The Scene

You are still sitting in that circle. Still outside Egypt. Still carrying what Egypt taught you about where people come from.

In Egypt, a god named Khnum sat at a potter’s wheel and shaped human beings out of Nile clay. That part is going to sound familiar in a minute. But you also grew up knowing why the gods made people at all. In the stories told across that whole world, humanity was built to work, so the gods could stop working. You existed to carry the load.

You have four hundred years of evidence that this is true.

There’s one more thing you should know. The breath of the divine, the life of god in a body, belongs only to Pharaoh.

Moses begins to say God formed a man from the dust of the ground, like a potter at his wheel, but then he says that God put His own breath in him. Just a regular man. One man made of dirt.

Then He plants a garden and puts the man in it (not a work camp or labor field) and tells him he may freely eat of every tree in it. This God gave Him abundance before the boundary.

You have never once been handed a place and told, "This is yours to enjoy."

What I See

God forms the man from dust, breathes life into him, and places him in a garden in Eden to work it and keep it. He gives the man freedom over all of it, with one line drawn. Then God says something He has never said before. In chapter one, God said "good" seven times and "very good" once. Now, for the first time, He looks at something in His own creation and says it isn’t good yet: for man to be alone.

And here’s what I want you to notice: the man never said it.

The man doesn’t complain. He hasn’t reported or noticed a problem. God looks at a man who is not aware that anything is missing and names the absence out loud.

Then He brings the animals, one by one, and lets the man name them. And somewhere in that parade, the man figures out for himself what God already knew: there was no one like him. Then God puts him into a deep sleep and builds the woman, and the man wakes up to a provision he had no part in making.

God does not consult the man about the solution. He doesn’t ask him what he wants or ask him to help build it. He puts him under, and does it Himself, and the man opens his eyes to something already finished.

He saw the need first. He named it first. He solved it while the man was unconscious.

The Name

I have spent most of my life anticipating and identifying the need, then meeting it. I can look at a room, a family, a meal, my body, and tell you what’s missing and what it will take to fix it. That skill has served me. It has also convinced me that if I stop scanning, no one else is watching.

But Genesis 2 says the scanning was never mine to do. God didn’t wait for a prayer request. He didn’t require the man to articulate his own loneliness in the right language before He moved on it. He identified what was missing in a person who thought he was fine.

The God who sees my needs before I do.

That’s the name I wrote down. Not the God who responds when I finally figure out what to ask for. Not the God who needs me to diagnose myself correctly first.

He is working on what I truly need while I rest.

The Invitation

There is a particular exhaustion that comes from believing you are the only one paying attention. If you have been the strong one, the one who holds it together, the one everybody calls, then you already know this. You have gotten so used to identifying everyone else’s needs that you have lost the ability to name your own. Somebody asks what you need, and your mind goes blank, or you say “nothing,” and you’re not even lying. You genuinely don’t know.

Genesis 2 has good news for a person who can’t answer that question.

The man in this chapter was not praying for a companion. He wasn’t lonely on the record. He was working in a garden with no idea that anything was missing, and God was already saying not good, already forming the answer, already moving.

Which means the silence you’re reading as absence may not be absence. It may be the part where He does the work you cannot participate in. The first thing God ever declared not good was isolation, and the remedy was not more strength; it was not being alone. The true question is: can you trust that your need can be met while you rest?

Ready to add your name to the roll? After reading Genesis 2, tell me what you found. Then, drop your name for Him in the comments.

The message was about being the same, but different, and I built it on Genesis 1:1-2. One of the first things God wants us to know about Him is revealed in the first two verses of Scripture, where He shows us what He can do with chaos. The Greek word we get chaos from means a vast chasm, a gaping void, an abyss. Sounds a lot like formless, void, and darkness. That’s the raw material He chose to create with, and I needed that God more than ever while I was in my most raw state.

I learned He’s “The God who sets things in order,” and you can watch the message where I unpack that here.

Today, I want to introduce another name I’ve given him, but first let’s travel back in time and imagine we’re among the Ancient Near East people experiencing this introduction to God for the first time.

