When God is about to do something profound and transformational in your life; he doesn’t make it obvious. He doesn’t get in your face. He doesn’t shout from the rooftops so loud that you can’t possibly miss what He’s showing you.

He doesn’t yell.

He does the exact opposite.

He whispers.

He whispers so quietly, so subtly, that if you were living a rushed, frantic, hurried speed of life, dreading the sound of the silence between one thought to the next, that you will miss Him entirely.

You will wonder where He is.

Why He won’t show up for you.

Why nothing seems to be changing.

And in that space of wondering, hard things may begin to grow in your heart like dread, impatience, and even bitterness.

All the while, he is still whispering.

You just can’t hear him over all the noise, all the distractions.

But when you slow down, truly slow down the pace of your life, something begins to shift.

Your breathing changes.

It gets deeper.

Your breaths are no longer shallow and short, grabbed in between endless tasks and worries of what you should do or shouldn’t do. They grow long, slow and steady, as if each exhale knows that it’s going to rest in His green pasture and each inhale feels like your first real deep, full and invigorating breath of the day.

And because you slow down, you begin to experience the fruits of peace and joy in your life. Not just have it come like a temporary visitor but you actually experience it in ways that begin to shift your perspective for the better.

Everything begins to rearrange itself around the peace and joy. Even when hard things happen, you are able to approach it from a grounded and centered place or can somehow see the silver lining in it all.

Lately, I have been in the practice of quick obedience to God’s calling in my life in ways that my ego would normally resist. I say practice because there are times I still fall short at this. Sometimes I wrestle with it longer than I care to admit.

The biggest change came at the beginning of this year, when I finally surrendered my role in my husband and I’s business and he took over fully.

As co-founders who built the business from the ground up together, we share equal responsibility across different departments. He has his role in the business and I have mine. And for years we operated like true partners in every sense of the word, both at home and at work.

But over time between moving to a new state thousands of miles away from family, working and raising our families full time; our plates became what felt like impossibly full.

Just a few months ago, our plate got so full that we thought about outsourcing a role to help with operations even though it’s still a little early to do financially. Just a few weeks postpartum, I was already staging and designing an entire home into a turnkey vacation rental for a client.

We felt like we could never quite get ahead. And while technically we had “freedom with our time” the reality of working in the hospitality industry is that it’s wildly unpredictable. Some days there is only maintenance. Other days, there is something urgent like a backed up septic and toilets that won’t drain and it doesn’t matter if we’re having dinner or spending time with our family. It demands for our attention.

So we started asking real questions:

How are we going to do this with two kids? How will be it be possible to keep up with this business while trying to be the most present parents?

Not just do it—but do it well.

I already wondered how we would manage all of this when we had one child.

Now we have two little girls fully depending on us and the decisions we make. Especially when you know the decisions you make today could impact the trajectory of the rest of their life.

Our daughter did attend montessori school for 3 months, and it was helpful for a short period. But deep down it didn’t feel aligned for our family. The time we have with our children while they are this little is so short, and something inside of us resisted sending her away during those fleeting years.

As the end of 2025 approached, we both felt it.

Something needed to change.

So we did the first thing that has always brought us the most clarity as a married couple.

We prayed.

And the answers to our prayers came, not all at once but in waves.

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Yes to showing up.
Yes to honoring the call to write.
Yes to consistency, even on days where I had no idea what I would be writing at all.

That yes didn’t stay contained to the page.

Neuroscience tells us that every repeated action strengthens a neural pathway in the brain. The more we do something, the more our brain begins to identify it as who we are. The resistance lowers. The pathway clears n Momentum builds.

One yes creates evidence.

Writing every day trained my brain in trust. In following up and follow-through. In identity. It taught my nervous system that I am someone who keeps promises to myself.

And once that pathway existed, it started lighting up everywhere else.

I started going to the gym four times a week not out of discipline or striving, but ease.
Then I started making sourdough bread.
Then sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

Then I made large pots of pho with the richest bone broth.

None of this was part of a grand self-improvement plan. These were downstream effects. Natural extensions of the first yes.

This is how change actually happens. Not through dramatic reinvention, but through faithful repetition. One decision, honored again and again becomes a foundation. And from that foundation, new choices stop feeling heavy and start feeling obvious.

Here’s what I keep coming back to:

You don’t need to overhaul your life. You don’t need a perfect system or more motivation. You need one honest yes—the kind you can actually keep.

Start there. Stay there longer than feels exciting. Let your brain, your body, your spirit catch on.

Because once you prove to yourself that you can show up in one small way, the next yes will find you. And another. And them another.

So if you’ve been waiting for clarity, or confidence, or a sign..this is it. Pick the yes that’s already tapping on you. Choose the easiest most doable one to say yes.

Say it once.
Then say it again tomorrow.

That’s how new pathways are made.

Warmly,

Share

It asks for pauses
in the middle of laundry
in the doorway

while cooking a meal
while holding a crying child

I used to call this weakness

Now I see
it is my body
rewriting love

Slowing me down
so I don’t miss
the weight of her head
on my chest
the way my breath steadies hers

Motherhood did not make me slow
it made me present

more present

There is a pardoning
for the woman I was
who could hurry through life

But there is reverence
for the woman I am
who kneels to tie shoes
who measures time
in naps, meals and heartbeats

I am not behind

Actually
I am exactly where life
has asked me to be

moving at the speed
of what matters

And it is a dream come true

A prayer answered

Warmly,

It’s just a gym ceiling with fluorescent light and a speaker

Why share something so plain, so unremarkable.

