Category: Krista

I began this summer feeling breathless and overwhelmed after 7 long years of planting a church in New York City.

The prophetic words spoken over my husband and me in 2017, just before we embarked on this adventurous (and arduous) endeavor for Jesus, were now at the forefront of my mind. A man with a remarkable ability to hear from God said of the next season of our lives: “You two are going to grow quickly in maturity, you are going to advance in your kingdom years quickly. God has a speed-up system for the both of you and at times it will be frustrating and stretching.” 

The man, prophesying, paused before continuing: “But if you would just take on this assignment…”

Now, 7 years after those words had been spoken over us, two things are undeniably true about the words he shared: 1. My husband, Ricky, and I did indeed “take on this assignment” of starting a church in NYC, just as God had asked. Twice, in fact. Once, when we started our church in 2017, and again, when we had to replant the same church after COVID obliterated us and forced us to start over with just two people meeting in our living room, all while combating the foolishness we faced every week. 2. This journey has been incredibly frustrating and stretching. And now, 7 years later, I felt the weight of just how difficult it had been.

We’ve given up so much… I said to my husband with tears in my eyes, as I ran my fingers over the red and white checkered tablecloths on the corner table of the Italian restaurant we sat in at the start of the summer. I’ve always struggled to make eye contact when I’m being most vulnerable, and to keep the tears at bay I did my best to distract myself while I spoke. We had given up so much it nearly took my breath away–more than anyone knew, and so much that I’d be more embarrassed than proud to divulge.

Not only that, but there hadn’t been much to show for all the hard work and sacrifices we had made. In fact, despite enduring all that we had endured, and tenaciously continuing to build what God had asked us to build, things were far from “up and to the right” as one would hope or expect when following Jesus. Frustratingly, they remained the same, and at times they even got progressively worse. It was during the late spring, when a new wave of people began leaving our church, that a spirit of discouragement settled so heavily on my spirit in a way I hadn’t felt in all my years of church planting. It wasn’t that there was ever a temptation to quit, but rather a realization that if something didn’t miraculously change, I wouldn’t have the strength to persevere. Meanwhile, I secretly wondered if what we were doing would ever be worth what it had cost us.

As I tried to retain my composure, I watched the waitress carry plates of marinara-laden pasta to the nearby table, my mind drifting to the seemingly carefree life she led, which I now envied. Her day, routine. Her interactions with people varied, but limited. Limited to “I hate your spaghetti,” “Where’s my drink?” or “How much longer will it be?” In contrast, my world in ministry involved having my words, marriage, and leadership decisions scrutinized and my husband’s character questioned. Sure, people could leave her restaurant in a fury and leave scathing reviews, which would be hurtful. But we were watching people leave our lives, and that was far more than hurtful, it was heartbreaking. (Something I was all too familiar with–and in reality, traumatized by–growing up as a pastor’s kid.)

Throughout early summer, there were many more honest conversations like the one we had at the Italian restaurant that night. Many with my husband, but lots more with other, more experienced pastors in our lives, who had been through far worse for longer and defiantly refused to quit, pastors we were always so grateful for in times like this. In each exchange, we talked candidly about how difficult and lonely ministry can be, about the strained endings to meaningful relationships, and about how, when it gets tough or the cost doesn’t feel worth it, we all momentarily entertain thoughts of what life would be like doing something lighter and safer, like serving beautiful plates of pasta to hungry patrons, knowing full well that our purpose will never be sufficiently fulfilled apart from God’s plan for our lives. Which for us entails starting churches.   

But with every conversation we had, though each was therapeutic, I knew I needed something more. It became abundantly clear to me that to continue to do what God had called us to do, I needed to be replenished–not just physically, but deeply and spiritually. I had poured out so much, given up everything, and now I felt empty and depleted because quite literally, there wasn’t anything left. If God wanted me to get up and do it all again come the Fall, He was going to have to miraculously revive us, and not just revive our spirits, but our vision and expectations as well.

Could God do it? He began promising He would. (It’s what He promised Daniel.)

In Daniel 10:16-19 Daniel pours out his heart and exhaustion much like I did over my bolognese that night. In response, God makes him an incredible promise.

Daniel recounts his experience, saying, “…I said to the one standing in front of me, “I am filled with anguish… my lord, I am very weak… my strength is gone and I can hardly breathe.” Then the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “for you are very precious to God. Peace! Be encouraged! Be strong!” As he spoke these words to me, I suddenly felt stronger… “

I see your anguish, I felt God saying to me. I know the weight of what no one else knows you carry and how deeply tired and discouraged you feel. But don’t be afraid. In time you will feel your strength returning to you.

You will feel your strength returning to you–that’s what God promises when we are most weary, and if we can muster up the energy to continue to follow Him no matter how frustrating and fruitless it may currently feel, we will experience this promise. And as I type these words there are tears in my eyes, because God so lovingly and miraculously has kept His end of the deal…

I didn’t even notice it happen until just last week, the very last days of summer, when we were sitting with a couple who are in ministry themselves and lead a church far away from us, but were wrapped up in the same exhaustion and questions we know so well. But this time, literally and figuratively, we were sitting on the other side of the table. 

It happened almost in slow motion, but upon hearing their discouragement and weariness, I leaned over and touched the wife’s arm, These were strangers I had just met, yet so intimately understood., I said to them as if I believed it, Never underestimate the extraordinary lengths God will go to revive you. He can do it, no matter how depleted you feel today. My husband and I wouldn’t be here, still married and in ministry, if He hadn’t. 