The Scene

The year is 1440BCE. You’re in a wilderness outside of Egypt. You’re SAT in a circle listening to a man read a scroll out loud about how the Earth was formed. You…well, no one really knows how to read, and what He’s saying is completely different than what you grew up hearing.

Up until recently, you have been a slave your whole life. You thought the sun was a god and that every night it fights a serpent and every morning, if he wins, the light comes back. Power goes to whoever is strong enough to hold things in order.

Right now, you think the human representative of that power is Pharaoh. He, and he alone, is the living image of god on earth.

Then comes Moses.

He’s telling you that the sun was never a God nor was it in a battle. Instead, it was spoken into existence and lifted into the sky by the power of words from the only true God.

To top it all off, you find out that on the sixth day of creation, you and all the people in the circle with you were made in the image of God. Not Pharaoh.

What I See

Seven times in one chapter, God stops and looks at what He made and then checks that it was good. He isn’t building straight through and grading at the end. He inspects as He goes. There’s something to be said about God being able to see His work as good even if it’s not finished. That’s more than I can say about some of you us.

Day two has no verdict. He separates the waters. He makes the sky. Then the chapter moves on in silence. That means He’s not just giving away “goods” for the sake of it. On day three, what He started on Day 2 finally earns a good. Two actually. He separates the water from dry land (good!) and commands the Earth to bring forth vegetation (good!).

On day six, God calls humanity very good. Nothing else he creates gets that very in front of it. He called us very good before we did anything at all; we were just being.

The Name

Imagine believing that you’re only as good as your ability to do and produce while worshipping a God who calls you good before you do anything at all. The pressure I put on myself connects my goodness with my execution. I’m not good until I’ve successfully completed and fulfilled everything assigned to me. But the assignments never stop coming, and therefore I never feel good enough for long enough.

God didn’t wait to see if the human prototypes would perform as directed before calling them good. He knew it would take time and many mistakes before they could live up to their fullest potential, but still called them good.

That’s the name I wrote down. Not the God who will call me good when I finally get it together and execute the vision. Nor the one who needs me to hide my flaws and failures. He’s the God who calls me good even when I’m not so sure it’s true. He checked His work seven times in that chapter. He never once checked mine. What He does check is my heart.

The Invitation

Maybe God has never been as impressed by our performance as we are. Throughout Scripture, He keeps looking past what people can see. When Samuel is impressed by Eliab’s appearance, God reminds him that people look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

Instead of constantly asking, “How am I doing?” maybe I need to start asking, “Who am I becoming?” Because you can get the work right and let your heart get hard. You can meet the deadline and lose your peace. You can build something successful while becoming someone you don’t recognize.

And the reverse can be true too. You can be in a season where the work is unfinished, the results aren’t impressive, and there are things you wish you had done differently, while God is doing some of His deepest work in your heart.

Maybe God isn’t checking my work because He’s checking on me.

Did you read Genesis 1? Tell me what you found. Drop your name for Him in the comments. It might not sound anything like mine. That’s the point. I want to learn what He looks like through your eyes.

Next week: Genesis 2, and the first time God looks at something He made and says “not good.”

When I fell on that trampoline, I did not just lose control of my body. I lost the version of God I thought I knew. In the days after, at the appointments, in the waiting room, in the loneliness of loud scans, and in the gazes of gratitude mixed with grief from loved ones, one thought started running underneath everything.

Was God punishing me?

That feels a bit too honest to put here, but where religion usually runs to “God has a plan” and “everything happens for a reason,” I was wondering if I had done something wrong and this was my punishment. I figured the quicker I learned what it was, the faster I could stop doing it and fix my life. I wanted control. I wanted to get back to the version of my life where I understood the rules. If suffering was punishment, then maybe obedience could become insurance.

If you have ever gotten a diagnosis, or watched a marriage come apart, or sat in a silence from God that lasted longer than you thought you could survive, you may have asked a similar question. Auditing your own faithfulness, looking for the line item that explains the pain away and helps you avoid it in the future.