But to me, that tiny dot represented everything at the gym today.

I’m on a journey to restrengthen my core after carrying and birthing two babies. That dot was what I fixed my eyes on during some post partum core workouts. I didn’t focus on the people walking by or the mirrors or the tv flashing music videos or notice what anyone else was doing.

I focused on that dot.

The more I focused on that single, unmoving point, the quieter everything else became. The room didn’t change but my experience of it did.

I gave the mind something to focus on so any distraction lost its power. The noise fades. The body settles into the rhythm. The more I zoned into my core, the more I focused on every inhale and exhale.

Without a focal point, the mind does what an untrained mind will do.

Panic a little.

It scans the room. It paces back and forth. It compares, judges and critiques.

It either runs wild or shuts down completely. Working out feels longer, heavier and harder than they need to be. The work becomes overwhelming because our attention is scattered.

But when you give your attention to a focal point, you can move through the workout with clarity. One breath, one rep, one moment at a time. You can stay present and engaged with the moment you’re in.

Life works the same way.

When we don’t know what we’re aiming at, everything competes for our attention. Opinions get louder. Fear rises. Doubt gets stronger. We adopt what other people think/feel. We exhaust ourselves trying to hold it all at once.

For me, that focal point in life is God.

He is the stillness when everything else is moving.

The fixed place when the world won’t stop spinning.

The quiet unassuming dot on the ceiling when the thoughts are running at 95 mph. When I give my focus to Him, everything else falls into its proper place and the noise disappears. It no longer leads, it dissolves.

I don’t need to control the whole room. I don’t need to figure out everything at once. I just need one place to rest my eyes, my gaze, my mind, body and spirit.

Our focus shapes what we perceive and experience. What we give our attention to is what shapes our inner world.

Attention is a form of devotion.

And sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do— especially in a season of rebuilding is choose where you look..

… and keep looking there.

After all, doesn’t He tell us—

“Be still, and know that I am God.” -Psalm 46:10

🍵

Warmly,

What once felt like absence now feels more like invitation. Even in seasons of emptiness and isolation, His kingdom isn’t somewhere far off. It dwells within us.

If you’re paying attention, His presence is everywhere.

Trust the process of the unique journey you’re on.🍵

Warmly,

I’m the kind of person who will slow down and pause for a good ol’ street performer in the middle of a busy downtown. While the rest of my family has already made it down another block, I’ll stand there a little longer than I should, watching someone sing their heart out or move their body like the world isn’t watching. There’s something about witnessing someone, in real time, disappear into their joy. Or even when I’m meeting a new friend and they completely geek out about something. I have seen passionate janitors light up cleaning the floors. Or mechanics with soiled nails and rough hands but full hearts. Librarians diving into must read books. Even if none of it lands with me, it’s the way their eyes light up when they talk about it that does. Their excitement is contagious and they give me joy.

This has followed me into motherhood too. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be listening to Moana singing How Far I’ll Go on repeat again and again. But when I get to watch the way my daughter lights up when she sings and dances to it? When she disappears into it completely? That fills me up. Her happiness makes me happy.

But the problem is this: fewer and fewer people are doing what they love.

Instead, we’re distancing ourselves from the very things that make us feel alive.

Sometimes I try to remember what life felt like before smartphones and social media. I picture everyone tucked inside the four walls of their home, giving themselves fully to something they enjoyed. Playing cards at the kitchen table for hours, painting late into the night, making up choreography to their favorite songs (I wish I still had home videos of these times), practicing an instrumental, shooting hoops, building something just because it felt good to build. There was time to deeply sink into things. To get lost. To be bored long enough to create something out of nothing.

Our minds were more present then. More focused. Less fragmented. We weren’t pulled in ten directions at once. We weren’t feeling this unconscious urge to record everything we were doing to share online with the internet. We could stay with one thing long enough for it to change us.

What we don’t often talk about is how even the most “innocent” scrolling has trained our brains to be undisciplined and distracted. We are barely able to stay with one task, one feeling, one desire before reaching for another. If our brains were computer browsers, it’s as if we keep opening new tabs without ever finishing what we opened the first one for. Eventually the whole browser crashes under it’s own weight. Because it’s overloaded.

And we call that burn out.

But I don’t think we’re as tired as we think we are, the way we think we are.

I think we’re tired because we’ve stopped doing what we love.

We tell ourselves we’re burnt out from working too much, from parenting, from keeping up, from the weight of the world. And yes–those things are real. Life is demanding. But I also believe that spending time doing what you love is one the greatest cures for exhaustion. I’m not talking about the kind of exhaustion that a good night’s sleep can fix, I’m talking about the kind that comes from being disconnected from yourself.

Even now as a mom on days when I’ve barely slept (which, thankfully, are fewer lately)- I feel more energized when I carve out even a small moment for something I enjoy. It could be making a hot cup of matcha or cappuccino, it could be plating my food before eating it, it could be drawing or singing– all woven into the day – all those little moments of doing what I love makes me feel energized. Grounded. Like I’ve been plugged back into myself. It restores me. The energy doesn’t come from rest alone, it comes from a liveliness that doing what we love draws out from the inside. Every time I intentionally devote myself to doing something that brings me joy, it charges my batteries.

