will guide us step by step. He will be there with us the whole way (even when we might not fully see), and I am learning how much faith in that can impact us in breaking the loops of planning and starting to move into obedience.

So today I want to get practical about the small actions that let Him move through us in grand ways. And that starts with the loop.

Procrasti-planning: what is it?

Procrasti-planning is exactly what it sounds like: procrastination masked as planning. I don’t know where I first heard this term but it was like ding ding ding, that is exactly what I am doing.

The tricky part is that procrasti-planning doesn’t feel like procrastination at all. It feels responsible and actually pretty productive.

Procrasti-planning might look like:

• revising and reworking a business plan for a product (and constantly throwing it into AI for revisions) that has no proof of concept yet

• thinking you need the perfect branding before you share a single thing

• creating a full content calendar and mapping out your pillars without actually posting the content

• having ideas for a few lifetimes and getting so stuck on choosing the “right” one that you start none of them

Now, creating business plans, content calendars, wanting a beautiful brand: those are not bad things. They’re actually really beautiful actions. The problem is when these epic ideas we want to bring to the world get caught in plan mode and research mode and those ideas never get to have the impact or potential they were meant to.

Why we do this

The thing I have learned is that planning gives us a hit of dopamine, without any of the risk.

When we map something out, we get a real sense of progress…

I can see the potential of this idea, I’m excited, it’s coming to life in my head, without ever having to risk anything. No one saw us try. Nothing has the potential to fail, if it remains here.

But the moment we go to actually post the thing, be vulnerable, be seen? Red alert. This is scary. And we slide right back into research mode, where the progress feels nice and easy.

But here is what real life taught me: you can plan something for twelve hours, or you can do something for one hour, and only one of those teaches you anything.

Twelve hours of planning ends with you knowing exactly what you knew before, just with nicer formatting.

One hour of doing ends with actual information: what worked, what flopped, what felt alive, what God opened while you were moving.

So the deeper questions become: is my planning actually a form of fear? And am I trusting God with all my heart and letting Him make my paths straight?

YOUR full plan was never THE full plan anyway

Proverbs holds the balance for us planners:

In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps. (Proverbs 16:9)

Planning is not necessarily the problem. We do need some sort of plan and I do think sticking to somewhat of a plan or consistency helps us a lot whether that is business, fitness, savings etc. But the key is, He establishes the steps, He makes our paths straight. We have to let Him actually guide our path.

I resisted this for a long time. And it is kind of funny to think that with all my big planning, that was never THE plan anyways.

Coming from a business background, I have been trained to often reverse engineer: define the end goal, work backwards, build the plan.

But when God is in the picture, sometimes there is no end goal to reverse engineer from yet, because we don’t know exactly what He has in store for us.

On my prayer walk this morning, as I was praying over my own clarity, God gave me a picture of this and I have to share it because it’s really special. He showed me an image of a river.

Procrasti-planning is thinking you can engineer an entire river before letting any water flow through. But we all know, that is just not how a river forms.

Water starts moving, and the path gets carved by the actual flowing. The river never knew exactly the path it was going to take. It never says, “okay, I’m going to flow exactly this way to the ocean”. It lets nature take its course, bending as it goes, and the way gets carved while the water moves.

That’s us. We need to let the water flow (with our action), and let God direct and carve as we go. Thank you, Lord, for that visual!

So what is an actual small action?

Let’s talk about the small actions that can actually have impact. It is not about the time the action takes, but rather these types of actions have two requirements:

1. It is a complete action, start to finish. It is often part of a bigger goal, it is writing one page, rather than writing the full book. It has a clear start and a clear end.

2. It produces something real. This is the big test of whether you are taking a small action for real movement: it produces something real. For example a video has been posted, an email has been sent, something is living and existing out there.

Breaking down these big ideas and big dreams into tangible steps is how we bring it all to life.

A good thing to remember is that small actions create momentum. Momentum creates confidence. Confidence leads to more action, and that is a positive loop to get yourself in. We don’t wait to feel more confident to take action, and we don’t wait to feel motivation or momentum, that all is a byproduct of our initial small actions.

When your actions are calibrated to glorify our Lord, ooof, that is where your negative loops really start to break and where you really do start moving in an authentic purposeful way.

Soo, enough reading, let’s start moving!

Since I’m doing this right alongside you, I thought it would be fun to use this opportunity to lift each other up with action and accountability!

If you feel called, share one small tangible action you can take this week and let’s check in on each other!

I’ll go first: this week I’m posting 1 talking video on Instagram (3 is the goal, but 1 is the start, and I’ll comment below when it’s done!).

Your turn! Please remember this week that the ideas in your heart are absolutely there for a reason! They were placed there, and they are worth honoring. One small baby action at a time. I’m cheering for you. 🤍

And if you’d like to go deeper, I encourage you to check out the following:

My name’s Amanda and I wanted to share a simple, straight from the heart, letter series. Just a simple collection of letters with the pure intention to share lessons I have had along this journey of what it is like to actually give your heart to Jesus.

The questions that come up, the seasons a single woman walks through, the actual real life changes that happen. While some things I think are meant to stay between us and God, I also think there is something really beautiful about realizing we aren’t the only ones going through certain moments or the only ones who don’t have it all figured out.

So for this first letter, I wanted to share a bit on:

Career Confusion or God’s Redirection

I know a lot of us experience career changes and life transitions. And first of all, can I acknowledge how normal that is?

I think many of us still carry this subconscious idea that we are supposed to have our well-oiled career figured out, especially as we move into our 30s. And that is just not always the case. So many of us experience shifts, and I really think it can be such a healthy part of life to experience change within our work. So if you’ve been switching things up, by choice or by no other choice (lol), I get it!

For a long time, I could feel God pushing me out of my operations position and into working for myself. I remember distinctly feeling this in my prayer time, I could feel God pointing that I was made for something “more” in my work. Looking back, I know I kept trying to hold on to my current position because it was familiar. I was running the company under the (very chaotic) founder, my team depended on me, the pay was nice. And I just kept pushing it off, letting more and more days go by without making my own exit plan for what I actually wanted to build.

Looking back, I can see what God was saying to me so clearly: you’re either going to leave and leave in a prepared manner, or I’m going to give you a push.

And.. I got pushed.

The company ran into issues, a lot out of my control, and I was moved out of a role without my own plan in place.

I wish I could say I was like okay, awesome! God closed that door, and here is the shiny obvious door He is pointing at me to walk through.

But that was not there. It seemed as if I was standing in one of those rooms of magic doors, with no clear key to any of them.

The thing with social media is you see so many doors, so many people doing so many things, that pretty soon your whole brain is seeing ONLY DOORS. Doors that were never even meant to be in your view are now doors you are comparing with other doors.

This is why I began to realize that guarding my heart and tuning out everything that wasn’t God’s voice was how I was going to find my key. The more I protected what was coming in, the quieter the room of my heart got and the clearer the direction became. Doors that were never mine have started fading from my view. And the door He had been calling me to open for a long time has started to become clearer, and clearer.

But here is what I ran into: seeing your door and actually walking through it are two different things. I kept cracking mine open bit by bit, peeking through. And lately I can feel God being like, “okay, come on, walk through it already!” haha. He really is so patient.

One thing I have noticed, I have no problem building other people’s businesses and brands. I have no problem consulting for clients. But when it comes to the things God has put on MY heart, I overthink everything. The perfect plan, the fear of it not working, having to see and rework the conditioning that my gifts need to earn money or they are not worth pursuing, or the opposite, that I could actually be paid for sharing my gifts.

It really is an interesting process, letting God lead you through a career change.

For me, it has meant surrendering a lot of worldly conditioning about what equals success.

Letting others be confused about my transition and my process of figuring out what I want next. Actually practicing trusting God, taking faithful action, and not steamrolling myself into having to know everything now.

And I have been especially grateful for this time to let my job stop being my main identity, shifting into being a Daughter of God, finding my identity in Christ, and letting my work flow from there.

I find so much motivation in finally understanding the whole point of why we are here. It makes the rat race look so small.

I think a lot of our societal norms are breaking, and I think a lot of us need to be in our God-given gifts more than ever.

We need to be looking at where God is taking His people and His Kingdom. The interesting part is figuring out how to live this out when you have real bills to pay (that’s the real life kicker haha). But through all of this transition, what I find beautiful is that I have always been okay. He has provided in every way I have needed.

So I want to ask you: have you been in a career change? What has God been teaching you in this time? Is there a door you've been cracking open but haven't fully walked through? Please share a comment, I would love to connect further on this topic!

Mini Life Update

I know we are just getting to know each other, but I thought it could be fun to share some insights into life.