And for some reason at that moment, in those last lingering days of summer, I realized that the reason those words came out of my mouth so naturally, was not just because I believed it was something God could do, but because it was what He miraculously had done (once again) for me.

And then I said something with an invigoration and conviction I haven’t recognized in myself in many years. The words I uttered were ones I had long forgotten I used to believe and live before the exhaustion set in. I declared over all of us, as couples, over our ministries, and over all of our heartbreak, weariness, and questions, “We have to refuse to give up on a story until we see God’s glory.”

As the words left my lips, I felt a fire ignite within me, lifting the heaviness I had been feeling just months before. It was as if I had become rooted to the ground, my posture straightened with renewed energy and expectation, and my mind determined on one thing: I’m not giving up until I see God’s glory in this place. 

Even more profound, it wasn’t just that I now possessed what I needed to keep going (like God topped off enough gas in the tank to reach the intended destination), I deeply desired to keep going because I wanted to see God’s power and redemption sweep over these places in all our lives and hearts.

“He can do it,” I told them. And I truly believe and look forward to watching Him prove that He can.

Thanks to God, my husband and I feel a night-and-day difference from who we were at the start of the summer. I described it to a friend who had been praying for us: I feel like one of those magic tricks where someone walks in as one thing and comes out as something completely different. That’s what God has done when it comes to strengthening our spirits, and what I believe He wishes we understood He always has the power to do(!)–returning our strength to us not just this summer, but also every other time in our lives, marriage, and ministry when we feel our strength faltering and our grip loosening around the things God had asked us to do.

Ezra 9:8-9 encapsulates perfectly all that God has done in my life and heart (and for the sake of our future ministry) in the Summer of 2024–and what He wants you to believe that He can do it for you whether you are rebuilding a church or a marriage, whether you need strength to fulfill God’s calling for your life or simply to navigate the storm you are currently in. Speaking to what is possible Ezra says, “Our God has brightened our eyes and granted us some relief… in His unfailing love our God did not abandon us… He revived us so we could rebuild the temple of our God and repair its ruins.” 

As we jump into this new season of church planting beginning this weekend and all that encompasses, I’m grateful to God that though I have no earthly idea what’s in store (but I’m fervently believing for God’s GLORY), either way I am ready. I have been deeply replenished by the One I poured it all out for. I did it all for Him, and I was revived by Him, and I’m comforted knowing He will do so again and again however many times are needed or until the job is complete. Maybe not overnight like He did for Daniel, but over the course of a summer. 

And with it, not a moment too late.

More Crazy Stories About Church:

We started a church in NYC with $330

My Father Had an Affair with the Church: You Call Him Pastor

Years ago… another lifetime ago, really… I remember a day so tragic that every cell in my body felt like it changed in response. 

We were young, twenty-something youth pastors taking the teens in our youth group to Summer Camp when, unimaginably, one of the boys in our youth group tragically slipped beneath the most glorious waterfall and drowned. Another friend of ours, a counselor, slipped in after him, drowning as well. 

After 11 years it still remains difficult to find the words to describe all that unfolded that summer…, all I know is I’m different because of the events that transpired that day. (We all are.) 

That day changed us forever. 

No longer were my husband and I able to go on being the fun and carefree youth pastors we once were; teaching topics like peer pressure & premarital sex, all while choreographing a mix of Jesus and hilarious antics with an ease that suggested they were meant to go together (as all the best youth pastors are skilled in doing). No, we learned, much to our dismay, that youth pastors can also very much preach funerals. 

We also could no longer go on believing the sugarcoated truths we all tell ourselves to make us feel superficially at ease, palatable untruths like that there is a hierarchy of death and that children always bury their parents. Not since that day we watched for ourselves how unspeakable tragedy can rip through the most joyous times and stunning landscapes with zero regard for age or principle. 

That day changed us forever. (Tragedy and suffering always do.) 

And because of that, there were parts of ourselves we thought we would never recover. 

The same has been true of so many areas of my life that have been exposed to pain and suffering over the years. 

In my marriage, there were times I thought I’d never be able to trust my husband again, that my shattered heart would never recover from the lies that came out on that dark and tempestuous night.

There have also been betrayals (so. many. betrayals.) I thought I’d never recover from them, and they made me want to throw up my hands, put up my guard, retreat away to my fortress, and never give of myself generously again. 

And there have been extended seasons of depression so long and dark, that it felt as if I were feeling my way down an impenetrably black hallway with no end in sight. And in that never-ending tunnel, I worried I might never be the same again, that I might never live in the light again – that I might never belly laugh effortlessly or wake up with anticipation, that there might never be a future purpose worth enduring my current pain. 

And all of that is because suffering of any kind changes us. Pain chisels away familiar parts of us, leaving things we once valued to feel forever lost, never to be recovered. 

And maybe there are parts of us that can’t be recovered… that is, by the average person or by your own best efforts. Sometimes you have to bring in some skilled reinforcements. 

Enter: Mark Angel 

Our paths crossed with Mark Angel after the unimaginable heartache at camp that summer, a man with a notably strange skill in recovering bodies. A man we never intended to meet, or frankly, wanted to meet, but who would go on to teach me so much about Jesus because we did. 

In an article titled ‘“Angel of the Nine Fingers”,’ they describe Mark Angel vividly.