So many of us are burnt out because somewhere along the lines, we stopped paying attention to ourselves and more attention to everyone else.

Every time you open an app, you’re turning your attention outward, into other people’s lives. What they’re doing. How they’re doing it. What they think. Why do they think it. Slowly, subtly, you drift further away from your own inner world. From your own curiosity. From your own creativity. From the things that light you up. You stop paying attention to your body, your posture and most times, you may even be clenching your jaw and barely breathing.

Almost without noticing, you become over consumers and under creators.

And when you stop creating, something in you withers.

You stop creating not because you don’t have anything left to give but because you forgot how to listen to the part of yourself that wants to give it. Creating doesn’t have to mean art you share online or become work that earns you money. It can be private and messy. It can be completely pointless with no aim or direction. Creating is simply an act of engaging with something you love without needing validation. It’s about choosing presence over performance and depth over distraction.

So perhaps the quiet rebellion of our time isn’t productivity, or hustle, or optimization.

Perhaps it’s about falling back in love with something and protecting that love fiercely.

Maybe it’s to remember, to return to a time when we could just sit with one thing until that one thing made time disappear. The thing you loved before you learned to measure your worth.

Before productivity, visibility, and optimization entered the room.

Maybe it’s an invitation to turn off the noise. Close the tabs. Let yourself be a beginner again.

Because the world doesn’t need more tired people consuming each other’s lives.

It needs more people who are alive. Lost in their joy. Creating for the sake of it. Reminding the rest of us what it looks like to fully be here.

The world doesn’t need you to be perfectly optimized and robotic.

It needs you lit up and alive.

The most generous thing you can offer the world isn’t your productivity.

It’s your aliveness.

I think that’s why I always stop for street performers. Why I linger when everyone else keeps walking.

Because in a world that’s rushing, scrolling, documenting, and measuring itself, someone standing there singing like no one is watching feels like fresh air.

A reminder of who we were before we learned to look away from ourselves.🍵

Warmly,

We went to our favorite restaurant, perched on the 8th floor of a resort right by the ocean. Before our reservation, we had some time to enjoy the beach. We sat on loungers as the sun began to set. The same wind that had canceled our paddle boarding plans ended up being the very thing that energized me. I took in the crispy, salty air—the kind that makes you breathe a little deeper without realizing it.

Ahead of us in the most dreamiest setting; were two young kids, a girl and a boy, jumping in the waves, laughing as the water chased their little ankles. I found myself watching them with an unexpected tenderness kind of feeling.

Then I looked at my husband.

His eyes were catching the light just right. Still that same beautiful hazel and I was struck by how wholesome and handsome he looked. He is truly my soulmate. I thought about how we would exchange stories about our childhoods at the beach before we met and how much we enjoyed that time with our families. I thought about the true innocence of that child-like nature.

There is a brilliant naivety that allows us to be present in a way that adulthood so often resists.

We can get there, we just have to work extra hard to.

It takes effort to train ourselves to be present, in a world that has conditioned us to be distracted.

When we were that little, as little as they were, the rush of cold waves hitting our legs and the sand beneath our feet were all we knew. We weren’t thinking about bills, or income or groceries or what we’d make for dinner or running through our brains of endless logistics. We weren’t managing calendars or carrying mental checklists. We weren’t taking in content from millions of different peoples lives flashing on our screens. We weren’t broadcasted too much of what happened in the outside world unless we were sitting in front of a television, watching the news.

We were simply right there, fully in the moment, fully where our feet were.

Then life goes on.
It expands.

When I looked at him, I was in awe all over again but it wasn’t because of what you would think.

I noticed how weathered we’ve become. Our skin isn’t as smooth as when we first met eight years ago in our twenties, by the river near that bridge. There are more lines, a few more gray hairs, hidden but there. There are subtle signs showing of long days and short nights. Of responsibility layered on top of joy.

Between moving our whole life down south, raising two little ones, ending old businesses and growing new ones, tending to our homes and investments, and everything in between, life has left its mark on our skins and in our eyes.

That’s the worldly, fleshly side.

There’s also the invisible side: the spiritual wrestles, the work of breaking ties with generational strongholds.

And yet, there’s something deeply beautiful about looking and being weathered.

Weathered doesn’t mean we’re worn out. It means we’ve weathered through the storms of many seasons of life. It means we’ve been touched by life and life has touched us back— deeply and meaningfully. It means we didn’t run from it or try to preserve ourselves in some untouched version of who were once were. We stepped in … all the way. We carried it. We let it shape us.

It means we stayed.
It means life came at us and we didn’t turn away from it.

We chose it.

Presence looks a lot different now. It’s no longer jumping waves without a care in the world. It’s showing up no matter what we’re feeling and still choosing to be there. Still choosing each other. It’s standing side by side in the responsibilities we built together. Having the ability to respond to the life unfolding. It’s planting our feet firm in the life we created together.

As the sun sank lower and the sky was turning into warm hues of yellow and orange and the kids kept chasing the water, I realized something simple and steady:

We’re still here.