For the last 5 years I have been working remotely, living most of my time between Mexico and Canada with travel intertwined. For a few months a year I come home, and last week I flew home from Mexico to Canada with my rescue dog. We were originally thinking of staying in Mexico, but to be around family and help out my dad with some health issues, I made the last minute decision to head back. It was Snowy’s (Nieve’s) first flight and she did so, so well. I adore her and I’m so grateful she gets to experience Canada with us.

So, I’ll be home for a few months with the main focus to love and pour into my family, and be disciplined. There is a time for rest and a time to put your head down, and I’ve been in a rest and be quiet season. This is a season of discipline and action for me.

Quick Heart Notes

• What I am reading: Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund

• What verse I am sitting with: Psalm 139 (I am in love with this entire psalm and this is the one I chose to meditate on for August)

• A lesson I am learning: steward what’s right in front of you. A happy content life lives in the simple things, even the dishes.

• Advice I could use help with: self guided Bible studies you like to follow? Lately I feel like I am jumping around a lot and I would like to follow a yearly plan of some sort. If you have one, please share it with me!

• Messy action I am taking this week: starting to post talking reels (ugh, I know, haha.. but I feel the push to start speaking on video more, let’s see how that goes!)

• A goal this week: checking out a new church this morning after sending this out, and seeking some Christian community while I am back home.

Well, that is it for letter one! If you would like more letters like this straight to your inbox, subscribe below if you haven’t already! Happy Sunday to you friend 🤍

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Like I had my time with God and then I would close my Bible and notebook and go into my actual life where I then would default to worrying, figuring things out on my own, going through the motions, and moving through pretty disconnected.

Maybe this was early in my faith journey and I had not matured spiritually enough, but I think that many of us, no matter where you are in your walk, go through these moments.

Where we have a bit of a gap between our spiritual life and our… life. Sometimes, somehow, we can get into a habit of putting our faith into checkboxes. Went to church, check! Read my Bible today, check! And then we move onto the rest of our day…

We then stress about work, we go through the other tasks we needed to get done, we might complain or stumble or struggle through some difficult times of our day, relying completely on our own understanding and ability to figure things out. But what I know to be true is that it was never meant to be separate and this separation is just based on our own limited view.

God Is in the Whole Pie, Not a Slice of It

A while ago now, I saw a similar graphic that was so perfect that I had to draw my own. Bear with me, I am not a good graphic artist ha! But, the point is there.

As you can see, sometimes we fit God and our faith into one part of our day, rather than embedding God into the whole of our lives.

I think it is a great visual reminder that instead of our faith being a slice of the pie, we realize it is intertwined and infused into each and every area of life. God is the reason for all of it.

Each category of life has unique opportunities to breathe the love of God into it. Our work is a way to honor the Lord, our creativity is a way to move what God has placed in our heart out, our hobbies are a way to enjoy and connect as humans, our fitness and health are a way to steward our physical vessels, our family and friends, a way to pour God’s wisdom and love into.

Each area is time with God, each area is devotion and each area can be worship.

One of my favorite verses in all of the Bible is this:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
— Psalm 139:7-10

I adore this scripture because it is such a reminder that the distance we feel is real to us, but it was never real to Him.

No matter where we are in this world, we cannot run, we cannot hide, even when we think we are so far, so distant, so sinful, so off track, He is right there. His right hand will hold us fast. His presence is always there.

Your To-Do List, As Worship

Recently I shared a note about a little thing I write at the top of every daily task list I make, and that is calling it a Blessed To-Do List.

A few of you enjoyed this reframe and I wanted to expand on it, because it truly has helped me in various ways to look at the day but I also think it opens a bigger conversation into how we bring God into our everyday tasks and life.

When we view our daily tasks as blessings, they easily become opportunities for worship. When we begin to ask how we can bring God into the dishes and laundry, into preparing a meal, into our work interactions, into our creativity, that is when we invite Him into our daily lives.

This makes me think of the book The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence is a humble dishwasher and is able to access the complete presence and joy that is the Lord, in simple moments like washing dishes.

I don’t want to sound too cheesy, but reframing your to-do list as a list of blessings really does start to shift things, because it really is all a blessing. It is all a gift.

It is all an opportunity to enjoy this human experience for what it is.

When we reframe it that way, even the mundane stuff becomes something we're doing with Him instead of alone, and that is pretty special.

So How?

Back to The Practice of the Presence of God, he says it perfectly:

“We must know before we can love. In order to know God, we must often think of Him; and when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure.”
― Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

We must know Him before we can love Him.

It is like anything. We do not trust or love a stranger. In order to know Jesus, we must think of Him, we must come to Him, we must be intentional in our relationship and to know Him. And from that relationship, we begin to abide in Him. We begin to trust.

We begin to go to Him as our default and for Him to be our resting place.

This, I believe, can take time. And like the book title says, I really do believe it is a PRACTICE. A daily practice. Especially if you have been running on your own for a long time or new to your faith.

Simple Practical Tips

So if you have been feeling a bit disconnected throughout your day, I would like to share a few things that have actually improved my own practice of welcoming the Lord into my day and shifting out of checkbox mode.

I truly have to say I am in a really special place in my faith and am really just enjoying growing in relationship, wisdom and deeper surrender. If you feel disconnected in day to day life, just know I have also been there too.

Here are a few practical things to start with:

• Morning pages: I call these my Heart Pages. I have shared that writing is one of the ways I connect and communicate. If you are here on Substack, you probably can relate. Writing can help you slow down enough to connect to your gratitude, prayers, and communication with the Lord. (If you haven’t grabbed the Heart Pages method yet, it’s the free download waiting for you when you subscribe!)

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• Worship music throughout the day: I know this may be an obvious one, but this truly has been a game changer and removing secular music was a big thing for me. It’s interesting how music can lead us into a moment with God or far away from Him. Sharing my playlist and taking recommendations for worship songs soon btw!

• The Blessed To-Do List + planning: Like I shared, simple reframes like the blessed to-do list, monthly planning that is rooted in scripture and what God has on your heart, all help recalibrate your actions to prioritize Him.

• Prayer walks: nature + prayer = a big yes! Bringing in prayer walks in nature I think is one of the most refreshing things you can do in the morning, or as a brain break if you can!

• Prayer, but also casual dialogue: sometimes we think of prayer as a formal thing, which I think there is so much beauty in intentional prayer time but as our relationship develops, the more we can also simply have direct dialogue and just get to be a friend with Jesus through our prayers throughout the day.

I hope these small actions can help you bring God into your day just a little bit more! Remember, may it all be worship!

I am curious what helps you bring God into your everyday life? Please share so we can learn and be inspired by you in the comments below!

If this article gave you something to sit with, I would love to have you here. Subscribe below for a letter like this one each week, honest faith, practical tools, and help learning to live from a heart that is fully His.

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If you have been out there on the search like I have, maybe for years, maybe for a lifetime, here is what I have found. We may spend a whole life trying to find a purpose that will always have a hole in it, because that hole is only filled when our identity is in Jesus Christ. When we try to find purpose in anything that is not Him, the search never closes. When we look at purpose through the lens of Him, it all starts to be much simpler.

If you have been searching for purpose, I know that place well. Because I was not just in the search. I was certified in it.

Let’s talk about that first…

My time as a certified life purpose coach

For a long time, I really wanted to help people. That part has always been real. Since 19 years old, when I moved alone to Malaysia, I was always on a quest for a life that did not fit the societal norm, and as I searched for meaning myself, I was always driven to help others do the same.

I genuinely wanted to help people connect deeper into why they were here, and looking back now, I think God was probably always nudging me toward this kind of work even before I had a relationship with Him. I just could not see it at the time.

As I have shared, I was interested in New Age spirituality for most of my adult life. I gravitated toward the endless content pointing at manifestation culture, dream life culture, living your “highest self” culture. And at the core of almost all of it there was a huge missing piece, and the missing piece was God. There was no connection to Him at all. If anything the message was that you are God and you are your own creator.

With this desire in my heart, I enrolled in a dharma /purpose life coaching certification and trained to help other people “discover their purpose”.

Through the entire program, I felt like a fraud. I would sit in these coaching seminars, in practice sessions with other students, and so much of it felt fake to me. I kept thinking, who am I to help somebody discover their purpose? I was supposed to be guiding people to the answer, and I did not have it myself. Honestly, the idea of helping someone, somehow, circle their purpose after a few sessions felt artificial. I left certified, with some surface level tools, and no actual ground to stand on. A purpose coach who had not really fully understood her own purpose.

As I have been writing this piece, I had the urge to actually pull out my dusty training binder from the certification. It is filled with teachings and frameworks (yes, I have always loved frameworks) and I reread them through this new lens.