“…Mark Angel, a short-fused Deschutes River hero whose name can silence a room full of river folk. It’s not every day you see Angel—and that’s a good thing. If he’s around, something terrible has happened. 

Angel is a self-taught, freelance whitewater rescue diver and extreme salvager. He retrieves whatever a river takes. He’s known for plunging—untethered—into Class IV rapids decked out in old scuba gear and then crabbing his way upstream along the bottom. Into the black, violent water he goes, searching for whatever you’ve lost: a luxury watch, a wedding ring, a body…it’s entirely likely that nobody else in the world can match Angel’s river salvage skills.” 

He retrieves whatever has been taken…

Into the black, violent water he goes, searching for whatever you’ve lost… 

In another article, they described the great lengths to which Mark Angel would go to salvage things. While other divers might tactically drop themselves into the water near the vicinity of where an object was lost and then give up if it was no longer in that area, Angel retrieves things by plunging to the depths untethered and doing something that resembles “‘rock climbing on the river floor”’ against the current, searching relentlessly for whatever has been lost, and refusing to give up until it is found. 

If you lost it, Mark Angel does whatever it takes to find it, even if it requires rock climbing the river floor. His business motto: was, ”Salvage of any item, from any place, at any time.” — He makes bold claims that he can recover whatever has been taken, no matter how raging the river or the circumstance that stole it from your grasp. (And here’s what I’ve learned: Jesus promises He can do the same.) 

In Matthew 11:28 Jesus says, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life.” 

In other words, Jesus inquires, ‘What have the circumstances or storm you have been navigating this last year or season stolen from you? Have you lost your joy or your strength, your peace or purpose? Have you lost your hope for better days to come or your faith in a God who is good and knows what He’s doing?’ If so, Jesus promises it all can be recovered. 

I love how sure Jesus is of His salvage skills: “Come to Me…and you will recover your life.” 

Like Mark Angel, Jesus makes bold promises to salvage any item, any part of us, from any place, at any time, no matter how raging the storm or circumstance that stole it from our grasp. I picture Jesus willingly and unflinchingly plunging into the depths, much like Mark Angel, to search for and retrieve what we have lost when others (including ourselves) have long since given up. 

This is encouraging because, over the last few years, there are areas of my life and my heart that have felt more lost than ever. (Maybe you feel the same way.)

Thanks to more than a decade of infertility I have felt at times like I may never be able to dream again. I’ve had empty arms and an empty womb for so long that I don’t know how or even what to dream anymore. 

And at times I’ve even felt like I lost my voice. It’s been so long since I’ve let people into my heart and my deepest questions; it’s been so long since I let anyone into my mess. Even now as I sit down to write I’m afraid I won’t have what it takes, that I may never find the right words to say. 

And worse, God feels far and I fear I’ll never feel His closeness again. I worry the best days are behind me and that I’ll never again watch God triumph gloriously over my darkest and most confusing days. 

But what I’ve come to realize is this: I didn’t irreparably lose my voice, nor did I lose my strength and my purpose. I didn’t lose my faith, my hope, or the ability to hear my God speak, it all just needs to be recovered. And Jesus promises, with Him, it can be. 

Jesus is saying to each of us, ‘I see what the storms of these last years have stolen from you, how it has changed you. I know you feel unrecognizable from who you once were and that you fear you will never be the same, but you don’t know the lengths I will go to, the depths I’ll plunge, and the capabilities I have if you call out to me.

If you make it a priority to come to Me in this New Year…you will recover what has been lost in your life. With My help, you will regain possession of the person I’ve made you to be and the plans and purposes I have spoken over your life. There’s nothing of you that’s too lost it can’t be recovered, there’s nothing too bad that it can’t be redeemed and used for good. I’ll never stop searching until what feels forever lost has been found and what feels beyond repair has been painstakingly put back together again (especially, when what’s been fractured most is your view and trust in Me.) 

‘I’ll do whatever it takes,’ Jesus says as He plunges into the darkest, most violent waters we have found ourselves in.’

‘…Even, if it requires rock climbing the river floor.’ 

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life.” Matthew 11:28

1.http://www.mountainonline.com/angel-nine-fingers 2.”https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2008/08/the_monday_profile_mark_angel.html

“There’s no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”

-Zora Neal Hurston

I see you hiding in your pain. I’ve always tried to hide my pain too. It’s my go-to, and quite frankly, it’s generational. I come from a long line of professional pain hiders and emotion cover-uppers. 

Growing up, I watched my parents fight behind closed doors. I know every household is different, but in our home, the quieter and more concealed my parents were being, the worse the state of our reality actually was.

If we walked in after school to a house seemingly empty and silent, only to find my parents whispering behind closed doors, it meant they were concealing something, that what they were saying and feeling was so bad it was unrecoverable. It was always the first sign that our life as we knew it was about to be upended.

I have many memories myself of doing the same. 

Taking breaks from other women’s bridal showers to cry in the bathroom because, behind closed doors, my own marriage was falling apart. (And all those silly games played and the shiny new silverware from my own bridal registry had done absolutely nothing to prepare me for what I was now faced with.) 

I’ve miscarried behind closed doors as well. This last time, while filming for our church. There I was, smiling, making lighthearted comments as I honored families in our church, all while stuffing down everything tumultuous going on inside of me. That is until the camera turned off and I could fall in a heap and erupt with all of my anger and questions, yet again, on the other side of the bathroom door.