Different waves now but we’re still standing in the water.

Deeper but standing—

Right where our feet are.

Being present, not in a way that just happens to us but in a way that we earned.

What a luxury it is to get to grow old with someone.

It turned out to be the most beautiful evening together.

And man, I swear I fell in love with him all over again.

God is good.

God is good.🍵

Warmly,

And that sentence rearranged something in me. Because for a long time, I thought discipline was about grit. About trying harder. About clawing my way through generational curses, bad habits, old patterns, and cycles I swore I was done with.

But the truth is…. willpower gets tired.

Your environment doesn’t.

The people we surround ourselves with are subtly shaping us long before we realize it. Their values. Their language. Their humor. Their upbringing. Their coping mechanisms. Their vices. Their faith. Their behaviors.

What we normalize becomes what we tolerate.

What we tolerate becomes what we participate in. Before we know it becomes a part of our everyday life.

And it’s not just people.

This extends to the content we consume.

I’ve been fasting social media for the past 48 hours and right away, I noticed how much mental space being on Instagram and Facebook took.

Also I noticed relief. A long exhale. A settling in me. Mental spaciousness because my brain wasn’t busy anticipating what my next shared story will be (I post very little nowadays but even then it takes up more space than I ever realized)

The conversations we have. The podcasts we listen to while driving or doing the laundry or working out. The music playing in the background. The shows we binge on when we’re feeling depleted yet looking for a quick dopamine hit. The accounts we scroll. The headlines that punch us real hard and make us want to click even though it were up to us, we would never bother to search for it. The narratives we rehearse because it’s what the world shows us over and over again.

We aren’t just sitting on the sidelines consuming content.

It’s the content that consumes us.

It’s interesting.. actually quite sneaky. Because it’s easy to feel like we’re only neutral observers right? Especially if you’re not clicking anything and you’re just scrolling through - it can’t hurt. But the reality is, we aren’t just observers, we are absorbers.

We absorb the contents we view through our eyes and listen through our ears like a sponge.

I’ve watched this play out in my own life in subtle ways.

There were seasons where I wondered why I felt more restless, more unsettled, more disconnected from God. I know He’s there so why did it feel like He was so far away?

But when I took an honest look at what I was feeding my mind, the answer became more clear.

Not everything was “bad.” But not everything was building me either. And that’s where discernment comes in.

If you wanted to make a fresh caprese salad and you opened the fridge to see that both your tomatoes and your basil were rotten, would you eat it?

Would you feed your body expired, rotten food?

So why is it that we don’t think twice when it comes to feeding our minds rotten content that leaves us feeling disempowered and/or unhappy with ourselves.

This is where discernment comes in. Maturing requires that we recognize the slow ways “the company we keep” is eroding us .. slowly but surely.

These things, whether people or content, don’t scream danger. They don’t trigger your brain to run because it thinks a tiger is chasing it. But it does dull your spirit.

I thrifted a white crop that says “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23. And when I wear it, I love what it reminds me to do. Scripture tells us to guard our hearts because our hearts are easily formable. It’s impressionable. Our heart, eyes, ears, are all gates .. entrypoints. What we take in through those entrypoints, eventually live rent free in our being.

The brain is made to absorb information and rewire itself around whatever you consistently give it. It will learn what you teach it. It will learn patterns based on how you train it until you learn to break it. If it teach the brain fear, it will become anxious. If you teach it by comparison, it will become jealous. If you teach it anger, it will become reactive.

On the other hand, if you teach it how to focus on one thing at a time, it will become more present. If you teach it how to think positively, it will look for the bright side of things.

This is why it’s not enough to let your mind go on autopilot mode.

Because if you don’t choose what shapes you, something or someone or many someones will.

And most times, it won’t be aligned with who God is calling you to become.

I’ve learned that not everyone is meant to come with you into every season.

Not every conversation deserves your energy. Not every joke requires your laughter. Not every opinion requires your agreement. Not every opinion deserves a seat in your mind. And that doesn’t make you self-righteous, selfish, or judgy.

It makes you responsible.

Because small compromises, compound and living in a state of peace doesn’t come to striver harder. It comes from choosing wiser.

Making wiser decisions.And sometimes, this means we make the wrong ones first to deal with the consequences enough to know it’s not what we want for ourselves.

Choosing environments that support who you’re becoming not we are outgrowing. Choosing friendships that sharpen you. Choosing content that feeds your spirit not just distracts you.

Ask yourself if it’s helping you become more whole?

Because who you become in your future is already being determined by what you’re allowing today.

And you get to choose wisely.

Guard your eyes, your ears and your heart. Not of fear but out of love.

You become what you tolerate.

It’s about being honest.

The life you want isn’t built in dramatic moments. It’s built in what you are willing to tolerate on a random Tuesday night when no one is watching.

And the hardest part isn’t learning what to armor yourself against … it’s admitting what you’ve already let in.

What’s something you’ve been tolerating that you’re ready to outgrow?🍵

Warmly,

We are so eager to

Take flight,

See space,

Go higher,

And we forget

That if we quiet ourselves,

and listen closely enough

To the heart beat of the Earth,

The greatest revelations won’t come to us when we’re higher,

But right here, when we are close to the ground.

Breathe.