And here is the honest part, some of it is close to being helpful. The self-reflection prompts are real, what are your natural strengths, what breakdowns have become breakthroughs, what do people always call on you for. But laced through those same pages are entire spiritual systems, chakras, doshas, karma, receiving downloads.

What I was taught, next to what I now know:

• your purpose is hidden in your blueprint → your purpose is already settled in Him

• receive downloads from the universe → hear from God through His word and prayer

• balance your energy → guard your heart

• you are the creator of it all → you were made by the Creator, and He moves through you

• self-discovery to serve yourself → self-reflection surrendered to God, to love and serve others

A quick note:

Coaching itself is not the problem though. Reflection helps us, frameworks help us, and there are seasons where we truly need guidance, from mentors, wise counsel, and wonderful coaches. Some of my favorite work in that season was blending my business background with the coaching training to help women launch businesses they cared about, photography, postpartum services, fitness coaching, and that practical side genuinely was helpful.

What those women were really doing was learning to steward gifts they already had. However, the difference in the work is the root. When guidance is rooted in the Lord, it points you back to Him instead of deeper into the search.

The problem with “finding”

Here is what I could not see back then.

The problem starts with the phrase “Find Your Purpose.” “Finding” tells us purpose is something outside of us, something lost, something we have to hunt down. It sets us up for a life of searching, and searching, and searching.

It also assumes there is one perfect purpose to uncover, usually tied to a career, passion, or role. But we are constantly changing. Who I was at twenty is nowhere close to who I am today, and if purpose is built on a profession or a season of life, it will keep moving every time we do.

That is why I think this whole idea of one perfect purpose apart from God is a fractured way of thinking to begin with.

Through the Christian lens, our purpose does not change throughout our lives because it is rooted in Someone who does not change. First day of faith, last day on earth, same thing: know Him, love Him, love people, make Him known. How we live that out will shift with our seasons, but the purpose underneath stays put. And that is something we can actually rest our heads on.

What purpose actually is, biblically.

When I came to faith, purpose was absolutely simplified. Scripture hands us the complete concept in three things:

1. Love, know, and honor God.

2. Love people.

3. Spread the gospel.

The same purpose for every single one of us. And there is such a sweetness in that simplicity, nothing to hunt down, nothing to decode, just three things to live. The first two are beautifully simple (not always easy, but simple). The third is where it gets specific to you, let’s break it down.

1. Love, know, and honor God

This is the first purpose and the one everything else flows out of. Jesus said it Himself when He was asked which commandment was the greatest:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. (Matthew 22:37-38)

So what does this look like through the lens of purpose? It means the primary reason you exist is relationship and not some kind of achievement. You were made to know God, to spend real time with Him, to delight in Him, and to live in a way that honors Him. Before you produce a single thing, before you build anything or help anyone, you are already living your purpose every time you draw near to Him.

Sigggh…. what a beautiful way to spend this life.

I spent years trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, and the answer was underneath the question the entire time. We were made first to be WITH Him, before we were ever made to do anything. Wow, does that take the pressure off.

2. Love people

The second purpose comes in the very next step of the same conversation:

And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39)

Through the lens of purpose, this one dismantles a lie most of us have carried for years, the lie that purpose has to be impressive to count.

I really want to emphasize that purpose does not have to be a profession. It does not have to be a platform, a business or presented on the biggest stage. It is not reserved for the people with traditional standout skills.

Loving people IS purpose. Which means purpose very much starts inside your own family. It can look like how we show up for the people already placed in our lives, our parents, our friends, our neighbors, the strangers we interact with. A completely ordinary Tuesday, just like today, spent loving the actual humans in front of us, is purpose being fully lived.

I think about how much time I spent looking past my real life, searching the horizon for some grand big thing, while the people God had literally placed in my path were right there. The search kept my eyes up and out. Love brings them back to what is right there or who is right there sitting next to us.

3. Spread the gospel (this is where it gets specific to you)

The third purpose is the one Jesus left us with:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)

And here is where your uniqueness finally enters the story, in the right place. Because the unique part was not WHAT your purpose is. It is HOW you do it.

We all share the same core purpose. But God gave each of us a completely different makeup to carry it with, different gifts, different personalities, different stories, different people in front of us. Your testimony is one nobody else can tell. The way you create, the way you communicate, the work your hands naturally reach for, the specific rooms you have access to, all of it is the how, not the what.

Some of us spread the gospel through teaching, some through hospitality, some through art, some through business, some through our content, some through friendship and parenthood. The gospel goes out through the specific shape of you.

This is where all the beautiful conversations about God-given gifts actually belong. Not as clues to hunt for your purpose, but as the equipment He already handed you for the purpose you already have. I talk more about this in a recent article called How to Find Your God-Given Gifts: A Practical Heart Inventory Process.

I encourage you to spend some time in prayer, and in processes like the one above, to help tune in to what God might be wanting to move through you in this part.

It’s not about you (really? what a relief!)

One of the books that shaped this for me is The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. It opens with four words that undo the entire self-discovery industry:

“It’s not about you.”

The first time I read that, something in me clicked instantly.

The world had been telling me the opposite my whole life. The purpose conversation out there is all me, me, me. What is MY purpose, what is MY passion, how much money can I make from it, how do I build MY dream life around it. And I think this is actually why so many of us feel disconnected from our purpose, we are staring so hard at ourselves that we cannot see anything else. Searching inward for something that was only ever going to make sense looking upward.

This is not a demotion (don’t worry, you are still an important part in this). But when purpose stops being about you, you can finally step into it. The pressure that kept you frozen, the fear of picking wrong, the performing, comparing, all of that was the weight of making yourself the point.

Take yourself out of the center and there is nothing left to protect. It shifts into being an act of obedience and actual surrender. It is God moving through you, and your only job is to stay close to Him and hand over what He put in your hands.

The good news!

So if you are in the search right now, here is the relief I found: you can take a breath. Your purpose is not out there waiting at the end of the course or the quiz. It is already settled. Love, know, and honor God. Love people. Spread the gospel with the specific life and gifts He gave you.

Sometimes our purpose isn’t what we think it is, sometimes God wants to use us in a way that we would never imagine, but the key thing is quiet time, prayer time and really living out the first part of the purpose (the loving and knowing God part) that helps us to identify it.

A little self reflection helps, a little heart work and biblically rooted study helps, but at the end of it all, the simplicity of laying our heads and our identity in Jesus is the way.

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The desire I found at 19, to help people understand why they are here, never left. God just gave it a new root. Heartmade is what grew from it, my own God-given gifts, now all pointed back at Him.

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That is a big claim, so let me back it up with my own life. I have always struggled with being fully expressed. I have had some creative ideas for years, and most of them never left my head. I could give you a different excuse for every single one of them, but really deep down the excuses were all types of fears.

As I have stepped into my faith and a real walk with Jesus, something has shifted around all of this. I feel so strongly convicted to create and take action on the ideas He has placed on my heart, and when I ignore that conviction, I am starting to see it for what it is: disobedience.

I know God does not need my works. But He does convict us, and continuing to choose fear over a conviction He keeps bringing back is not something I can avoid anymore.

That truth changed how I look at everything. This life genuinely is short (cheesy but true), and I think it would be such a shame to reach the end of it having never shared what God was moving through me. So I have started taking what is on my heart seriously. It is not fluff and it is not just a hobby to get to someday.

And neither is yours.

I am talking about the idea that just kind of hovers around you, the one that sits quietly in the heart going that would be so cool if I did that. Maybe yours is:

• the thing you would make or write or build if you knew it would be received well

• the business idea you keep coming back to every few months

• the skill you would love to finally learn and actually use

• the project sitting in your notes that you keep reworking but never sharing

I believe none of that is random. Every single one of us was put on this planet for a reason, and I believe the thing we keep avoiding, the one hovering on the sideline of our life, is very often the thing that leads to our greatest freedom, our greatest impact, and our greatest way to honor God.

So let’s get into it. 🤍

We Are Often Attacked Where We Are Strongest

Now I don’t chalk everything up to spiritual warfare, but I do believe sometimes it has a greater impact than we might realize. And I do want to mention it when it comes to this topic. Because there is something about it that makes sense: the enemy tends to attack us right where we are strongest.

When we are living as our most expressed, most true creative selves, that is when we are most able to spread light, to connect, to serve, to make real impact. A person who is fully living in their gift is a problem for the enemy. And when we are not taking action, that is exactly where the enemy loves to keep us.

Look at how specific the pattern is:

• The deep thinker can be attacked with overthinking. Someone with real depth, real insight, things genuinely worth saying. But the depth turns inward, and they stay caught in their own loops instead of ever sharing what they see.

• The visionary can be attacked with scattered starts. They see possibility everywhere, which is the gift. But it gets twisted into starting everything and finishing nothing, so no single vision ever becomes real.