And as I always did, I would stay in there, just like my parents did, and likely their parents before them, until my face was no longer red and blotchy from the tears, and until I could regain my smile and the effervescence everyone expected from me at that moment.

Stuff it down. Pretend. And when you can’t, hide away until you can. Rinse and repeat. All while the turmoil grew – and grew – inside of me.

I think we all do this to some extent. At times we all feel the pressure to excuse ourselves and our pain from the world and hide our mess behind closed doors. 

The problem is, what happens when the pain doesn’t go away? What happens when our season of grief stretches years, a decade or longer even, and still you have no reprieve? What if relief never comes? What happens when we have made it our go-to to recoil back and hide away when we’re in pain? …do we stay in hiding forever? 

These are the questions I’ve been faced with. It’s why for the last handful of years I’ve stepped farther and farther away from social media and blogging. Because, at times, things inside of me were too unspeakably bad. 

I remember the old adage every mother has spoken to their child at one point or another: If you can’t find something nice to say then don’t say anything at all. And so I waited, to find something nice to say. The problem is, nice words never came.… Fiery words came. Loaded words came, but nice words? Not even close.

And so I made a choice: hide away until things got better. Until the dust settled, the storm was over, and my face was no longer red and blotchy from all my crying. Then, I dreamed, I could reemerge into the world, with sunshine on my face, flowers in my hair, and answers to my biggest faith questions (that probably rhyme, because the most eloquent and lovely words always do).

The problem is, there has been no resolution to my problems, still no answer to my prayers, and no relief from my heartache. I’m still very much in a storm, my heart is still deeply shattered over so many things I thought God in His power would have redeemed by now….

But instead, God proposed a different option to me, and I think it’s the same thing He wants to offer to you in your own attempts to cover up your pain.

God said, “What if instead of hiding your pain, you choose to be honest about it?”

(…it’s what Jesus did.)

In the Garden of Gethsemane, hours before He was to be crucified, we find Jesus anguished and distressed. And it’s in His distress, that Jesus then shares these vulnerable words with His closest friends, words you too may have felt in your own heartache or have scribbled in your own private journal at one time or another:

 “[Jesus] told them, ‘My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death…’” (Matthew 26:38)

Crushed with grief — Those 3 words are few but loaded. They are translated from the word Peripulos which comes from the words Peri and Lupe. Lupe means sorrow, and Peri means all around, on every side. 

The word Peripulos is found multiple times in the Bible, once describing the crowd that surrounded Jesus when he walked from town to town. And another verse describes a belt around your waist. 

By choosing to use the word Peripulos to describe his pain, Jesus was saying, quite literally, He was surrounded by sorrow. 

Jesus was acknowledging, in His own pain and ours, that sometimes due to the difficult things we are forced to walk through in this life we might not only experience sorrow in our lives, but we can also become engulfed by it. We can have unrelenting trials and heartaches coming at us from seemingly every side, making our grief not only overwhelming but inescapable. Inescapable, no matter how hard we have tried to hide and pretend away our pain. 

Here are two takeaways from this passage that have comforted me in my own season of deep sorrow (and my prayer is that they comfort you in yours.):

1. Being fully perfect did not exempt Jesus from feeling anguish

I’m not going to lie, when my own anguish washes over me, the first thing I think is something is wrong with me. Or worse, I believe the lie that Someone up there is punishing me. 

We do this all of the time, do we not? We look at the broken pieces of our lives and the first thing we do is scramble to find our misstep, certain we must have done something wrong, and that there’s no way we could still be within God’s perfect plan for our lives.

But we can find comfort knowing no one could ever follow God closer than Jesus (read: no one is going to get more gold stars on his behavior chart for being obedient) yet here we find Jesus both fully and completely in God’s will for his life and simultaneously crushed by what He has to endure.

2. Jesus didn’t hide His sorrow (far from it)

Another thing that is encouraging is what Jesus did in this sorrow. 

Matthew 26:38 begins by saying, “He told them,  ‘My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death…’”

What did Jesus do when His soul was crushed? He told of it.

You see, Jesus didn’t hide his humanness behind closed doors. Yet how often as Christians is that what we strive to do? So often we aspire to glide through life’s cruelties and disappointments as if we are impenetrable to those watching. We hide behind our flower-overlayed Bible verses and our filtered photos on Instagram, all while our marriages and mental states are secretly crumbling. Hiding away so that no one sees the pain and questions we’re ashamed of. 

Maybe someone told you your faith requires that of you. Like a soldier getting his marching orders, you are to just take what’s given to you by the man in charge, without question, emotion, or upheaval–others may have required that from you, but I’m here to tell you God does not. God didn’t require Jesus to swallow His pain and His questions, to stuff down His feelings in the name of faith, or declare rhyme-y tweetable wisdom over his deepest anguish in hopes it would make it all magically disappear. And if God didn’t require that of Jesus, why would He require more from you?

Jesus neither deserved the anguish He experienced nor denied it. And instead of hiding His deepest pain, Jesus spoke honestly of it. (And I’m learning the same should be true for those of us who call ourselves Christians and whose mission it is to emulate Him in all we do. Even…in how we grieve.) 

So the question becomes, will we be brave enough to tell of our sorrow? Will we stop hiding our humanness away, and choose instead to be honest about it like Jesus? And in my case, will I stop striving so hard to conceal my mess, and instead choose to write through it? (God is up there in Heaven hoping I will.) 