You can do this.

Warmly,

Are you comfortable with losing your identity?

Today, you wear

the name. 

the role.

Most of what you do

moves through the narrow lens 

of who you think you are.

But if the name fell away,

the title,

the image, 

the hunger to be seen—

Would you still know yourself?

Could you loosen your grip 

on status,

on form, 

on the familiar weight of wanting? 

Detaching from your identity

is detaching from your ego

it’s names, forms, material desires for status 

and attachment to the material world.

Can you lose all of it and know within an instant who you truly are?

Can you find your identity through Me?

When you know this,

You know Me.

Warmly,

Because for a moment, I saw Zach and I in them.

It reminded me of back when we stuffed everything we owned in a storage container, wedged our houseplants and a few luggages in our cars and made the twenty-something hour drive down to the coast of Florida. It reminded of how electric that season felt. How it was filled with enthusiasm and curiosity, how blissfully naive, and a copious amounts of time to explore and wander.

We felt like this couldn’t be real.

The sunsets, the palm trees, the fresh ocean breeze, the salt in the air, the weather — there was so much beauty to love and take in. It felt like a vacation that forgot to end. Paradise. And this was home. We promised each other it would never get old. That we wouldn’t get comfortable enough to forget that we were living in paradise.

And as life does what life does—three housing remodels, two kids, and a whole new business later, some settling happened.

It wasn’t like settling was a bad thing. Actually, after moving so many times, settling was what we needed to feel safe, comfortable and secure. We craved being able to settle into the nooks and crannies of where we lived and eventually this happened. We have built an incredible community of people here who love on us and we get to love back. I can go to the grocery store and know the cashier and butchers by their first name. We have our go to mechanic and go to pediatricians. We have our go to places and go to favorite restaurants.

So no, I am not writing to paint the settling as a negative picture, because it’s what I prayed for.

But there’s something subtle that happens when we start to settle in ways where our days start to feel familiar. When life gets so full that it quietly has a way of shrinking itself.

We start saving the things we long for—presence, slowness, meaning, feeling— for later.

And if we’re not mindful, if we don’t catch ourselves and wake up while we’re living in these days… later never comes.

Morning routines turn into nap time routines, into meetings and work, into afternoon activities and bedtime routines, and then we do it all again the next day. If we’re not careful, our days become hallways we keep walking through. We show up where we’re supposed to be. We’re alive in every measurable way

But we’re not fully inhabiting the places we occupy.

One year passes. Then two. Then three. And suddenly we’re scrolling through photo memories, wondering where all the time went.

So for the sake of never losing the enthusiasm, I’ve been asking myself some questions lately:

• How can I create more depth to my days?

• How can I apply more presence to what I’m already doing?

• How do I add more life to my years?

Chewing your food before you swallow it. Taking the longer, more scenic way home.
Walking slower on purpose.
Eating a meal without taking a picture of it.

Letting yourself actually be where you are.

I want a life with texture to it.

The kind you can feel, like a cool French linen duvet.

I want blank spaces on my calendar.

I want room to breathe. Room to notice. Room to remember why I love and am so grateful for this life.

And maybe this is it.

Maybe this is the invitation for all of us to stop waiting for the moment when things slow down, and instead learn how to meet ourselves right here, while the sun is still setting and our feet are still in the sand.

What are some small ways you can add more depth to your days? More presence? Start with something small and treat it like an experiment. Notice how it makes you feel. 🍵

Warmly,

Last year, my parents in law came to visit and one of the things we always enjoy doing together is working in the yard. We learn a lot from them in this arena and we’ve come a long, long way. When we first bought the house, it was a junGLE. There were overgrown trees, plants bursting out of cracked plastic pots, and I kid you not— pine needles piled not one but two feet high.

It was pure chaos.

And yet, part of what drew me to the house was that very wildness.

It was lush. Alive. Full of potential.

Over the years, we have continued pouring ourselves into it clearing, planting and learning. This past year, things started to shift. My husband somehow managed to grow grass where there had only ever been dirt. Between putting up a fence and removing dying trees.. our yard started to feel like it was coming together. Needless to say, we’ve put in tons of work over the years to make it more functional and enjoyable for our family.

His parents gifted us three bougainvilleas, which we planted along the fence where the sun shines the brightest. Nearly a year later, one is thriving, one is trying and one looks …

by all accounts…

dead. 😫

The leaves wilted, then dried, until nothing was left but brittle branches.

From the patio, mid conversation, we would glance over it and say '“looks like it’s on it’s way out.”

Yesterday while I took the girls out, my husband got to enjoy some quiet time in the patio. He shared with me that after reading his Bible, he stood up and walked through the yard to move his body and take in some fresh air. As he passed the plant. The dead one. He noticed something he hadn’t seen before.

It was a tiny sprout!!

Magenta pink.

And in that moment, the Lord revealed to him, “I bring what’s dead back to life.”

His revelation settled deep in me.

Because how many things do we abandon simply because they look dead?

How often do we trust what our eyes tell us more than what God has promised?

We see dryness. Silence. Stillness. And here we are, jumping to our own conclusions. We see things as they appear, not as they are and instantly, we decide that our story is over.