• The detail-oriented can be attacked with perfectionism. Their eye for detail is exactly what would make their work great. Instead it becomes the reason nothing ever feels ready enough to share.

• The natural builder can be attacked with endless preparation. They love systems, plans, and research, and the planning becomes fear masked as productivity and nothing to share. (This one is me!)

Do you see yourself in one of these? These are just examples but notice that in every single case, the struggle and the gift are the same trait pointed in different directions. Pointed one way it moves through us and into the world, pointed the other way it stays locked inside.

What the Bible Says About Burying Talents

There is a very famous parable Jesus tells about this exact thing, and it was one of the first things I read in the Bible that immediately spoke to me. A master entrusts three servants with talents before going away. Two of them put what they were given to work. The third buries his in the ground, and when the master returns and asks why, his answer is one I have said with my own actions:

“I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground.” (Matthew 25:25)

What gets me about this servant is that his reasons probably sounded responsible to him. Fear rarely looks like fear. Most of the time it looks like preparation, research, or waiting for the right season.

But here is what I love about faith. God does not need us to be fearless before we move. He wants us to bring the fear to Him and lean on Him in the process (Isaiah 41:10).

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Avoidance Audit: Prompts to Help You Name the Thing

So if you know me by now, you know I love a framework and I love prompts to help us identify and then MOVE. So I invite you to grab a paper and walk through these, or if you are a Notion girl like me, I turned this into a free template you can duplicate right here 🤍

Step 1: Name what is hovering.

What is the idea, the dream, the thing that keeps circling you? You do plenty of hard things. Which one specifically makes your chest feel tight? Write it down in plain words.

Step 2: Run the tug test.

Avoidance alone means nothing, some things are just hard, and not every struggle is an assignment. The mark to look for is avoidance + longing, held together over time. Does this thing keep coming back? Does it show up in your daydreams, your prayers, and (be honest) your envy when you watch someone else do it? If yes, keep going.

Step 3: Write the other side.

Now the fun one, yay! If you took action on this thing, what would it actually feel like on the other side? What could open up in your life, in your confidence, in your closeness with God? Write it in detail, because we usually only ever imagine the risk, and never the freedom.

Step 4: Connect the fear.

Underneath every avoidance is a sentence we believe. If I share it, I will be judged. If I try, I will find out I am not good enough. Who am I to do this. Write down your actual sentence, then ask the question we always ask here: what story am I believing, and who told it to me? That is one you can bring straight to God. Renewing what is in the heart is His work, and He is so good at it.

Step 5: Make one ten-minute move.

Alright, so we can pray over this, and do that first. But let’s also get moving, because a parked car is very hard to steer, as they say!! What is one thing you could actually do right now, within 10 minutes, that could get things started? Sending 1 email, setting up 1 account, making one note, posting one article. Baby micro actions I believe are the best thing to do to create momentum.

An Honest Process

This is something that I am actively working through. When you have a habit (an output as I call it), it has been conditioned from inputs + processing. But the thing that is cool is, as I am changing my inputs and bringing God into the processing that occurs in my heart, my actions and habits are actively changing, which leads to hello positive upward spiral of action and momentum and confidence and fruit of the Spirit. Thank you Jesus!

So tell me, truly: what is the thing that keeps tugging at you, the one you have been circling? Comment below or just hit reply and I will be adding you to my prayer list! 🤍

Access the free Notion template and fill out yours here:
👉 The Avoidance Audit template

And you can find all of our other free tools + resources in the Heart Library here:
👉 The Heart Library

Follow your heart. Trust your heart. Your heart knows best.

These are all things that the world will tell us.

If you are like me and did not grow up with any religion or faith based influence, you may have been following your heart with all your might, thinking it was the right thing to follow.

I followed my heart for all of my twenties and it took me places that felt right and weren’t.

My heart led me into relationships I had no business being in. It led me toward goals that I thought would finally make me feel something, and didn’t. And it also led me into heaps of “spiritual practices” that felt like I was on the right track but with nothing actually being resolved.

Now, on the other side of that, I don’t think the problem was that my heart had consciously bad intentions. I am also very grateful for all of these life experiences, especially to show me the contrast of living in faith vs. not. However, I think the problem was that no one ever told me: the heart needs to be guarded and rooted in the One that created it before it can actually be trusted.

“Follow your heart” was not correct instruction. It was always supposed to come after something else.

The truth about the heart

As I started my faith journey, I found that early on that scripture is VERY honest about our heart’s condition, and I need to be honest with you about my first reaction to it.

“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Genesis 6:5

Ummm... tbh I didn’t love to hear that. That verse genuinely made me sad for humanity when I first read it. And Jeremiah 17:9 goes even further and calls the heart deceitful above all things. It is very clear that our hearts are not our best friends when left unguarded.

But here is what I find so beautiful. The bible gives us both realities at once: our hearts can be deceived, and they are also the very place God chooses to renew us.

Scripture never says the heart is the enemy, it says guard it. And there is a real difference between a heart that is surrendered and being renewed by God (daily!) and a heart that is running wild on its own inputs.

Scripture also tells us that the heart is where God does His deepest work. It's where He transforms us, plants new desires, and teaches us to know Him.

Over time, He also forms the gifts and callings He has for our lives. The heart has more capacity and intelligence than I think we give it credit for.

Inputs, processing, outputs

Proverbs 4:23 says: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

This verse is pretty much what the entire Heartmade concept is centered from.

It gives us a fundamental instruction on how we work. And when I started understanding this, it truly helped me with my own heart. So let me break down how I see it now.

what enters the heart

↓

what the heart believes

↓

what the life produces

Inputs = what enters the heart.

There is no neutral input. Everything we consume is slowly integrating into the heart, shaping what it believes and what it reaches for. Philippians 4:8 gives us the filter: whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, think about these things.

But the reality is, in the world we operate in today, our hearts are constantly fed things that create clutter, distraction and overwhelm.

Examples: media, conversations, environments, relationships, scripture, the phone before you’re even out of bed, it all is taken in whether we are conscious of it or not.

This is where the real guarding comes in.

The question to ask: what am I allowing to shape me?

Processing = what happens within

This is how the heart interprets what it has received, the beliefs it forms, the meaning it assigns, whether it runs on truth or fear, gratitude or comparison. And it is something we participate in:

• through prayer

• through scripture

• through honest reflection

• through practices like written prayer and journaling

The question to ask: what story am I believing?

Outputs = what flows out

Our words, our habits, our decisions, our creativity, the things we build and the things we keep almost starting. Most of us call our outputs our personality and say this is just who I am. But outputs are formed, which means they can change. And they don’t change by forcing a different output through willpower, they change by going back upstream.

Examples: your words, your habits, your reactions, your creative work.

The question to ask: what is my life revealing about where my heart is at?

Your outputs are signs: reverse engineering

Our outputs are great indicators of where our heart is TRULY at. What are our habits, how are we prioritizing a heart posture for the Lord, how are we communicating, how are we expressing.

Let me give you a real example.

Say the output is: I cannot seem to stay consistent with anything creative. I start strong, I drop off, I feel guilty, I restart, I drop off again. (Sound familiar? Be honest.)

A lot of us try to fight that output directly. We buy a planner. We set a new goal. We find an accountability partner. We recommit on Monday. And none of it sticks, because we are fighting the symptom, not the source.

So let’s trace it back.

Processing: what does your mind actually believe about your creative work?

• That it has to be perfect to be worth sharing?

• That you are not the kind of person who finishes things?

• That other women are more talented, more qualified, more positioned?

• That God isn’t really in this, or maybe this idea wasn’t from Him after all?

Those beliefs are running the outputs. They are the processing layer, and they were formed somewhere.

Inputs: what is actually going into your heart around your creative work?

• Are you spending more time consuming what everyone else is building than building your own thing?

• Are you scrolling comparison content first thing in the morning, before you ever sit down with God?

• Was there an opinion put on you that is affecting your confidence?

• Are the voices you have let in telling you the truth about who you are and what you were made for?

Trace it back far enough and you find where to actually start. Not at the output. At the source.

So what is the instruction then?

If “follow your heart” is the incomplete version, then what is?

Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.”

Not trust your heart. Trust the Lord WITH your heart. Give it to Him. Let Him be the one who guards it, feeds it, renews what is in it. And then, from that place, build.

The heart is the source, the place where God put your gifts and your calling and the deep knowing that you were made for something. But a heart that is running on unguarded inputs, on old wounds and comparison and the noise of a very loud world, will hand back outputs that feel like you but aren’t really. They are just whatever the heart was fed.

Take the inputs audit

Guarding your heart is not about controlling it. It is about allowing God access to transform it. We do not renew ourselves, we participate in His renewing work.