That being said, I still can’t promise I will have anything nice to say, but I do have a lot that is jarringly honest to say. I sure as hell can’t tell of pretty things, but I can tell stories of painful things — about tragic miscarriages, decade-long infertility (with no end in sight and time quickly running out), and times when it felt like God dropped the ball and led me astray. I can speak about betrayals, a near plane crash, and a diagnosis that threatened to leave me deaf and blind. And more than that, how it all changed me. 

I can’t promise I have answers to all my faith questions (far from it if I’m honest) but what I can promise is I’ll never walk away from my faith despite them.

All I know for sure is it’s okay to feel your rawest emotions, it’s even okay to speak of them… gasp. Unlike generations before us have made us believe.

(After all, Jesus did.)

Next Post: Rock Climbing the River Floor (You Will Recover Your Life)

Within the first two hours of waking up on my 35th birthday, I had cried all the makeup off my face. 

It had been the first thing I had done when I woke up that morning: busy myself with getting ready in hopes that it would mask or, at the very least, distract from all the turmoil I felt inside. Then… it was as if I had put nothing on. Unlike times in the past when I had cried only to the point where black rivers of mascara stained my cheeks, this time the immensity of my weeping and sorrow had taken it all.

It was as if God started the first hour of my 35th year by saying, “Enough pretending, my child. You’ve been hiding your sorrow behind pleasantries and painted smiles long enough.”

Undeniably distraught (and newly bare-faced) that morning, I had asked my husband to meet me at the dining room table, where I confessed amid the quietness of that room and the secret turmoil I had been carrying inside, that I no longer knew why I was on this earth anymore. I didn’t like my life, I told him, and I feared I never would.

We sat there in silence. Our minds retracing the cost of the last decade, ever since our mid-twenties, when we admirably and somewhat naively chose to follow Jesus wherever He led — never envisioning the tragedies we’d walk, the suffering it would bring, the loss, the confusion, and the decade-long+ unanswered prayers. 

My mind wandered, thinking of the beautiful woman with impeccable makeup who had jumped off a high-rise in Manhattan just a week earlier, and I wondered for a moment if she had ever sat around the dining room table and said similar things to people she loved…I don’t know why I’m on this earth anymore… I don’t like my life, I’m afraid I never will… if she had cried all the makeup off her face. I wondered if my husband was thinking of her as well.

I watched as he gathered himself calmly, doing his best to map a way “out” as he is so gifted in doing. And as he spoke of options: medications and connections he had to therapists in the city, his voice trailed off into the background of the deafening reality that was now at the forefront of my mind: This, had destroyed me. Even crazier, I knew it would. (Two years ago I nearly prophesied it.)

Two years earlier, while driving somewhere along I-95, and carrying a pregnancy I was told by doctors I could never have, I said something that had I not spoken out loud, I would never have remembered saying it at all. 

For starters, whether I liked it or not, I knew God was using this miraculous pregnancy to get me to write again. 

It had been many years since I’d written consistently on this blog. Quite honestly, I had stopped and never looked back. Until that moment…

Thinking back to all the previous posts on this blog, each detailing every miraculous provision in my life over the years, and then thinking of this pregnancy… this actual, real-life miracle after 8+ years of infertility… I knew I’d never be able to let this miracle that I now carried inside of me be left unspoken. 

I’d have to write, I said. 

My mind then trailed to a different thought, a heavier reality. One in which I would be forced to write even more… and that was if this pregnancy didn’t result in a baby. 

Imagining (yet another) miscarriage, the years and years of infertility, and the ugliest of emotions that I knew – all too well — would follow suit. The confusion I’d no doubt grapple with if God were to grant me this miracle after nearly a decade, only to then take it away….

And that’s when I said these words that now resounded in my mind, “If I lose this pregnancy it will destroy me… And the only way I know how to get out of a pit that deep and dark is to write my way out of it.”

It would destroy me, I had said.

Now, two years later, while sitting around the dining room table on my 35th birthday, I had been right… I would lose that last pregnancy and, when I did, it would destroy me in such a profound and humiliating way that it would take me years to admit it.  

Losing – yet another — pregnancy destroyed my identity as a woman. Not just regarding my ability to have children (which is real, and feels like it should be your right), but also chiseling away, if not wholly obliterating, the kind of woman I’ve been created to be. Transforming me from the vulnerably honest and real-to-the-point-of-being-raw woman I’ve been known throughout my life to be, to a woman who hides away, excusing herself and her mess from the world because she can’t bear to crumble at another pregnancy announcement or combat that look people don’t realize they give when they hear the magnitude of my pain and my faith questions. 

Unrecognizable as the wholehearted woman I used to be, the severity of my un-dealt with pain now had me numb to the point of becoming robotic, while in another moment I’d fly into a rage I never knew I was capable of. At times the severity of the pain had me questioning the purpose and future of my life, knowing full well why people keep drinking or jump off tall buildings.

It was clear, I was not who I used to be. But I wasn’t the only one… God wasn’t who I thought He was either.

Losing that pregnancy felt like God set me up, led me astray, dangled the carrot of a miracle, and then cruelly snatched it back, watching me crumble and reduce to nothing when He did.

For that reason, over these last 3 1/2 years, I’ve given God the silent treatment for longer stretches than ever before, and other times (more notably) a piece of my mind. 

Because of the magnitude of my confusion and frustration in this last season, I now have worship songs I can barely stomach (I skip them on the playlist as fast as I can) and verses I find so conflicting that I’ve scribbled curse words in the margin of my Bible to stomp my feet in rebuttal. 