I’ve been wanting to finish writing a book i’ve been working on and publish it for a long time. I have started and stopped more times than I can count. There were seasons I walked away completely. I felt like I failed and maybe my dream of writing and publishing a book is just dead. But I knew that was a lie because the urge inside of me to keep going only grew stronger. I’m sure writing and publishing on here daily is doing it’s thang thang to strengthen my writing muscles and stamina for this book. I pray God continues to work on me. I pray that I do not fall prey to the lies that tell me my time has passed.

Because God is not limited by appearances.

He is a God of miracles.

A way maker.

A restorer.

He breathes new life into places we have already mourned but don’t know how to move on from.

Maybe you’ve been wanting to keep writing on Substack too but you’re too hesitant invest more time in it because you post something you’ve worked hard on and you hit the publish button but, no comments, no likes, no new subscribers — just dead.

Maybe there’s a passion you once carried that feels buried now.

Maybe a calling you’ve ignored for so long you assume it’s gone.

Maybe a relationship, a dream, a season of faith that feels beyond saving.

So hear me when I say this— what looks dead may only be dormant.

Just resting.

Because roots do deep work in the dark.

And God is never finished just because we are tired of waiting.

Don’t rush to pull it up.

Don’t declare it all over too soon.

Stay faithful and keep tending to the soil.

Because resurrection often begins in a quiet and subtle way…

with the smallest hint of color to remind us like a gentle nudge,

that life was there all along. 🍵

Warmly,

Lately I’ve been writing every single day. Twenty days in a row.

Some days I open the page knowing exactly what I want to say. Other days, I just sit there staring at the blank wall in front me, noticing the tiny globs of imperfect paint job from when we remodeled this house a few years ago.

Waiting and waiting for something honest, something real to surface.

It’s made me wonder: what actually makes a writer worth reading?

What makes me want to stay when everything else is begging for my attention? What makes me want to click the “save” button and actually pulls me to sit down and read it later? (Let’s be honest, how many things have you saved in your digital folder that you never come back to it?)

Is it that they have perfect grammar? Use of punctuation? Expert advice delivered like a neatly packaged lesson like they know something we don’t and got it all figured out?

Definitely not that.

The writing that holds me … the kind I return to— are written by people sitting on the other side of the screen willing to pour it all out.

They don’t care to present themselves as a know-it-all expert in their field.

They don’t posture themselves as authorities.

They don’t have all the answers.

They aren’t A.I. polished and vanilla laced.

They aren’t smoothed down until there are no edges left.

They aren’t putting on performances.

The kind of writing that makes me pause in my tracks is the writing that is shaped by lived experiences. They sound human.

They sound like someone real who is breathing on the other side of the screen— thinking in real time. They share what’s true for them even if it’s messy, incomplete or risky.

They don’t always offer hindsight tied with a bow. They offer their full presence while they’re in the middle of it.

They invite me to sit beside them while they make sense of something they don’t yet fully understand or have the language for.

These are the kinds of writers who lead with their humanity first.

They aren’t afraid to let you see them as they’re wrestling with something out loud.

They don’t resolve everything for your comfort and hold your hand through it.

They share what’s true for them without trying to make it universally relatable.

They accept the risk of being misunderstood.

They trust the right readers will stay and the wrong ones will go.

They share their thoughts with honesty. They don’t care about making sure they appeal to everyone. I notice how quickly I tend to disengage from content that offers wisdom without a story. Encouragement without context.

Insight without skin in the game.

I want to connect with stories. Writing that feels inhabited. Lived in.

Real stories about an ordinary day, observed with honesty.

What caught your attention. What unsettled you. What you couldn’t shake. How you moved through it. How do you view things? What’s your perspective?

I think as a generation overall, many of us are tired.

Tired of striving to be perfect or pretending we have clarity when we don’t.

For years now, our feeds have been filled with ‘perfection’, crisp images styled like magazines, edited into something that feels aspirational and distant while we’re all scrolling in our oversized t-shirts, messy pineapple buns, slouched necks, legs that haven’t been shaved in 4 days and double chins trying to feel less alone.

It’s relentless chase of a dangling carrot and I think many of us are quietly exhausted by it.

We’re tired of polished.

We’re weary of the posed and the poised.

We’re no longer nourished by what looks good yet feels empty and hollow.

We’re craving meaning.

We want real connection.

We don’t want authority, we want presence.

We don’t want answers, we want sincerity.

The kind of writing I want to read whether on here or Instagram or anywhere else doesn’t try to flash me shiny things to impress me. It doesn’t boast. It doesn’t flaunt.

It doesn’t rush to teach me something or conclude.

It simply tells the truth as carefully as it can then leaves room for me to feel something, to perhaps recognize a part of myself that maybe I haven’t seen in awhile, or to walk away with my own quiet understanding.

It doesn’t compete for attention.

Writing like this is a courageous thing to do.

Maybe this is the part where I start writing the way I want to read.

With fewer conclusions.

Letting the writing be shaped by what i’m actually living, not what I think should sound good.

Sharing my wrestles out loud.

With trust in the reader and patience in myself.

With the knowing that not everything needs to be resolved.

No lessons tied up neatly with a pretty bow on top.

No certainty I can hand over to you.

Just presence. Just honesty.

Because some things just need to be said while they’re still dancing and alive.