So this week, take an honest audit. Spend one day just noticing everything you let in, the accounts, the conversations, the background noise. You might be surprised how much clarity comes from simply paying attention to what has been shaping your heart all along. If you do this, please let me know, I’d love to learn about your findings. 🤍

I am a sucker for any kind of end of the month, end of the quarter, mid-year audit. Anyone else?

Mid-year is one of the best natural points in the year to pause and reassess your life, goals, and direction.

By this point in the year, most of us either feel on track, slightly off track (Hi, its me.) or unsure where the time has gone (Hi, it’s also me).

Either way, this is a helpful moment to slow down, reflect honestly, and realign your next steps with what actually matters.

I do this reset every year and it has become one of my favorite planning routines, not because it is complicated, but because it is the complete opposite.

One page, four sections, combined with a lot of prayer. Here is how to do it. 🤍

What you need:

A blank piece of paper and a pen. No fancy planner, no app, just you, a page and some quiet time with the Lord.

Draw a cross down the center of your page to create four equal sections and label them:

1. Prayer + Vision

2. What’s Working

3. What’s Heavy

4. Priorities + Goals

Quadrant 1: Prayer + Vision

Before we plan anything, let’s pray. This is non-negotiable for me and honestly the quadrant is where we really tune into what we are being called into for the rest of the year. This section is between you and God :)

Write down:

• Your current prayers over your life and work

• Any verses God keeps bringing back to you

• Visions or dreams He has put on your heart this season

• Anything He has been speaking to you lately

Ask yourself:

• What do you want to build through me this season, Lord?

• What have I been carrying that you placed there?

• What feels like a God-given idea vs. my own striving?

Sit here longer than you think you need to. The rest of the quadrants will make so much more sense when this one is full! Also great to bring any scripture you want to root the rest of your year here as well.

Quadrant 2: What’s Working

Sometimes we jump right into the next thing or what we haven’t been doing well, before we actually identify the things that have gone right. Before we change anything, we need to see where God is already moving, because I promise it is more than we give Him credit for.

Write down:

• Everything that is working beautifully right now

• Where you feel alignment, flow or ease

• Where you can see God’s blessings in your life

• What feels right and good and worth protecting going into the second half of the year

• Answered prayers! (thank you Lord)

Ask yourself:

• Where is God already blessing what I am doing?

• What do I want to make sure I carry into the rest of 2026?

  

Quadrant 3: What’s Heavy

Alright, this one is equally important and requires some fun honesty. Let’s take a second to tune into what hasn’t gone the greatest this year, where we can improve, and what we need to let go of and give over to Jesus.

Write down:

• What feels draining, forced or heavy right now

• Commitments that are costing more than they are giving

• Areas where you feel stuck, depleted or like you are pushing uphill

• Anything you have been holding that might be time to release

• Habits that are not serving us

Ask yourself:

• What is God asking me to pause, release or change?

• What have I been holding onto that was never mine to carry?

• Where am I striving instead of trusting?

Then pray over each one. Ask God about releasing, pausing or changing these things. Sometimes the mid-year move is not adding more but it is letting something go and giving yourself full permission to do that.

Quadrant 4: Priorities + Goals

Do not complicate this one, I am serious. The whole point of this quadrant is simplicity and focus, which is exactly what the second half of the year needs. Because a complicated goal list gets us nowhere.

Write down:

• ONE big goal you would be MAJORLY proud of accomplishing by December 31st

• 3 smaller supporting goals or priorities alongside it

• 1 to 3 simple next action steps for each, with a date next to them

Ask yourself:

• If I could only accomplish one thing by the end of 2026, what would make me say “that was a real win”?

• What three things support that one big goal?

• What is the very next step I can actually take this week?

One big thing. Three supporting things. A few actions to get the ball rolling. yay!

Now spend time with your page

Don’t rush this part. Let your quadrant page become your guide for the rest of the year.

Let Quadrant 1 lead everything else. Let Quadrant 2 show you where God is already at work. Let Quadrant 3 give you permission to put some things down. Let Quadrant 4 give you the focus and the direction you need.

And then pray over the whole thing, every section, every goal, every heavy thing you wrote down!

Feel free to expand and journal more beyond your 4 quadrants on anything that needs a little extra attention or prayer over. 🤍

Now: ACTION

Once you have your quadrant page, take your Quadrant 4 goals and write out 1 to 3 next action steps for each one and put a simple date next to each step. That is your plan for the next 30 days, and it genuinely does not need to be more complicated than that.

Personally I love mapping this into Notion, it is where I keep my goals, my action steps and my due dates all in one place so nothing gets lost on a piece of paper somewhere in my bag lol.

Would you like access to my Notion planning dashboard to help you do this? I am happy to share it. Leave a comment below and let me know! 🤍

Hope this is helpful for you and if you do this, please, let me know in the comments below!

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We are consuming more than any generation that has ever lived and creating less of what God placed in us.

I have been sitting with this consumption vs creation imbalance and I can’t help but think.. it feels as if spiritual warfare has attacked our creative essence.

Sometimes, and I am not afraid to admit it, I have been so FULL of comparison, noise, information, other people’s work, other people’s ideas, other people’s LIVES, that I cannot hear the voice of God over my own.

And it prompts me to ask, is it possible that consumption is one of the enemy’s most effective distractions?

Because when we are so busy taking in what everyone else has made, we never make the thing that God put in us to work on. Until we are aware of this as believers, we will continue to stay disconnected.

God as the original Creator

A core point that shifted my mentality around creativity is this:

The very first thing God reveals about Himself is that He creates.

“In the beginning God created…”

He could have presented Himself as omnipresent, almighty, even all loving, but instead He shows Himself as a Creator. Of light, water, land, color, living things, us.

A while ago I read the book Called to Create by Jordan Raynor, and he opened the book with this idea that really stuck with me. The first time we meet God, He is creating and the first thing we learn about ourselves is that we are made in His image. So the urge to make things is not reserved for those of us that are stereotypically “creative.” It is part of how we act out His likeness.

We create because the One we are made in the image of created first.

Creativity is not just for our hobbies after our “important work” is done, it IS our important work.

Consumption Keeps Us From Our Own Creative Essence

When we are only consuming, something in us can go quiet and dim. We feel overwhelmed, foggy, and honestly just heavy after a unhealthy dose of scrolling. We scroll past a hundred people building the thing we keep circling and we take in more and more and make less and less.

I really do believe this is spiritual and not just a productivity problem. A heart that is always taking in noise has no room left to hear God or to remember what He placed there in the first place.

A big thing I have come to realize in my journey is that the enemy does not need to talk us out of our calling. He just needs to keep us full. Full of other people’s voices, other people’s lives, other people’s art success, until we cannot hear the thought God is trying to move through us.

I also think that what we are actually made to create, the thing that could help other people and spread God’s love, is often where we are attacked the greatest.

So what if we weren’t so hard on ourselves, and realized that our motivation, our productivity, our creative energy could be exactly where we are being spiritually opposed.

Thinking of this gives a bit of grace, but an even bigger call to pray over our creativity, protect our hearts, and rely and hand over our creativity to Jesus in every way we can.

How Creativity Has Been Stifled by Metrics (aka: not everything has to be a business or made to go viral)

Somewhere along the way we tied creating to numbers. Likes, follows, the dreaded algorithms, all of those numbers that tell us whether what we made was worth making or not. We took one of the purest things we do and hooked it to some sort of report card.

(Please tell me this doesn’t just make me sad…)

But please remember: He did not ask us to create so that it would perform.

He asked us to create because we are His, and making is part of how we commune with Him. The moment we are creating for the metric, we are no longer creating for Him and we feel the difference in our hearts when we create from that place.

I actually can be the first to admit I let so much time go by in this state. Coming from a business degree and being an ex COO, when it came to my creativity I thought it needed to = business, = profit, = a way to make money. That just kept me stuck and overthinking.

Your Creativity is a Heart-Check

This is the part I love. When we are guarding our hearts, when we are connected and the noise is on the low end, creativity flows almost on its own. The action and creation process becomes evidence of the connection. A clear heart overflows into something real.

When we have a healthy, creative, expressive life, I believe this is where God is happy and moving through us clearly. And if we are stifled, overthinking, that is a good observation that we may need to spend more time in rest, in quietness, in scripture and in prayer.

What I Mean By Creativity (it’s not just painting and drawing)

Because I know where some of us go. We hear “creativity” and we think painting, drawing, the girl who was obviously artistic in school, and we quietly count ourselves out (ME because I can’t draw to save someone’s life lol).

That is not what I mean at all. Creating is making something that was not there before.

Creation can look like:

• writing

• building businesses

• cooking

• designing

• problem-solving

• hospitality

• mothering

• organizing spaces

• storytelling

• teaching

• innovating

• (and yes can be painting + drawing too hehe)

There are so many things that fit under the creative lens.