Quite frankly, the God I love and have trusted and sang about every Sunday was no longer acting in the character of who I thought Him to be either — and not only was my confidence in Him destroyed, but equally destroyed was my confidence in His supposed “perfect plan” for my life. 

Not only did I know full well why people keep drinking or jump off tall buildings, but what I also came to understand is why people walk away from their faith forever, middle finger up in the air blazing. And I told God that. 

And His response? Well, it will surprise you… (it surprised me.) Just five words in response to each of my harshest accusations (and they are the same words I believe God desires to speak to each of yours.) 

God simply replied, “I can speak to that….”

In a passage deep in Ezekiel, there’s a verse tucked away in a chapter about restoration that speaks powerfully to God’s character when we’re standing in the wreckage of our lives, and in need of reviving. 

Ezekiel 36:3 begins with God speaking to the people of Israel who needed restoration of their own, saying to them, “….Give the mountains of Israel this message from the Sovereign Lord: Your enemies have attacked you from all directions, making you the property of many nations and the object of much mocking and slander.”

God is saying, I see what you have gone through, and I know the blows it has taken to your faith and spirit. (But He doesn’t stop there…)

The next verse goes on to show us something interesting about God, saying, “Therefore, O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Sovereign Lord. He speaks to the hills and mountains, ravines and valleys, and to ruined wastes and long-deserted cities that have been destroyed and mocked.” (Ezekiel 36:4)

Don’t miss this. He speaks to the hills and mountains, ravines and valleys, and ruined wastes and long-deserted cities….

In this passage, God not only acknowledges how cruelly the people have been treated, and how perilous the terrain we can sometimes find ourselves on in this life, but He also reveals His ability and desire to speak to it.

You see, not only does God see what’s happened to us, but He desires to speak into it. — All of it. 

God wants to speak to the hills and mountains in our lives; the daunting things we are up against, that feel immovable. Impassible, even. Even when Especially when the hopelessness we are up against is somewhere He led us to.

God wants to speak into our ravines and valleys, the low and windingly dark places we’ve had to walk unbeknownst to those around us. (Our darkest and lowest moments always are, out of the line of sight of others and far beyond the facades and flashiness we display on our Instagram or Facebook.) Yet even when our most punishingly difficult journey has remained unnoticed by others, there’s never been a step we’ve taken, or a scar we bear, that has ever escaped Him.

Not only that, God desires to speak into the ruined wastelands, the places in our lives that were once brimming and blossoming, and now feel ruined beyond repair — even when it’s us who are unrecognizable from who we once were, and our spirits and hearts are the ones in disrepair.

And maybe the MOST significant thing God has the ability and desire to speak to…

“He speaks to the…long-deserted cities that have been destroyed and mocked.” — This is God saying He could speak to the places in our lives and hearts where we feel He’s most abandoned us. (Perhaps where we even have evidence of it.) 

Looking back over the last 3 years, I realize it’s the areas of my life where I feel God has most deserted me that have left me the most destroyed.  

Maybe the same could be said of you. 

Maybe like me, your decade-long prayers for deliverance have continued to go unanswered, leaving you empty-handed and receiving only one thing in abundance from the God of “immeasurably more” and that’s His silence on the other end of the line. Leaving you to feel forgotten by the very same God everyone speaks so highly about every Sunday, and on an especially bad day, forsaken by Him.

Maybe like me, there are dates on the calendar marking when your heart broke and when your world stopped, and with that, God’s love for you became murky. 

Your faith has been rocked and your heart rattled, watching the cruel and confusing things God allowed entry into your life. And now, you beat back a voice that taunts you with, “Why would God have allowed this?” and “Where was He when ______ happened?” Questions you fear you may never have the answer to and that berate you with every step you attempt to take forward.

I get it. Believe me, I do… But what if I told you that was to be expected? The questions. The murkiness. The rattled heart and shell-shocked faith. (Journeying over hills and mountains, down ravines and valleys is far from a cakewalk, after all.)

What I’ve learned through my own treacherous faith journey these last few years is that when we can’t see God’s heart, when we don’t understand His silence, when we feel rejected by His inaction, that’s when our faith becomes most shattered. —And yet it’s into those exact places of our lives and hearts that God desires to speak!

It is there that God unflinchingly responds to our deepest pain and harshest accusations, saying, “I can speak to that… All of it! I can speak to whatever has destroyed you and your confidence in Me.”

That’s why I’m writing again. Because God made it clear to me around the dining room table that day exactly two years ago, I can’t pretend I’m okay any longer. I couldn’t, even if I rallied all my best efforts and most impressive church-appropriate behavior. (I know because for years I’ve tried.)

God is inviting me instead: to acknowledge that my circumstances have destroyed me more than I like to admit, that I feel more deserted by Him than I could have ever expected, and that writing is the only way I know how to get myself out of a pit this deep and dark. To acknowledge in fact, that sometimes it feels like my life and faith depend on it. 

And even more, to allow God to speak into it — All of it. (He is inviting you to do the same.)

Perhaps God brought you here to this little cob-webbed corner of my abandoned blog to hear Him say the same words He said to me a year ago: “Enough pretending, My child. You’ve been hiding your sorrow behind pleasantries & painted smiles long enough.”

No more pretending away your pain. No more masking your sorrow and hiding how you feel in the name of faith. No more isolating yourself and your mess from the world and no more silent treatment with the God you don’t (right now) understand. 