Whether you earned your wounds or life just happened to you, I bet nobody warned you about the disorientation after the crisis. When the old language stops working. When the prayers you have prayed your whole life don’t come out with ease. When the desire to pray doesn’t come at all. You are not angry at God. You just don’t know where He went or whether the God you had built in your mind was the same God who had been with you all along.

That fork in the road is where I could have made a deal. I could have settled for a faith that says and does the right things, but ignores the moments in life where trusting God meant ignoring your questions. I could have looked forward to the taste of the next victory while ignoring the sour taste of the current defeat. I see that kind of faith all the time.

I’ve also seen what that faith does over time. You end up believing that there is a God, but you aren’t sure you can trust His plans for you.

Someone I knew everything about but no longer truly knew. So, I took it as an invitation to know Him more deeply. Not know about Him. I have known about Him my whole life. I have a library of what people have said about Him. I needed a reintroduction to His character and ways. So I did the only thing I knew to do.

I went back to the beginning.

One question, one chapter at a time

I opened Genesis 1. I wasn’t looking for a promise to claim or a verse to carry into the week. I stopped looking for instructions. I stopped looking for answers and asked one question over and over.

God, who are You?

God, who are You?

God, who are You?

That’s it. When I began to see Him beyond the text, I did not just get the answer to the question. I got a new name for Him. It wasn’t a churchy catchphrase or a dissertation. The names were simple, but real and undeniable.

• The One who doesn’t look away.

• The One who knows what we can’t handle seeing.

• The One who waited until the coast was clear.

Chapter after chapter, I was writing down names. These were not the formal ones from the hymns I heard growing up. These were the names created out of my own disorientation. Before I could question who I was to give God a name, I remembered Hagar.

She is Egyptian, foreign, enslaved, pregnant by a man who is not her husband and who was not her choice, and she has run into the wilderness because the household she belonged to became unlivable. She has no standing. No power. Nothing that qualifies her for a theological moment.

In Genesis 16, she does something that nobody else in the entire Hebrew Bible does. Prophets don’t do it. Patriarchs don’t do it. Moses doesn’t do it. She gives God a name. Not because she understood everything about Him, but because she understood something about Him. She calls Him El Roi. The God who sees me.

Hagar wasn’t in a temple. She wasn’t even the main character in the story. At the lowest, most disoriented, most disqualified moment of her life, God makes her the only person in Scripture to ever give Him a name. Others name places, but nobody else names Him. That name is still in the book.

Naming the God who meets you in your lowest is holy. It’s the moment when the distance between you and Him can’t get any greater. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the oldest, most biblical things a person can do. Scripture gave that honor to a woman the world had written off. In a season where I began wondering if my name was being erased, I found myself meeting a God whose character kept expanding. Every chapter dismantled another assumption. Every name reminded me there was more of Him than I had ever imagined.

I have been calling this study The Name Project, and I’d like to share it with you.

So here’s my invitation…

For the next twelve weeks, I’m walking through the opening chapters of Genesis, one chapter at a time, answering that one question, “God, who are You?” and giving Him a name based on what I find.

Each week we’ll explore:

• the chapter we’re reading together and what actually happens in it, in case you haven't read it yet

• what the original audience believed about God before Genesis challenged them

• what the story reveals about His character

• what seeing Him this way changes in us

When it’s all said and done, I’m going to ask you what name you would give Him. I want to know what He looks like through your eyes. I know I’m not the only woman in a season of discovering God while disoriented. I think there are a lot of us, women who are refusing to walk away from a faith they fought hard to possess, but who can’t settle on the version of faith we had before. If you are quietly looking for who God actually is in the middle of a life that didn’t go the way we planned, you’re welcome here.

In preparation for next week, read Genesis 1, and if you’re willing, I’d love for you to share His name. Maybe your name won’t sound anything like mine. That’s the point. Hagar called Him “The God who sees me.” Abraham would know Him differently. Moses would know Him differently. David would know Him differently. Every encounter reveals another facet of the same God.

So next week, after you’ve sat with Genesis 1, I want to know...

What name did you give your God?