So the question is not “am I creative.” It is “what has He given me to make, and am I making it?”

One quote that sticks out to me is this:

“The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
―Martin Luther

Remember that we don’t actually need to be making bible verse mugs for example to be “creating” for God. It can take a lot of different shapes and forms.

Creativity as Obedience + Devotion

There are so many verses and stories in scripture pointing towards a creative heart for the Lord, but one that I love is a man in Exodus named Bezalel.

Bezalel is the first person scripture says God filled with His Spirit.

Exodus 31:3, “I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills.”

If you haven’t read this Scripture yet, please pause reading this article and go read!

The thing I like about this story is that Bezalel is not a king or anyone fancy, but a craftsman, filled with wisdom and skill to make beautiful things for the place where God would dwell. The first Spirit-filled person in the Bible was a creative. Creativity, done for the service of God, has always been both obedience and worship.

So what if your creativity is not just a personality trait or a hobby, but an act of devotion? I dont know about you, but this shifts something within me to start taking action on a few things :)

Tips For Honoring God Through Creativity:

The past few months have been nothing short of beautiful since I have welcomed God into my creative process. So let me share a few simple ways to do this:

Create just for Him: This single handedly has changed my creative process. This lets off so much pressure for metrics, for performance, for likes and praise. When you are just creating for the Lord, it has a completely different gratification and joy in the process.

Prioritize quiet time with the Lord: We need to be able to hear Him, period. Quiet time will yield the highest clarity always.

Pray over what you make, before you make, when you make: Bring prayer and welcoming of the Lord into everything you do. Over what you should make, before you actually create, during the process. Let your creativity be worship + prayer.

Use creativity to spread the good news: What we make can point people to Him. Not always with words on it, sometimes just with the love and care and integrity. Spreading love, connecting with other HUMANS through the HEART. A made thing done from a clear heart carries something the world can feel…and that something is Him.

I hope this helps you connect and take note on your own creativity.

I wanted to end this reflection with sharing a final tip on something that helps me in my creative process. It is a process of written prayer and brain dumping what is on my heart, something I started to call my Heart Pages. Think Morning Pages but with a faith and action focus.

I wrote a quick summary on heart pages for anyone who might find it interesting to try out. You can access it as a free subscriber!

Thank you so much for reading kind heart! I hope this helps reflect on your own balance between consumption vs. creation and bringing the Lord into your own creative process.

The Heart Library

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HEART + BRAIN
The science and scripture of how you actually work.

💛 Heart Inventory Workbook: A five-zone process to uncover the gifts, desires, and lived experience God already wrote into you. Download below ↓

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CALLING + CREATIVITY
Tools for tuning into what you’re here to build.

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Frameworks and tools that turn what’s in your heart into something real.

💛The Avoidance Audit: A 5-step Notion template to name the thing you keep circling, find the fear underneath it, and make one ten-minute move.

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LIFE
For the resets, the routines, and the everyday of it.

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It is an overwhelming feeling sometimes, knowing that you are living a life adjacent to who you really are.

For years I felt this way. I was living, showing up, working and doing all the “things,” but something in my heart was saying: I’m pretty sure we are supposed to be doing something different with this life.

For five years I was a COO for a food and lifestyle media company. A position I was proud to have climbed into after starting as a humble marketing assistant. Even though I was very capable on paper, having success in running and managing our team, I was constantly met with an environment that made me second-guess my capabilities. In environments that aren’t especially supportive of your creativity, you start to shrink.

As I was entering a time of deep internal change, completely shifting my faith and knowing Jesus for the first time, I could feel that I also needed the external change. And as I got to know my Creator truly and deeply, He closed the door to my job.

The company took a hit. The founder pivoted in a direction I couldn’t follow. And I was let go.

It felt as if He had been allowing me time to leave on my own, and I was confused, scared and delaying the move, so He did it Himself. A life moment that completely rerouted me spiritually, financially, emotionally, all the lyyyys.

I had experienced life pivots in the past, but this time was different. This was the first time I was doing it with God at the center of my heart and life.

At 32, for the first time, I had a moment to stop and actually ask:

Okay. What does God actually want to move through me?

At the same time, God was actively rewriting my entire view of purpose, from something to find into something already settled (I share that whole unraveling here). So this question was never about finding my purpose. It was about the gifts He had already placed in me to live it out.

Which led me to creating this process (just a little less polished at the time).

Reframing what a “gift” actually is

I had always thought of gifts as something grand and spectacular. The person whose voice stopped a room. Someone with extraordinary athletic ability. A painter whose work made your heart feel something you couldn’t name.

So when I thought about my own gifts, nothing jumped out at me.

I was just a Canadian girl who had spent her years travelling the world without any specific standout talent. Trying all sorts of things, but not really being a master of any.

But as I began to see my life through the lens of what God had been doing all along, I started noticing things.

I have always been naturally introverted and observant. Naturally detail oriented. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial pull, a love for systems and frameworks, a curiosity that takes me to new places, literally and figuratively. I love design. I love creative work. I love understanding humanity through experiencing different cultures. I love helping organizations run better.

None of those felt like gifts in the dramatic sense. They felt like just me.

But here’s what I’ve come to believe: the things that feel like “just you” are often exactly what God designed.

The closer I got to stopping the fight against my own natural personality, the more I began to map out a next path that felt like a natural fit, one He had prepared.

Right now I’m using my marketing and design skills to serve a nonprofit children’s shelter. My new project, Heartmade, is a direct blend of every natural gift I have: the entrepreneurial heart, the systems thinking, the deep love for helping others, the creativity. None of it came from a course I took or a credential I earned. God keeps providing clients and financial opportunities that fit directly into these skills, and I have been practicing saying no to the ones that cause friction.

So my love, it is time we stop diminishing the actual epicness that is inside us and avoiding the natural beauty that is a blend of lived experience, natural skills and strong pulls and desires. Because the Creator of the entire universe put so much intention and beauty into who you are, and it is time we take some inventory on that.

Let’s dive into mapping this out shall we!

The Heart Inventory

Here’s something that changes everything when you actually believe it:

Your gifts are not hiding from you, they ARE you.

Scripture tells us the heart is our inner command center, the seat of our desires, our will, our personality, everything that makes us us. Which means the clues to who God made you to be aren’t somewhere out there waiting to be discovered. They’re already written into the heart He designed.

This inventory is just the process of reading what’s already there. Each zone has helped me to truly look into different parts of my lived experience, natural heart and who I desire to actually serve (all part of the inventory).

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Zone 1: Your Story

Your lived experience holds more information than you realize.

Your life is not a random collection of events. Every chapter, including the ones you didn’t choose and the ones that sting a little, left you with something. A skill. A perspective. A tenderness for a specific kind of person. God doesn’t waste chapters.

Ask yourself:

• What seasons shaped me the most?

• What did I walk through that I couldn’t have learned any other way?

• What did those hard chapters give me, even if they cost me something?

Zone 2: Your Skills

You are more skilled than you think.

Skills come in three forms:

• Tangible skills — writing, design, organizing, planning, building, creating

• Soft skills — listening well, encouraging, leading calmly, bringing clarity to chaos

• Lived-through skills — what you know from actual experience: starting over, rebuilding, finding your way back

The things that feel so natural you’ve never considered them valuable? Those are usually the ones worth writing down.

Ask yourself:

• What do people come to me for without me advertising it?

• What feels so easy to me that I assume everyone can do it?

• What have I learned through living that no course could have taught me?

Zone 3: Your Desires

Your desires are actually clues.

What you genuinely want more of in your life, and what you want less of, tells you something real about how God wired you and what kind of work you’re actually built to sustain. The things you keep coming back to, the work that lights something up in you, the life you quietly long for, none of that is accidental.

Ask yourself:

• What does a day feel like when it’s right?

• What drains me even when I’m good at it?

• What kind of impact do I find myself daydreaming about?

Don’t filter this for what sounds humble enough. Be honest.

Zone 4: Who You’re Drawn to Help

We are called to serve.

Usually someone who looks like a version of you a few years back. The struggles you’ve walked through are not just your story, they’re your preparation. The tenderness you feel toward a specific kind of person, the conversations that energize you, the problems you want to solve before anyone asks you to, those are all directional.

Ask yourself:

• Who do I feel naturally protective of or drawn toward?

• Who do I understand without them having to explain everything?

• Who was I a few years ago, and what would have helped me then?

Zone 5: How You Naturally Offer Value

The way you’re wired to show up is part of the assignment.

Some of us come alive teaching. Some in deep one on one conversation. Some in creating things, writing, designing, making. Some in systems and structures that help other people move. Some in quiet behind the scenes work that holds everything together.

