What if the difficulty you’re facing is not proof that something has gone wrong? What if it’s part of how God is growing you?

In this episode, I’m sharing honestly about marriage, motherhood, obedience, and the pain that made me want to avoid all three. I didn’t grow up dreaming about getting married and having children. In fact, I had already decided that the safest way to avoid being hurt—or hurting anyone else—was not to enter those relationships at all.

But then God asked me to say yes.

What I didn’t understand was that saying yes to God would not protect me from challenges. I thought obedience meant everything should work out easily. So when marriage, parenting, finances, health, and life became difficult, I began questioning whether I had made the wrong decision.

But sometimes difficulty doesn’t mean you are in the wrong place. Sometimes it means God is using the very place you are in to expose the lies you believe, stretch your capacity, mature you, and heal the parts of you that pain taught to hide.

We’re talking about the difference between consequences and growth, the need to control outcomes, and the lie that says, “If I want it done right, I have to do it myself.” We’re also looking at how pain can lead us to create counterfeit solutions that feel safe but keep us from the relationships and experiences God designed us to have.

Life Work:

What counterfeits have you created in your own life?

What have you decided you will or will not do because you are trying to avoid pain, protect yourself, or control an outcome?

Write it down. Sit with it. Pray over it. And ask God to show you whether the thing you created to keep yourself safe is also keeping you from the life He is calling you to live.

I’m sharing something a little more personal in this episode. I talk about how God meets us in the middle of our pain, shame, fear, and unanswered questions.

We’re looking at Genesis 3 and the fall of man, but not just from the perspective of sin and separation. I want us to pay attention to how God responded after Adam and Eve hid themselves in shame. He questioned them, corrected them, challenged them.

But He also covered them.

And that matters.

Because so many of us are carrying pain we think we should not still have. Pain in our bodies. Pain in our relationships. Pain in our families. Pain in our finances. Pain in places where we prayed, believed, worked hard, did what we knew to do, and still did not get the outcome we hoped for.

But pain does not mean God has abandoned you. And pain does not mean you are not enough.

In this episode, I share honestly about living with chronic physical pain, the shame that can come with still needing help, and the comfort I find in knowing that God understands exactly where we are. He knows how He made us. He knows our limits. He knows our bodies, our emotions, our systems, our relationships, and our needs.

And just like He covered Adam and Eve, He still covers us.

Write a prayer of thanksgiving for the ways God has cared for you and covered you.

It can be a few lines or a few pages. Just be honest.

Where have you seen Him cover you?
Where has He cared for you?
Where has He met you, even while you were still carrying pain?

In this episode, we’re talking about one of the biggest myths many of us have believed about emotions: that they are either good or bad.

But what if emotions aren’t good or bad at all? What if they’re simply information?

Today, I’m unpacking why emotions and feelings should not be judged as positive or negative, and why that kind of language can actually make us afraid of the very thing God gave us to help us pay attention. Emotions are bodily responses. Feelings are the meaning we assign to those responses. And neither one is sinful, shameful, or something we have to run from.

Instead of calling feelings good or bad, I want to invite us to see them as pleasurable or painful. Pleasurable feelings often show us where a need has been met. Painful feelings often show us where a need has not been met yet. And that changes everything.

Because pain does not always mean something is wrong. Sometimes pain simply means there is something we need.

In this episode, I also talk about hunger pains, emotional needs, anger, boundaries, grief, and how Jesus modeled the full spectrum of feelings without sin. This is an invitation to stop judging what you feel and start getting curious about what your feelings may be communicating.

Life Work:

Write down every feeling word you can think of.

Excited. Angry. Sad. Frustrated. Joyful. Hurt. Peaceful. Disappointed. Whatever comes to mind.

Don’t judge the words. Don’t separate them into good or bad. Just write them down and begin noticing the full spectrum of feelings God created you to experience.