Not just once, but again and again and again. I didn’t know it at the time, but that one prayer would dismantle my need to “arrive” and replace it with something more complicated, but more holy and honest.

Because every yes required a level of vulnerability, I couldn’t perform my way through. Every yes demanded humility, the kind that doesn’t let you hide behind what you’ve built or what you’ve achieved. It exposed how much I still didn’t know and how little control I actually had. This wasn’t about becoming impressive; it was about becoming dependent.

I used to think confidence came from arriving, from finally becoming someone who had it together. But I’m learning that real confidence doesn’t come from external accomplishments, it comes from inner development. It’s formed in the quiet places no one sees, where alignment matters more than applause. It’s built when you trust God in seasons where you don’t even fully recognize yourself.

What this prayer gave me wasn’t certainty about my outcome; it gave me confidence in my company. I may not always feel settled in who I’m becoming, but I’m settled in the fact that I’m not becoming her alone. That kind of assurance doesn’t eliminate the tension, but it does anchor you in the middle of it. It reminds you that process doesn’t mean abandonment.

Now I can tell the difference when I’ve drifted from that place. There are moments when I feel overwhelmed, stretched thin, and mentally exhausted, and if I’m honest, it’s usually not just about what’s on my plate. It’s about what I’m trying to carry without Him. I’m trying to make decisions without pausing, produce without abiding, and sustain something that was never meant to run on my fumes.

That’s when I know I’ve shifted from striding to striving. Striding has a rhythm to it, it’s paced, present, and partnered. Striving feels rushed, anxious, and heavy, like everything depends on me getting it right. Striving is what happens when I forget that this life was never designed to be self-sustained.

And the only way back isn’t to push harder, it’s to return. Return to abiding, to listening, to the quiet place where I remember that I don’t have to figure everything out. I just have to stay connected. I have to choose presence over pressure.

For a long time, my attention was scattered, and so much of my energy went into staying connected to everything and everyone else that I lost connection with myself. More importantly, I lost connection with God. I had input without processing, noise without reflection, movement without meditation. And eventually, that kind of pace caught up with me.

Because you can’t sustain a life of purpose if you don’t have a place to be still. You can’t keep pouring if you never pause long enough to be filled. So now, I’m learning something again, not for the first time, but in a deeper and more intentional way. I’m learning to stride.

I’m learning to walk with God instead of running ahead of Him. I’m learning to move at the pace of grace instead of the pressure of performance. I’m learning to trust that I don’t have to arrive to be aligned. And even though that truth stretches me, it’s also setting me free.

The prayer still hasn’t changed. God, I’ll say yes. Yes to slowing down, yes to being led, and yes to letting go of the version of success that required me to be self-sufficient.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, it might not be because you’re doing too much. It might be because you’re trying to do it alone. And maybe the invitation isn’t to get more done, but to come back into rhythm.

I’m learning to walk again, not perfectly, not quickly, but intentionally. And if you’re in a season where everything feels like it’s stretching you beyond what you can handle, you’re not failing. You’re being invited.

So come walk with me. We may never arrive, but we can learn how to stride. Together.

I’m stepping away to think again.

Nothing dramatic happened. I’m not trending, and I’m not at my breaking point.
My head just feels full.

Before I can fully process one thought or perspective, it’s intercepted by another. A headline. A hot take. A swipe. A sound bite pretending to be wisdom.

I used to love social media as a melting pot of belief systems, backgrounds, and lived experiences. It stretched me. It challenged me. It invited empathy. Lately, if I’m honest, it has clouded my ability to process the world and people from my own vantage point. I don’t feel informed so much as inundated.

At times, it feels like I’m being gently lulled into apathy and stagnation. Not by evil or opposition, but by ease. By algorithms that decide what deserves my attention before I ever do.

I don’t want the cause of death for my confidence, identity, or purpose to be an algorithm.

I need to find myself again. Or, more accurately, I need to create enough space to hear myself think.

When I first entered this digital space, I wasn’t trying to build anything. I was blogging to find clarity. I cleared my head by pecking away at keys. In that honesty, I found community. Not because I was loud, but because I was clear.