You don’t have to force yourself into a shape that drains you. The way you love to show up is part of the gift.

Ask yourself:

• When do I feel most energized in my work or in helping someone?

• Do I love guiding, creating, encouraging, explaining, organizing, making?

• What kind of work feels most like me, even when it’s hard?

The Clarity Zone

This is where it comes together.

You’ve just mapped five zones. Now we connect the dots.

Pull your strongest answer from each zone and place it side by side:

• My story gave me...

• I’m naturally skilled at...

• I desire a life that feels...

• I feel drawn to help...

• I love offering value by...

Do you see a pattern? A thread running through all five? That thread is your gift.

Now write it out using this formula:

God has equipped me to [what you do or create] for [who you help] using my gifts in [your skills] and my experience with [your story].

This doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does help us to hone in on what we can offer the world and our Creator.

What to do with what you find

Here’s what I want you to hold onto when you finish this inventory:

Your gifts don’t have to make you money to be worth honoring.

Some of your gifts are for your family. Some are for your community. Some are for a season you can’t see yet. But when you start using them, getting curious about them, and taking action on them, it is really interesting what starts to open up.

I encourage you to follow along with this publication because I will be sharing more of my own frameworks and life insights on how to move these gifts into something real.

Want to go deeper?

The full Heart Inventory workbook walks you through all five zones with reflection prompts, tables, and a clarity formula to help you connect the dots into a direction that’s actually yours.

It’s free for every Heartmade subscriber and waiting for you in the downloads section of this publication. Subscribe, access the heart library, download the workbook, and I encourage you to put pen to paper on these zones.

That’s where it starts to get real. 💛

About The Author:

Hi there! I’m Amanda, the heart behind Heartmade. I’m an ex-COO and lifelong systems + operations lover, new(ish) in my walk with God, originally from Canada, now living abroad with my dog. Here, I write through life transition (the messy middle of purifying a heart) and share what’s actually helped me grow closer in my faith. It’s a life I’m still learning to walk, and I’m so glad you’re here for it.

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We are living through the golden age of the routine, and I will be the first to admit I am a little bit in it.

We track our steps, our macros, our screen time, our deep sleep. We have never, in the whole history of being human, been more committed to maintaining ourselves.

And somehow, the one thing scripture says everything flows from is the one thing most of us never maintain at all.

We will exfoliate twice a week and never once stop to ask what we are letting into our heart! So let’s change that. Let’s get into it. 🤍

the verse this is built on

Proverbs 4:23. Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Okay. I know you have heard this one.

It is on the mugs, the phone cases, I am pretty sure I have a key chain that says this. We have heard it so many times but let’s slow down and look at what it actually says.

First, the Hebrew, because the English flattens it a little:

• Guard (netzor, from natsar): to watch over, protect, preserve. The same word used for guarding your mouth and your way. This is very much a verb and an action.

• With all diligence (mikkol-mishmar): a guard post, a watch kept around something precious. The verse stacks a second guarding word right here, just for emphasis.

• Heart (lev): not just feelings. The whole command center. Your thoughts, your will, your loves, the core of who you are.

• Everything flows from it (totza’ot): the outflowings, the springs. The place your whole life pours out from.

So literally? Above all else, set a watch over your heart (your whole command center), because it is the place your whole life flows from.

Which means guarding your heart was never meant to be a one-time clean. It is a daily watch, kept on purpose, around the most important thing you have. That is hygiene.

So a heart hygiene routine is exactly what it sounds like: the small, repeatable, mostly unglamorous things you do every day to keep your heart clean and guarded, so that what flows out of you is actually good.

the three parts of a healthy heart routine

Here is the structure I keep coming back to, because it is simply how a heart works. Inputs, processing, outputs. What goes in, what you do with it, what comes out. This is our signature framework, and a real heart hygiene routine has all three. Here is what each one looks like on a totally normal day.

1. guard the gate (your inputs)

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

You cannot process or output your way out of garbage you keep letting in, so the gate comes first. We are big on the morning, and there is real science under it. As you wake, your brain moves through theta, its prime state for plasticity, when your neurons most readily wire in what they take in. So what you put in front of your mind first does not just get noticed. It gets written in.

(Quick caution, because this is where teaching drives off into new age territory. People call this your window to “reprogram your subconscious,” to plant affirmations until your brain believes them. That is not what we are doing. We do not reprogram ourselves. We just decide what gets in front of a primed brain and let God do the renewing. One version makes you your own programmer. Ours makes you the keeper of a gate.)

So please focus on:

• What is in your ears. Music on repeat, the background podcast. Whatever loops gets wired in. Choose it, or choose quiet.

• The screen. Set a cap, move the apps off your home screen, leave the phone in the other room while you eat.

• Your feed. Once a week, unfollow anything that leaves you anxious or smaller.

• The rooms and the people. Conversations go in too. Guard them with the same care.

2. wash it daily (your processing)

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:2)

So something came in through the gate. Now what? This is where most of us get stuck, because we take life in all day and never actually do anything with it. It just loops. The same worry, the same lie we believe about ourselves, the same reaction on repeat. Processing is what happens to all of that on the inside, and left alone, the inside does not sort itself out. It just spins.

The wash is where we stop spinning and start renewing. We take what is in there, the worry, the thought, the belief that has been running the show, bring it to God on purpose, and let Him reorder it. That is what renewing your mind actually means. Not thinking harder. Handing the loop to Him and letting truth take the place of the lie.

The practice I use for this every morning is Heart Pages, three handwritten pages with my coffee. And here is the thing, it is the whole heart routine in miniature: something comes in, gets reordered, points to something made. Prayer, flow, action.

• Prayer. Bring it to God first. Talk to Him on paper, honestly, until you have said the real thing and not just the polished version of it.

• Flow. This is the actual wash. Dump everything looping inside onto the page. The worry, the idea, the thing your kid said, the thing you would never say out loud. No editing. You are getting it out of your head and into the light where God can reorder it, instead of letting it run laps in your chest all day.

• Action. One line. The single brave thing you are going to do today. Not a plan. One action, because a renewed mind was always meant to point somewhere.

3. watch what flows out (your outputs)

Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

Here is the gift hidden in this verse. Your outputs are a diagnostic. You do not have to sit around wondering what is really in your heart, you just watch what comes out of it. Your words. Your reactions when you are tired and stretched thin. The way you talk to yourself when you fail. What you make, and whether you ever finish it. The overflow always tells the truth, even when we would rather it didn’t. Your habits, your creativity, your actions, they are all the FRUIT of a healthy heart.

So this part is not more effort, it is noticing. One minute, at night: ask what came out of me today? You are not grading yourself, so put the gavel down. You are reading the gauge. If today ran harsh or anxious or scattered, you do not scramble to fix the output. You go back tomorrow, guard the gate, wash the heart, and start again. The overflow always traces back to those first two.

keep a healthy heart

That is the work and it is the whole thing HeartMade is built on. Closing the gap between your heart and your habits, so we can build, create, and make what God placed in us real.

Guard it well. 🤍

Our hearts are like a ROOM.

While I was in my own prayer time, God started to show me my own heart and to explain the human heart to me like a room. Since that morning the metaphor has stuck so clearly in my mind that I had to share it with you.

Imagine inviting God into a physical room, and that room is your heart.

If we think of it like that, my guess is you would want the Lord to feel as welcome in your room as possible. I know I do!

Our hearts should be welcoming places for the Lord to visit. But if we are not doing a little housekeeping, things start to get complicated.

So what does it actually mean to have a welcoming heart?

Why the heart matters

Before we start tidying, it is worth sitting with why this room matters so much.

When we look at Scripture, the heart is the only place the Bible tells us the Holy Spirit actually comes to dwell. The only place God meets us.

Not in our hands, or our feet, or our nose, but our hearts. It is the one place inside this whole physical vessel of ours where God meets us directly.

• He put His Spirit in our hearts (2 Corinthians 1:22).

• Christ Himself dwells in our hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:17).

• Of every part of us He could have chosen, He chose the heart.

So this is not a forgotten room we can afford to neglect and that is why it needs our attention.

A well kept room

If you picture a room that is welcoming for the Lord, a few things probably come to mind. It is probably quiet. It is probably open and spacious. It is humble, with not a lot of flashy decor. It probably feels reallypeaceful.

It might be clean with a welcome mat outside, fresh air coming through the window, maybe a pot of tea on the table waiting to be shared.

A clean room, a pure heart.

Here is what a clean room and pure heart are filled with:

1. Quietness. With so much noise in the world, so much input, so much coming at our hearts all day, being quiet is one of the MOST important things we can do.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

This is a CORE verse I keep coming back to with this metaphor. But one of the biggest parts of it is the word “HEARS”.