Cry all the makeup off your face if you need to, but know when you do that there is a God in heaven who not only sees what has destroyed you and your confidence in Him, but who also wants to speak to it. Saying, there’s nothing too daunting or irredeemable that we’ve walked through, and nothing too harsh we’ve believed about Him that He cannot, or does not desire to, speak into.

It’s where we have to begin.

Next Post: When God Feels Far and His Love Nonexistent

I have a lot of people close to me who’ve been crossing their fingers for the day that I might write again. And here we are, I’m writing again.

To be honest, it’s been strange after all these years, but it’s nice I think. And its healing — that’s certain.

I’m sure God will have me share more at some point, as per usual (…could be a week or a month from now, or tomorrow, who knows? I’ll jump off that cliff like every other one, when He asks me to.)

But for now, it feels healing to break myself open again. To stop steeling myself behind silence or smiles on social media, and to stop running from the stories I hate so much (the nonsensical stories, that let’s be clear, God is the one writing — and that are too many to count.)

And to choose instead, to own my most incapacitating heartaches and questions, & sift through the muck in order to find the meaning in them. Even more, to * find Him * in them.

I don’t know where this will take me, or how long I’ll write in this season before the next time I quit lol. I’m not even sure if anyone will read along (…do people even read blogs anymore? Or is everyone too busy watching TikTok’s & the news?) I also still very much can’t figure out where to put a mechanically-sound comma.

But I need to write again because I need to find Him again. (God has been hidden & quiet for so long.)

And I need to write because I need to find myself again.

…Because she’s been hidden and quiet for so long as well…

I’ll start by saying this, I hate this season of my life. Like for real, I’m not a fan. Have I been through worse? So much worse. But make no mistake, this season I’m currently walking through is no freaking cake walk and it’s testing me in ways that make me want to rip my face off. (sorry that got violent real fast… clearly, we’re off to a great start.) 

 

It seems like everything in my life is uncertain. (And just when I’m certain of that level of uncertainty, the bottom falls out on yet another thing, making my already teetering existence all that more unsteady.) 

In this cycle of never-ending uncertainty, I can’t see what God is doing in my life, and even scarier, I don’t understand His heart in doing it. God feels far, and at the core, I feel forgotten and because of that, anxiety has crept its way back into my spirit, and on my worst days, has led me to a strangely dark place. 

I don’t know what’s going on in your world; what has you hurting so deeply or searching so furiously for anything that might offer you hope in this season. I don’t know the chain of events that unfolded that have made happiness feel so far from you (and God’s presence even farther) nor do I know what caused joy to move out of your spirit and why anxiety now resides in its place. (I can’t even fully pinpoint when it happened to me.)

All I know is just as I was entering this trying & terribly confusing season, God made me a promise. — And today I want to speak that same promise over you and over whatever is threatening to steal your joy in the present & rob you of any hope you have for the future.

It’s only 5 words…

“You will resume your singing.”                                                             – God

It doesn’t sound like much, but these words, spoken by God in Jeremiah 31:4, have kept me going since September. 

In this verse, God is promising that (one day) our happiness will resume, our faith in Him will be restored, and our joy will return. Not only that, but He’s acknowledging that He knew they would come to a halt in the present.

God knew this season of our lives would rattle us, tire us, and frustrate the hell out of us. And that because of the unforeseeable event that barged onto the scene and messed up all of our best laid plans, and the doors that keep-freaking-slamming-shut in our faces, that He knew our praises would pause, His love for us would get murky, and that our joy might take a brief intermission (or in my case a full-blown hiatus.) 

It comforts me knowing that God doesn’t look down on us for that, He expects it. 

He expects the ‘God, I don’t see you in this’ days, the ‘I don’t know if You can really be trusted’ seasons, and the ‘I can’t hang on much longer’ moments. — And we’re not the first to experience them. 

In the Bible, we see a man named David walking through a similar season (one he fittingly describes as a ‘parched and weary land where there is no water’ which, HELLLLLO is the single best description of this season of my life rn. David, you get me…) 

David had seen God do incredible things in the past but admits to God feeling painfully distant from him in the present, and in Psalm 63:1 we find him crying out to God with these words, “O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; My whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.”

I don’t know about you but David’s words echo my own frustrations, the same ones littering nearly every page of my journal, Where are you, God? Was THIS really part of your plan? I’ve been looking for you tirelessly & waiting for you endlessly yet still, there’s no relief or end in sight. How much longer until you come, until you show up and set things right? 

Like David, we want to know what God is doing and why it’s taking Him so long. We want to know where He’s leading us, whether it will be worth it, and we’d give just about anything to know how the story will end. (David tells us how the story will end…)

Psalm 63 ends with these words, a powerful promise for those of us who are clinging to God in a torturously fatiguing or uncertain season:

Don’t miss this...it’s sneaky good…

“…All who trust in Him will praise Him…” (Psalm 63:11)

You want to know how your story will end, or where this treacherous path you are currently walking will lead? If you keep trusting God, you will praise Him. If you continue to wait for Him, you will find Him. If you lean on Him, you will withstand this.

In this season of our lives that feels like a ‘dry and parched land where there is no water’ if we keep saying ‘yes’, if we keep doing what He’s asking us to do even though it doesn’t make any sense, if we keep inching forward, one (hesitant) step in front of the other, He will lead us out of this great unknown and to a destination that is to be desired.