Somewhere along the way, engagement became louder than discernment. Output began to outpace processing. And as someone who leads, teaches, and shepherds others, I feel a responsibility to return to clarity first. I cannot engage and find myself at the same time.

That tension has been sitting with me for a while.

Scripture gives language to what I’m sensing. When Paul writes, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” he is not speaking poetically. He understood that successful conversion would hinge on the mind. Not behavior management. Not public allegiance. Transformation would require an emptying.

The old ways of thinking had to be displaced for a new mentality to take root.

Sometimes in church, we talk about “the next” as another blessing, another level, another dimension of power. But the next thing I sense for myself is far quieter.

It is rest.

Resting in the fullness of who I am in God and releasing who I know I can no longer be. Resting from the pressure to comment, contextualize, or keep pace with every conversation. Resting long enough to metabolize what I believe rather than borrowing language that simply sounds right.

I don’t know how long this break will be. At first, I sensed forty days. That number carries meaning, but I’m not holding it rigidly. I trust I’ll know when it’s time to return. Not because the noise quiets down, but because what I’m carrying becomes so clear and sure that it can withstand the complexity of such a dynamic digital climate.

I’ll still be preaching. I’ll still be leading. I’ll still be writing. You may see my face and hear what God is teaching me through The Potter’s House or Woman Evolve social channels. And when it feels aligned, I’ll write here.

But for now, the stillness on my page is intentional.

Let it be a prophecy of the stillness I’m pursuing.

Clarity is worth protecting.
And I’m choosing to protect it.

Promotion is not always a celebration. Sometimes it is a confrontation.

When Woman Evolve expanded, I expected excitement. Instead, I felt the sting of weak places I did not know were still there. Growth kept placing me in rooms I prayed for, and then asking questions I was not sure I could answer. I believed the solution was simple. Find people who are more intelligent, more experienced, and better prepared, and let them lead the areas where I feel small.

Hiring is wise. Hiding behind hiring is not.

I did not want to quit. I wanted to disappear respectfully. I told myself it was humility, but it was a quiet form of self-rejection. If I could hand off every area where I felt inexperienced, maybe I would not be the reason our organization slowed down.

What I did not realize is that growth exposes weakness in every area of life, not just leadership.

• Promotion exposes where your confidence is thin.

• Love exposes where your healing is unfinished.

• Friendships expose where your boundaries are too loose or too tight.

• Opportunity exposes the beliefs you still carry about your worth.

At Woman Evolve, we brought in systems, structure, and brilliant minds. Yet something in the atmosphere still felt unsettled. Excellence was present, but ease was not. Productivity was present, but joy was not. I kept feeling the gap between what we were building and what I sensed God wanted us to create.

Eventually, I had to face the truth. The pressure I felt was not because I was failing. The pressure came from God exposing the places that needed to grow.

Exposure is not punishment. Exposure is preparation.

I reached a crossroads. One path was focused on results. The other path was focused on culture. Choosing culture felt risky. I did not want to slow us down. I did not want my lack of experience to embarrass me or disappoint the team. Most of all, I did not want to lead people into unknown territory when I was still learning the map myself.

Then God whispered the reminder that changed everything.

So I told the truth. I told my team where I felt strong and where I felt unsure. I told them what I hoped for and what I could not yet articulate. I showed them the places where my confidence needed support and the places where my calling required time.

Honesty created room for alignment.

At our retreat, I felt a closeness we have been reaching for since the beginning of Woman Evolve. Not perfection. Alignment. The kind of alignment that turns atmosphere into momentum.

Before we left, God took me to Matthew 18:1. The disciples asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? ” They wanted a clear standard so they could model success. Jesus answered by placing a child in the center.

Greatness, He told them, is not the one with mastery. Greatness is the one with wonder.

Children bring curiosity, forgiveness, courage, honesty, and ease. They bring the ability to fail without quitting. They bring the willingness to try again without shame. These are the ingredients that carry you through promotion. These are the ingredients adulthood teaches us to suppress.

Suddenly, I understood. Woman Evolve does not need the most seasoned leader. Woman Evolve needs the most surrendered one.

