FOR HE ALONE IS WORTHY

I don’t know when the voice first crept in. The one that whispers, “You’re tired. You’ve tried long enough. Just lay it down.” It didn’t arrive loud. It arrived gentle, wearing exhaustion like wisdom, wearing grief like permission. And some days, I almost believed it. Because grief has a way of hollowing you out. It makes quitting feel right. Like rest. Like mercy. But here’s what shook me awake today, the enemy does not plague what he doubts. He does not fight what he thinks

May this year be gentle with you. Not loud. Not demanding. Not insisting you be more hopeful than your heart can manage right now. This new year arrives quietly, unfolding without explanation, full of shadows you can’t name and unknowns that already make your chest tighten. I won’t call it happy. Because happiness feels like a dare when you’ve buried parts of yourself in last year’s soil. Because hope, some days, feels dangerous, like reaching for something that might disappe

I keep telling myself my life is made of moments too small to matter. The quiet ones. The unseen ones. The ordinary Tuesdays where nothing breaks open and nothing miraculous announces itself. The moments where I fold laundry with a heavy chest, sip coffee that’s gone cold, whisper prayers that feel unfinished. I’ve learned how to measure worth by noise. By milestones. By moments that photograph well and preach easy. And when my days don’t rise to that standard, I quietly file

There has not been a chapter of my life—no valley too low, no mountaintop too high—that hasn’t whispered this truth back to me: God is exactly as good as the Bible says He is. Not just on the days when the sun warmed my skin and everything bloomed in color. But in the nights when everything fell apart and I felt like I was crumbling too. When prayers came out in groans, when silence stretched so long it began to echo, when I thought surely I had been forgotten…even then, I fo

I’ve heard it my whole life. Jesus always wins. It’s stitched into memory like an old Sunday school banner. Echoed in sermons. Sung in songs. But today? Today I don’t feel like I’m on the winning side. Today, it feels like everything is slipping through my fingers, and I can’t even name all that I’ve lost. I’m not just losing. I’m being crushed. Like the weight of the world has collapsed on my chest and no one noticed. Like the prayers I whispered never made it past the ceili

I used to believe that walking with God meant having some sort of map, if not the full route, at least the next step, the next door, the next green light. But now? I am standing in the fog. Everything feels blurry, uncertain, hidden behind veils I cannot lift. I reach out for direction and feel nothing but empty air. And yet, He is here. This season of unknowing is not a punishment. It’s a purification. He is not withholding my next step to be cruel. He is slowing me down to

We whisper it at funerals. “He was such a good preacher.” “He affected my life so much.” “He was so good to my family.” “He was always there when I needed him.” “He walked with the Lord.” “What an example he set.” But how tragic that we wait until the casket is closed to say what should have been spoken while they were still alive to hear it. We choke back our gratitude while they walk among us, afraid that our honor might look “bad.” We silence our praise lest someone accuse

I clapped for them again today. Loud, joyful, sincere. Even as my own dreams gathered more dust on the shelf of “someday.” Even as I felt the familiar ache, that quiet, hollow echo in the soul that wonders if heaven has forgotten my name. But later, alone, I whispered: “God… what about me?” It wasn’t bitterness. It was longing. Not jealousy. Just that ache of someone who’s been planting faithfully in a field no one visits. The kind of ache that doesn’t scream. It just lingers

Jesus didn’t heal everyone. I’ve wrestled with that truth in the quiet places no one sees, in the hospital hallways where prayers echoed unanswered, in the graveside silences where I begged Him to come late like He did for Lazarus… and still believed He could. He didn’t always stop. He didn’t always speak. Sometimes… He just walked by. Sometimes the thorn wasn’t removed…. And that truth used to ache in me like a wound I couldn’t name. I had this idea that if He could, He shou

There is a sacred space that exists between the outstretched arms of the Savior. It is not cold or sterile or far away. It is not reserved for the perfect or the proud. It is carved in the exact shape of me. Of you. Of every shattered, sleepless, silently breaking soul that thought maybe this time, I won’t make it through. It is the size of the nights I couldn’t breathe from the weight of grief. The shape of prayers I whispered but didn’t believe would make it past the ceilin

I’m starting to see it now. All the detours I once despised. All the closed doors that felt like rejection. All the waiting seasons that left me hollow and aching. They were never wasted. Not a single tear. Not a single no. Not a single night I wept into the silence, begging God for just a sliver of clarity. He was doing more than I could ask or imagine, but He was doing it in the dark. Because the Lord has always had more in mind for me than I ever dared to imagine for mysel

There were nights I swore I wouldn’t make it through till morning… nights where my own heartbeat felt like a countdown, where the silence was too loud, where it hurt just to still be here. There were mornings I could not recognize the hollow-eyed stranger staring back at me in the mirror…not the girl I once knew, not the one who used to laugh freely, dream loudly, believe easily. There were moments I was certain I was too fractured to ever be pieced back together again, that

What do I do when Haman isn’t hung? When the gallows still stand in my enemy’s yard, and justice feels like a far-off whisper instead of a mighty roar? When he walks free and proud and untouched, while I sit in sackcloth, choking on prayers that feel like they’ve gone unanswered? What do I do when the sea doesn’t part? When Pharaoh is breathing hot and heavy down my back, and every footstep forward feels like one more toward drowning? When I’ve stretched out my hand, but the

Love is not nodding at the ache and pretending it is wholeness. It is not looking at a wound and naming it healing just because we are afraid of the truth. Love kneels in the ashes and dares to say, this is not how it’s meant to end. Love does not sanctify decay. It does not baptize the poison just because the starving soul calls it relief. If I saw a hollow-eyed friend collapsing from hunger, I would not hand them arsenic and call it mercy, even if, for a fleeting moment, it

My Shepherd will defend me. There are nights I feel like prey, cornered by shadows I cannot name, hounded by accusations that were never true, hunted by battles I never chose to fight. The wolves linger at the edge of my soul’s trembling, and every breath feels like a prayer caught in my throat. But even here, in the thicket of fear and the bruise of betrayal, I remember: I have a Shepherd. Not a distant overseer. Not a passive observer. But a defender. A Shepherd who does no

I am learning how to breathe in a world that split in two. There is the life I wake up to, and the one I still grieve in my dreams. The one I hold, and the one I held. The one that is, and the one that should have been. Every morning, I open my eyes and return to this timeline, this version of reality where something is missing… someone is missing. And yet, there’s another version of me that still walks in the garden of before. Who doesn’t flinch when certain names are spoken

Some days…I am Jacob. Not the Jacob draped in victory, but the one trembling in the dark, dust-streaked and hollow-eyed, face pressed into the dirt of desperation. The one whose name had not yet been changed. The one who wrestled, not out of strength, but out of ache. I’ve grabbed hold of God with trembling fingers, not out of defiance, but out of survival. Out of grief. Out of a holy kind of stubbornness. “I will not let Thee go,” I whisper, “not until You bless me. Not unti

I used to beg God for safety. Safety felt holy. It felt right. It felt like the proof of His presence, like a hedge of protection meant He was pleased with me, like the absence of pain meant I was favored. I didn’t want much. Just for the storms to calm. For the ground beneath my feet to stop shaking. For the tears to dry. For the ache in my chest to finally, finally let up. But the storms didn’t cease. The ground cracked wide open. The tears came like tides. And the ache? It