We will sing God’s praises again, He guarantees it. — praises of His deliverance and His healing, His perfect plan and His unrelenting love (no matter how impossibly far they feel from us today.) 

“This won’t be for forever,” God is promising to you and to me, “you will see My goodness and favor wash over you again. I’m not finished, the curtain hasn’t closed on your story just yet. Stay the course no matter how exhausting or confusing the path, it’s not for nothing and it won’t be a dead-end. I have good things, incredible things, awaiting you in the future — they are closer than you think & too wonderful for you to understand.”

“If you keep putting your trust in Me, I’ll give you a reason to praise Me again, louder than you ever have before…

You will resume your singing.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been exactly 16 months since I have written on this blog. An eternity really, when for so many years and through so many circumstances, this was the place I retreated to. My little corner of the world where I could cry and vent, document my life, and occasionally, have it out with God.

I don’t miss writing if I’m honest. I don’t miss straining over words or the placement of commas, nor do I have time for it these days. I don’t miss masses of people correcting my grammar, or the uproar that ensues every time a friend or family member’s ego takes a hit because of something I wrote. Not to mention, I’m uninterested in building a platform for myself or in joining the likes of those dishing out tweetable wisdom to the watching world. The older I get the less value I see in any wisdom I could offer, especially if it’s tweetable, and the more value I see in things like a solid under eye concealer.

But the reason I’ve chosen to pick back up writing on this blog is this (and only this): when I write I feel near to God.

And if I’m honest, I need Him now, just as much as ever.

 

Writing has always been where I go when there is nowhere else to turn.

I remember the first time my perfect little life was jolted upside down. (Not to be confused with the third time…the hundredth time…or the quadruple millionth time.) It was a month before my 12th birthday, and it had just come out that my father had been having an affair — an affair with not just anyone, but a woman my twelve-year-old self truly loved and admired. A woman I would’ve no doubt turned to had she not been an active participant in my heartache.

Making matters even more confusing, and because my father was a pastor at the time, my family and I literally and physically could no longer go to our church anymore. Amid such a hopeless time for my family, there was no place to retreat to, no community to link arms with, no pew to sit in Sunday morning to hear things like God is still God and God is still good. 

It begged the question: where was a preteen girl to go amid the chaos and heartache?  Where should she turn when her father, her tribe, and even her church, are no longer a safe place? I retreated to the only place left to go to — a blank sheet of paper.

I retreated to the only place left to go to — a blank sheet of paper.

Dear God… I wrote for the first time on December 11, 1998, in a flower-laden journal.

Dear God… I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. (For years I wrote.)

The truth is, I never stopped.

Whether clicking away from behind my laptop; publicly wrestling with my rawest feelings on this blog, or writing alone in the stillness of my apartment crying over what looks like scribbles in a college-ruled notebook, I realize I’m still the same preteen girl looking for a place to escape the chaos and heartache. It’s who I’ve always been and what I’ve always done.

In the past, on this blog, I have written through the cross-country moves & the miscarriage that changed me. The betrayals I never thought I’d bounce back from & the vows I was certain were broken beyond repair. I wrote through unanswered prayers and things that didn’t go as planned, times where I was terrifying close to letting go of it all, and the year I was bordering on coming unhinged. — And through it all, God has never failed me. Not once. Not even close. And He’s not about to start now!

Through it all, God has never failed me. Not once. Not even close. And He’s not about to start now!

That’s a welcomed reminder for me today because while my life has never felt more meaningful, it’s also never felt more uncertain. (I’ve often described this season of my life as ‘walking on a field of land mines with Jesus’ — a more twisted & sinister version of the sweet ‘walking in the sand’ poem every Baptist grandmother knows and loves and has hung on her bathroom wall.)

In my life today – and as I seek to do everything God is asking me to do – the stakes are high. Impossibly high. And the truth is, because of it, I could lose everything (yet again.) The magnitude of that reality often sweeps over me, leaving me rattled for days, even, weeks on end.

As for who I am today and how I’ve changed since I last wrote nearly a year and a half ago? Well …I curse and cry more than I used to, and am bolder and more firey than I was taught is ever acceptable. (Especially, for a woman. A woman in ministry, nonetheless.) And yet, I’ve never felt God more proud of who I’m becoming.

Oh, and I’m still not pregnant…  still… exactly 7 years after we first began this journey to have our second child. Only further proving said: uncertainty, and that you can be closer to God than they’ve ever been in your life, more in-tuned with His heart and His voice and just how deeply He loves you, all while being downright DUMBFOUNDED when it comes to what God is doing in your life (or what He’s NOT doing for that matter.)

Yet, if writing is how I’ve always found Him in the past, then it’s through writing that I’m determined to find Him again. (And He’s promising I will.)

“Write yourself out of this season…” I can feel God inviting, “Kick and scream your way through the uncertainty and cling tightly to Me as you have done before until you come face-to-face with My goodness once again.”

He then comes in a little closer, speaking more tenderly this time as if to reassure me, “…You will see My goodness again, I promise.”

So that’s what I’m going to do. With everything in me I’m going to seek to find Him in this mess, and as I do my hope is that maybe, just maybe, you will find a little of Him as well. I pray that as I write myself out of this season of my life, that you might feel lighter and less alone, more purposed and expectant in yours. (And at the very least, that you might be mildly entertained by my inevitably-exhausting- and- always-unruly life in New York City.)

There’s so much for us to catch up on, so many things I can’t wait to share with you, but we’ll get there…

Because I’m back.