I may not have every credential, but I know how to stay curious. I know how to laugh. I know how to tell the truth. I know how to try again with an open heart.

This is the kind of leadership that can hold a calling.

So this year, we embraced something profound and straightforward. We are not the blind leading the blind. We are children leading children, but we are following a Father who knows how to guide us into the future He planned long before we doubted ourselves.

Around that time, I sensed God testing the posture of my heart.
Would I still obey if the only thing He asked of me was to keep sharing my scars?

When I finally settled into the reality that obedience might mean staying there, humble, vulnerable, and exposed, everything changed. Invitations started coming in to teach what God was showing me in real time instead of only what I had survived. Revelation replaced repetition. Insight replaced injury.

And then I got pregnant.

Like so many women, I worried that pregnancy, recovery, and early infancy would slow down the purpose I had just begun to embrace. What I know now that I did not know then is simple and liberating:

Nothing can slow down God’s appointed time.

Motherhood did not pause my purpose. It clarified it.
It slowed ambition just enough for vision to catch up.

That season still speaks to me whenever FOMP shows up. FOMP is my reminder that purpose is not fragile and destiny does not require panic. I have been offered seats at powerful tables, partnerships that could scale the vision quickly, and opportunities that looked like the next level on paper. Yet I have said no more than I have said yes. Not because I lack drive, but because they conflicted with the kind of mother I am choosing to be.

I want my girls to remember that I was home more than I was gone.
That I did not just provide for them, but knew them.
That they were never an afterthought to my ambition.

Some people call this gentle parenting, but my studies in Human Development and Family Studies taught me that it is simply authoritative parenting. It is a commitment to know your children so you can help them understand the world they are growing up in.

As for my work, taking a slower and more intentional path has shown me that rapid growth is often brittle. God builds you in seasons, not spikes. Roots do not grow overnight. They deepen over time, under pressure, and through pruning.

I have told God about the generational curses I want to break in the areas of wellness, parenting, integrity, and righteousness. He has told me about the places He intends to position me. I do not believe He will ask me to sacrifice one for the other. So when I feel tension between opportunity and obedience, I choose the road that keeps my ego in check.

I know what it feels like to battle insecurity and the need for acceptance.
Attention can feel addictive when you have been overlooked.
Visibility can feel tempting when you have been dismissed.

So I choose the path that does not chase the spotlight. I want to be light rather than consume it.

And maybe you are not a mother. Maybe your story is entirely different. But you might be standing in a moment where you feel conflicted about what to pursue. You might be trying to understand whether you are being delayed or being developed.

Here is the filter I use.
Choose the option that requires more of God than it does of you.
Your obedience will never delay your destiny. Your impatience might.

Last week, I was invited to speak at the Hope Global Forum on Black media, wealth, and ownership. Sharing the platform with Stephen A. Smith, Charlamagne, and Byron Allen was no small thing. I prepared. I prayed. I gave the moment the strength it required.

Then I flew straight home.

Because more than a founder, leader, pastor, or emerging voice,
I am a mother who promised her daughters she would kiss them goodnight.

Purpose has room for that. Destiny is not threatened by that. And true obedience makes sure you never forget who you are becoming while you pursue what you are building.

I think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, distressed, weary, and facing change He didn’t choose. Life as He knew it was shifting, and He wasn’t ready to shift with it. But He did.

Not everyone follows purpose with fireworks or perfect faith. Most of us arrive trembling. Think about anyone who’s ever stepped into something hard: a parent letting go, an entrepreneur taking a risk, a person leaving what’s familiar for what’s necessary. We obey even when our hearts lag behind our feet.

Because when we surrender our will to something greater, when we align our desires with divine timing or even with what’s simply right, it opens the door for transformation we could never orchestrate on our own.

These are unprecedented times, and they call for unprecedented trust.
We can’t let the headlines shape our hope. We resist the temptation to surrender to despair and choose instead to surrender to faith, not in outcomes, but in a God who walks with us through the unknown.

And can I tell you something wild, given how dark things look?