Can you even hear the Lord knocking on the door to your room? We have to remove, subtract, and be quiet to actually hear Him knocking, and to be able to open the door at all.

2. Openness. Let’s make some room for the Lord! Is He welcome? Is there SPACE? When I think of a room that is well kept, I think of openness and accessibility.

No hidden junk drawers, no closets we keep locked. An open heart means nothing is off-limits to Him.

3. Humbleness. God is not asking for the flashiest room with the most glamorous decor. The opposite actually… He is drawn to a humble room.

Scripture tells us He dwells with the lowly and the contrite of heart (Isaiah 57:15). A plain, honest, unimpressive little room is exactly where He loves to sit down. MY HEART!! He is soo good.

4. Cleanliness & Purity. Let’s do some housekeeping, shall we. The more we tidy, maintain, and regularly clean our room, the more welcoming it becomes. And here is also a cool message He showed me in this morning: that He will actually help us clean. He will deep clean, get into the junk drawers and the closets we keep shoving things into (for years that is). But it is still our duty to guard our hearts and protect our space.

The opposite: a messy room

Can you hear Jesus knocking if the room of your heart has the TV on full blast, your phone dinging every 10 seconds, social media scrolling in the corner, and two people arguing next to the coffee table?

I can’t be the only one who has had a messy heart. A cluttered, closed-off room so shut to the Lord that honestly, I would have been surprised if I could have EVER heard His knock.

It is easier than we think to collect all sorts of clutter. Just like in everyday life, the clothes build up, the dishes build up, the trash piles up when we stop paying attention.

With so much overwhelm, overstimulation, and constant information, it is so easy to take in an insane amount of input throughout the day, straight into our HEARTS.

That is exactly why Scripture tells us to guard our hearts (Proverbs 4:23) and renew our minds daily (Romans 12:2). DAILY UPKEEP BABY!

How to have a welcoming heart

The core principles:

1. Tell God. Talk to Him. YOU ARE WELCOME HERE. YOU ARE WELCOME IN MY HEART, LORD.

2. Prayer.

3. Scripture.

4. Repentance.

And my absolute favorite: pure silence.

Thee are simple and as a Christian you are probably very familiar in all of them. They are core practices for a reason. Keep open dialogue with the Lord, pray over everything muddling your heart, turn to Scripture to renew your heart, repent to keep things clean, and please make room to hear the knock.

Let God do the deep clean

Here is the part that is so cool that I mentioned. God actually wants to help us in here. He wants to purify us. He wants to sanctify us. And the more we welcome Him in, the more He clears the room, the more He helps us organize the closets we have packed so full we don’t even want to open them. This is where He does His best work.

Like a good friend or a parent who comes in and helps, God wants in on the deep clean.

Put a welcome mat out. Daily.

A daily invitation.

A simple “Come in, Lord.”

That is how we make our hearts a place where God loves to dwell, not just visit.

So I will leave you with this, you do not need to ask is “is my heart perfect'?”, but rather is my heart WELCOMING? And do your part of the housekeeping.

Heart prompts: a few things to journal on

• Is my heart a welcome space for the Lord?

• What inputs do I need to start being aware of, to keep my heart clean?

• What is the state of my room right now?

• What could a daily invitation to the Lord look like for me?

  

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Hi there and welcome to the Heartmade Co.

A little about me

I'm Amanda, a 32 year old Canadian living between Mexico and Canada with my rescue dog, Snowy. My background is in international business, and most recently I was COO of a food and lifestyle company. I could feel God closing that door and pointing me toward something else, and eventually He closed it for me: a push to step into truly being of service with my own gifts. In between positions, I've built a few businesses of my own, from a smoothie bowl shop and a women's network in Central America, to digital and consulting businesses, to now the Heartmade Co. brand (in progress project!)

I've travelled to nearly 40 countries, I live abroad, and I'm passionate about humanity, God's creation, and truly creating and building a life that feels good to move through.

My Testimony

I was never raised with much religion, but I always had a quiet knowing of God.

For most of my adult life, especially while traveling and studying, I was searching. I tried more spiritual practices than I can count, tarot, psychics, plant medicine, manifestation, energy work, crystals, new moon ceremonies. I even trained as a life purpose coach and got certified in sound healing. I was looking for anything that would ease my anxiety, my low self worth, and that constant ache to understand my purpose.

But two years ago it all started to feel exhausting. Every practice told me I had to heal more, do more, keep up. And if something in my life went wrong, it was somehow my fault for not being a good enough “energetic match” to what I wanted. I was on a never ending healing train, and I just wanted off.

Then two summers ago, out of the blue, I felt a pull to go buy a Bible. I almost talked myself out of it. I had always thought religion meant control and suppression. But in my morning quiet time I started sitting with the Word, open to it for the first time.

Over the next few weeks something shifted. I began to feel a peace I had never known, and I started to see clearly how much of what I had been chasing was only ever temporary relief. It was only when I opened myself to a real relationship with Jesus that I started making changes that actually lasted.

It started with a lot of questions. But with each question it really felt that there was a Jesus shaped answer and the more my heart opened, the more peace and love I felt.

Prayer, scripture and fasting have changed my heart at the deepest level. I genuinely love who I am becoming and who I am rooted in Christ, and after spending so much time not truly loving myself, this is such a special thing.

I will always agree with the fact that relationship > religion. A relationship with your Creator changes everything, and I now share about my journey whenever I can. 🙏🏼🕊️

The gift I sat on for years

I was always really good at planning, strategy, operations and really good at giving advice, but really bad at taking my own.

For most of my adult life I was very anxious, an over thinker, and I really do think the enemy kept me distracted and overthinking for years. I’ve had SO many ideas, so many projects, that never saw their full potential because of my own fear. That is sad.

I got to a point, especially within my faith, where it wasn’t only that I was letting myself down. I felt like I was letting God down too, in a way (I know He has mercy, but it really felt like that). I felt like I was just letting days go by, overthinking, without ever actually taking action.

I know what it’s like to be stuck in a loop of procrastination that leads to shame, that leads to guilt, that leads back to shame. And when you are living for God, it can feel even worse, because it doesn’t feel like you are only letting yourself down. I personally was SO motivated by this one thought: I could not bear getting to the end of my life, standing in front of my Creator, and having Him ask me WHY. Why He blessed me with so many gifts, so many ideas, so much potential, and I chose fear instead. This is honestly one of the most motivating things for me to think about.

What finally changed

When I really began fully living for God, I realized I no longer had to do this alone. I no longer had to seek validation in my projects. I could just create for the glory of Him, whether 1 person or 1 million people ever saw my work.

I began to study scripture, while still honoring my knowledge in business, productivity, and brain science, and how much overlap there was between them. It wasn’t just fluffy devotions, it was actual, real HEART WORK happening, as I asked God to remove my fear and help me become the woman He created me to be.

These days I’m a digital product creator, I now have a few consulting clients, I serve with multiple organizations supporting children and women, and I’m starting my own dreams of nonprofit work helping women in Central America launch their own projects.

Over months of prayer, I came to know that God wanted me to share my journey, my practices, and the things that had actually started moving the needle for me. He put it on my heart that I am not alone in this feeling, and He blessed me with the fire to research, to practice, and to develop my own frameworks through lived experience, blending scripture with science backed approaches.

It is a daily process to step away from fear and take God fueled action. But that is the commitment we make. To pick up our cross daily, renew our mind daily, and stay devoted to our purpose.

What HeartMade is

The name HeartMade came to me in quiet time with Jesus. It blends two important things.

Heart. This is the biggest thing. We cannot survive without our heart. Yes, we can survive without a leg or a limb, but our heart is essential to our life. God speaks to us through our heart. He moves us through our heart. The heart is not just an organ, it carries an essential life force, and God’s messaging runs through it. What is in OUR HEARTS is there from God.

Made. This is the action. MADE has been DONE. Completed. Acted on. Made is past tense, it is finished. It is taking what is on our heart and making it real.

HeartMade is an educational company that gives you practices, support, inspiration, tools, and frameworks to help close the gap between your heart and your habits, so you can take action on your gifts.

What to expect here

Here is what you get when you subscribe:

• One post every Tuesday, straight to your inbox. Some weeks a small training, some weeks a journal prompt or a framework you can keep and use, some weeks an honest story from me.

• Heart Pages, my free morning practice. Three short pages, Prayer, Flow, and Action, done in about twenty minutes each morning.

• Faith first, always. A little brain science shows up too, but we will always stay rooted in scripture.

If you have been carrying something, a gift, an idea, a thing you know you were made to do, and it has just been sitting there, you are in the right place. You are not behind. You have a gift, you just have not had a bridge. Let’s build it together 🤍

Hit subscribe below. I would love to have you here, and I’ll see you Tuesday.