I was writing a birthday message to my daughter when I typed these words: “The place you hold in my heart is unmatched.” Then I laughed. Not because it wasn’t true. Because it is. But it also made me realize something. When someone holds that much of your heart, they also have the ability to break it. That’s the risk of loving deeply. As parents, we know that feeling. Our children can bring us our greatest joy and our deepest sorrow. A phone call can make us celebrate, or it

This morning I found myself thinking about church. Not the sermon. Not the worship. People. Specifically, a feeling I have carried for a long time. The feeling that I don’t quite belong. The feeling that somehow I am less than. The strange thing is, if you asked me if I believed that, I would immediately say no. I know what the Word says. I know who I am in Christ. I know I am loved. I know I am accepted. I know I belong to Him. Yet there are moments when something inside of

Some of the strangest parts of growth is realizing some people still think they know you. They speak from old memories. Old versions. Old seasons. And somewhere in the conversation they say: “I know you.” And quietly you think: No. You knew me. You knew me when I people pleased. When I overextended. When I worried about what everyone thought. When I carried relationships. When I checked on everybody else before checking on myself. When I quietly abandoned myself trying to kee

The awakening is realizing you have been surviving for so long that survival started feeling normal. You wake up one day and notice you do not know how to rest anymore. You do not know how to slow down. How to feel safe. How to simply be present. You only know how to brace. Brace for pressure. Brace for disappointment. Brace for loss. Brace for responsibility. Brace for the next thing to go wrong. And suddenly, you begin seeing your life differently. The overgiving. The fixin

There was a time holidays would completely expose me. Not every year. But the years where brokenness spoke louder than love. Holidays were and still can be exhausting internally. I realize now it was not always reality. It was the lens I was seeing through. Every interaction felt loaded. Every emotion became a question. Am I accepted? Am I loved? Did I do something wrong? I lived under so much pressure. Pressure to get motherhood right. Pressure for perfection. Pressure to h

Sometimes rising looks beautiful. Sometimes it looks like tears, anger, exhaustion, silence, wrestling thoughts, and trying not to lose yourself in the middle of it all. That is the part people do not always talk about. Humanity. The Bible never hid humanity. The messy middle. The internal battles. The tension between wanting peace while feeling overwhelmed. Wanting healing while still carrying hurt. Wanting to stay soft in a world that can make you hard. Some days the victor

I poured out. Silence came back. I reached out. Silence came back. I trusted. Silence came back. I shared my heart. Silence came back. I brought what was precious. Silence came back. I showed up hoping to be seen. Silence came back. The hardest part about silence is not always the silence itself. It is what starts speaking inside of it. Suddenly old wounds get louder. I shared too much. I cared more than they did. I should stop reaching. Stop building. Stop hoping. Keep

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is that forgiveness and access are not the same thing. As Christians, we hear it often: “Forgive.” “Let it go.” “Keep loving people.” And yes, absolutely. But somewhere along the way, many of us were taught that forgiveness meant continuing unhealthy access. That if we truly forgave, we would keep opening the same door, tolerating the same patterns, and abandoning ourselves in the name of peace. That isn’t peace. That’s bondage. Th

There is a question I’ve been sitting with lately: Lord, where am I giving from fullness, and where am I giving from hunger? At first, I didn’t understand the difference. I thought love was love. Serving was serving. Giving was giving. But the longer I sat with the Lord, the more I realized that sometimes we give because we are overflowing. And sometimes we give because we are starving. Sometimes we spend years being the strong one. The dependable one. The encourager. The hel

Yesterday I heard something that stopped me. You do not give yourself grace. I did not argue with it. I did not brush it off. I just let it sit in the back of my mind. And I kept thinking about it. Because I know grace. I write about grace. I give grace pretty freely. But later, when I checked myself, I realized something uncomfortable: It was true. Guilt has a way of speaking. Regret does too. For things I did not know. Things I should have done. Things I wish I handled diff