I feel hope rising. It makes no sense, but I sense triumph bubbling beneath the trouble. This pressure is pushing us to create, connect, and move with purpose in ways we never would have otherwise. Maybe one day we’ll look back and say this was the season that built our endurance and positioned us for divine impact.

Reflection Questions

1. What area of your life feels like Gethsemane right now, where your will and God’s will are in tension?

2. When have you obeyed reluctantly, and what did you learn on the other side?

3. What would it look like to surrender not to fear, but to faith, even without clarity?

Prayer

God, I admit there are moments when obedience feels like loss.
Help me to trust You when the path forward is foggy.
Remind me that even reluctant obedience is seen and honored by You.
Give me the courage to move, even trembling, in the direction of Your will.
And when fear rises louder than faith, anchor me in Your hope, the kind that outlasts every headline.
Amen.

If my heart could talk, it would say…..

I want to learn to love you. I want to dare to let you behind the walls of my soul that guard the places I swore never to revisit. And as much as I want to give you a tour of my soul, I can’t help but be honest and tell you that I don’t know where the trauma buried the landmines. The rejection, abandonment, fear, and shame, like ticking bombs, woven throughout my history, are fighting against our destiny.

They threaten to shape my identity, and as much as I want to give you all of me, my pride would rather give you the garden while I tend to the battlefield.

But you insist on being a warrior of love.

I don’t just want to learn to love you. I want to learn to be loved by you. I have no problem navigating your successes and scars, but I don’t know how to trust you’ll love mine.

I’m going to find a way to let love in. Yours, mine, God’s, and whatever pure love comes my way. I want to see beyond who left and find solace in the ones God ordained to stay. I will surrender the lens that makes me only see “them” and make space for the ones who wouldn’t leave me alone.

I guess you can say my mind conformed to the shape of my trauma, but now I get to let it be transformed by love…

If this hit home for you…

I wrote this after having one of those moments when one of the landmines of my trauma showed up in my marriage. I was defensive when I should have listened and too ashamed to admit I was wrong. My biggest fear at the moment was that my husband would change the way he saw me. Yes, almost eleven years married, and in crisis, this becomes my silent fear.

I felt the presence of God convicting me to trust love in the moment and not lean into fear. These were the questions I asked myself:

• Who would you be in this moment if you trusted that love would stay?

• How would you show up if you abandoned your fear and embodied his perspective?

I’m grateful that living under constant threat is no longer my norm, but in moments of regression, I have to remind myself that the bridge between fear and love is built by faith.

Maybe that’s why Paul wrote this in Ephesians 3:14-19:

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He (God) would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.

My inner man needed strength that could only come from the Holy Spirit. The strength to let Christ dwell in my ruins. When you let Christ dwell in your ruins, He shows you their beauty. Ask the woman caught in the very act of adultery. Jesus is moved with compassion whenever He sees brokenness because Jesus understands the power of what love can do when you let it in.

Let your heart write…

• When was the last time your fear of being misunderstood or rejected shaped how you responded to someone you love?

• What does compassion for your younger, more fearful self look like today?

• How might God be inviting you to let Him dwell in the parts of your story you’ve kept off-limits?

Let this prayer lead you home…

Strengthen my inner man, Holy Spirit. Teach me how to welcome Christ into the ruins of my heart, the places I still protect out of shame or memory. Show me the beauty You see there, the beauty that only resurrection power can reveal. And when the next landmine of my past threatens peace with others, let me remember: I’m not who I was when that wound was made. You dwell here now. Love dwells here now. And love is stronger than fear.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen

I don’t believe that everything with God requires us to buy an annual pass for the struggle bus. I’ve experienced God’s love offering me seasons of rest, joy, fulfillment, and contentment. I’ve also seen myself begin to worship those seasons or lose sight of God in the midst of them.

I’m currently in a season of growth. I feel God revealing areas where I need to develop so I can be anchored in the deep He’s calling me to. I’m fascinated by Jesus’ exchange with Peter before His ascension. Jesus asks Peter to let go of the comfort of doing what he knows well and step into a purpose that leads to, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Peter was willing to betray good for God. Are you?