So here’s to leaving more real somethings on the page and trusting that whoever needs it will find it. 🍵

Warmly,

P.S. If reading this reminds you of writers you love to read from, spread the love and share their Substack below and why you love reading from them. What makes you stay? What makes you linger longer?

It was about groceries. About water bottles. About a morning that should have taken ten seconds.

That morning, I asked my 13 month old to help me put the water bottles in the fridge.

That sentence alone should tell you how the rest of it went.

I opened the fridge. She reached for a bottle with the seriousness of someone handling something sacred. She inspected it with both hands. Smiled at it. Gave it to me. And before I could finish saying thank you, she grabs another.

What should have taken ten seconds took several minutes. There are still many items to put away. I only have a small window to get dinner ready before we get into bedtime routines and the whole shabam.

I had every reason to rush through the rest of it.

But then I looked at my daughter’s face.

Pure focus.

Pride.

The unmistakable glow of a tiny being who knows she is useful.

When she got on her tippy toes and the bottle finally landed on the shelf, she clapped. Not for me for herself.

The joy and instilled confidence glistened when she realized she could do it.

This is the subtle recalibration of motherhood that no one really explains.

You don’t just ‘lose’ time… You relearn what its for.

You get deeply anchored into its purpose.

Everything takes longer now.

Shoes. Dishes. Groceries. Getting out the door. Putting water in the fridge.

But it’s in the slowing that you can see things that you would have missed if you were living life on full speed. The way her brow furrows with complete concentration. The way helping her mama feels like joy to her. The way her confidence is built not in one big moment but one task at a time.

I’ve often heard of a saying that kids slow you down.

And I’ve heard it framed as a warning. But now that the same 13 month old is almost 3 years old, I can say utterly and completely, that having kids is an invitation.

The whole point isn’t to get back to the pace you had before they came into your world.

The whole point is to notice what shows up when you stop trying to outrun your life.

Maybe it’s an invitation to let them teach us.

Maybe it’s to let a 13 month old teach me that something as simple as putting water bottles away can be an event worth clapping for.

Maybe it’s teaching me to slow down, take some breaths, laugh and smile with her, heed to the richness of the moment, meet her exactly where she is.

Maybe it’s to admit that what feels difficult isn’t children at all-

Maybe what’s difficult is being a child in a world full of distracted, busy, rushing adults.

Today she can crack 10 eggs into a bowl without a single shell and whisk them well. We have fun making our morning pancakes together. She knows how to put her own shoes. How to wear her pants. She knows where the forks and spoons go in the drawer. She can use the potty completely on her own. She is her own independent and creative imaginative thinker. But none of this happened by accident. She’s been practicing since she was barely more than a baby.

From the outside looking in, it may look like I taught her.

Because somewhere along the lines, she taught me.

She taught me that I don’t need to do things on my own just because ‘I can get it done right and faster.’

She taught me patience even when there’s still a list of things to do before the day ends.

She taught me that inviting her into my life, into the ordinary work of living is how I create moments that are meaningful.

Not just beside me but with me.

She finds comfort, safety and belonging when she gets to actively participate in life with me- not just by watching me. And now, I am better mother to her and her baby sister. I am a better person.

Children don’t need to be distracted.

They need to be involved.

I love the joy she shows in being apart of it all.

And you know what?

Maybe that’s what slowing down was meant to give us after all. 🍵

Warmly,

The word reckoning can sound quite severe but what I mean by this is something gentler. It’s a holy accounting. A coming into truth. A face to face encounter with what’s real and honest. God’s way of bringing what’s been hidden into the light to restore, heal and call us back home when we’ve been too far off axis and we’re listening. We’re heeding to the call. We’re showing up.

There is weight many mothers are carrying that does not belong to them. It was handed down through generational lineages. Often subtly, efficiently, without question. Unspoken grief. Expectations, Survival patterns.Traumas. And in this reckoning, that weight begins to lift.

Not by striving or performing but by remembering,

These are the mothers God is refining. Quietly pruning. Gently shaping. The ones who have been walking through the fire without narrating it or announcing it to the world. They are breaking generational patterns that once felt unbreakable. They have learned to observe before they react. To pray before they speak. To intercede before they instruct. To discern before they define. To listen before they label. To understand before they judge.

Their calling does not living on stages or highlight reels or screens,

It lives inside the four walls of their home.

It lives in the long obedience of faithful-heartedness in ordinary days.

You will recognize them by their fruit.

By the warmth that settles in a space after they leave.

By the way children soften in their presence.

By the atmosphere of a steady peacefulness that follows them everywhere they go.

Their homes become places where mistakes are not feared, but taught from. Where discipline slowly turns into discipleship. Where holiness is woven into dishes and laundry and morning routines and bedtime prayers. Where gratitude is spoken where children can hear it.

This morning at church, during worship, I felt the gravity of this work settle into the room.

It was already a profound worship session when the pastor called the church into a total surrendering. To not just be spectators but make way to the altar. He specifically said if you’re just tired, doesnt matter if youre spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, to come up to the altar.

I came up to the altar ready to receive prayer and there were women praying for me.

Hands steady, voices low, and after they prayed, I began to notice the mothers in the room. Not in any dramatic way just a noticing. A quiet recognition.

There was a particular steadiness about them. A kind of tenderness that had clearly been a hard fought hallelujah. These were women who knew something about surrender- not as a concept but as a lived practice. They had learned where strength actually comes from.

They stand in the gap in between not with armors but with their bodies. Their time. Their energy. Their surrendered nervous systems. Their quiet yes.

It struck me that much of the most important work God is doing right now will never be platformed. The altar didn’t just stay at the church-

It comes home with us…

Into kitchens.
Into minivans.
Into whispered prayers over sleeping children.
Into the unseen places where legacy is actually formed.

The reckoning is not loud.
But it is unmistakable.

And it is already underway.

Warmly,

you are living the golden days.

It’s been chilly here in southwest Florida for the past few days - which coming from New York - I absolutely love. I love the break in between hot weather days. I love the excuse to wear oversized cozy sweaters and warm slippers. I love the urge to start a fire and camp around it. Make some smores and hot cocoa while sharing giggles under the stars. But today, the weather was just perfect. The cold air had softened and it was the perfect weather to spend outside.

My husband wanted to go to the park and we haven’t eaten lunch yet so I decided we should do a nice picnic at the park. As the burgers were sizzling on the stovetop, music humming in the background throughout the house (of course), I sliced up fruits and packed the cooler bag- moving quickly so we can head out as soon as Lani wakes up from her nap;

our daughter Riah’s sweet little voice cut through all the motion-

“Daddy, can you hold me?”

“Of course” he said stopping mid step to scoop her up in his arms.

They started to sway in front of the mirror, dancing to the song playing in the background as she chuckled while staring at their reflection. Her eyes gleaming with joy.

In the midst of it all, I paused and smiled.

Just long enough for the burgers to keep cooking.

And in that pause, something landed.

I thought to myself:

wow, these are the golden days.

The golden days are tricky because they’re easy to miss if you rush through them. Easy to mistake for ordinary while you’re standing inside of them. Easy if you’re just going on autopilot through the motions without pausing. You won’t know you’re living it while you’re in it. You won’t get a loud announcement. There won’t be no markers telling you to pay attention.

It’s not until years later, when the house is quieter and the kids are grown, do these moments come back to you. The sound of their laughter. The weight of a small body in your arms. The fullness of a home that once held everyone together all at once.

Right now, everyone is still here.

Our parents may live back up north, but they’re still alive, breathing, working, facetiming with us. We can call them and talk to them whenever we miss them. Our family is healthy. Our bodies work. We can walk, move, dance. We are vibrant. Joyful. Health lingers softly in the background, easy to ignore if you’re not listening for it.

It just so happened that Lani woke up at the perfect time and we made out it out right before the most beautiful golden sunset.

These are the days we will miss.

These are the days we will ache for later.

And the only way to keep them…

to really keep them close—

is to slow down enough to notice when they arrive.

So my life right now, is about practicing staying a little longer in moments like this.

Just long enough to feel them.

Just long enough to remember.

Warmly,

I’m saying this as a woman who has burned food while answering emails, fried my adrenals while trying to “multitask” and juggle too many things at once. I know speed. I know hurry. I know the false pride that comes from thinking that productivity makes you feel holy for being exhausted.

But nothing truly good is meant to be inhaled in one big gulp.

Think about the good stuff.

Dark chocolate that you break into squares.

Bread that needs to rise.

The first spoonful of your favorite ice cream.

These are often moments we don’t rush.

But somewhere along the way, we decided faster was better.

Faster was needed.

Faster was success.

We started to treat moments meant to be savored like an emergency.

We started to treat life like a race to the finish line.

Being a mom has taught me that the things that matter the most resist being hurried.

You cannot rush a child into feeling safe.

You sit with them through it.

You cannot speed up grief.

You cannot microwave wisdom.

Wisdom, the deepest wisdom, shows up when you’ve lived long enough to regret saying yes too quickly and learn the power of a solid no.

Slowing down is an act of faith.

It says, “I trust in God’s timing. What’s meant for me will not miss me.”

When you slow down, you begin to notice things you’ve been missing: the way your child’s laugh changes as they grow, the clearer ways they pronounce their words, the depth of their facial expressions, the warmth of their little hands wrapped around your legs.

Slowing down doesn’t mean you stop showing up. It means you show up fully. It means dinner can be simple and conversation can be rich. It means your prayers don’t have to be eloquent; they just have to be honest. It means you stop treating rest like a reward and start treating it like obedience.

The world will not applaud you for this.

Hustle gets the standing ovation.

But rest is what we need.

So take the long way home once in a while. Let the email wait. Sit on the edge of your bed and breathe before you charge into the day. Stick your hands out the window and filter the air on your drive. Go marvel in a sunset. Watch the waves. Read the same verse twice. Chew your food until it’s completely broken down before you swallow. Drink something hot. Hold your people a second longer than necessary.

You are not behind.
You are not late.
You are not wasting time.

You are living a life God deemed worthy of care, attention, and tenderness.

And like anything truly decadent, it deserves to be savored.

Your life is so worth slowing down for.

It’s a practice but one worth showing up for daily.

Warmly,

• Car windows down on a breezy summer day while listening to worship music or early 2000s music

• A warm cup of matcha

• The way flowers perk up after being watered

• Fresh herbs to top a dish you just made

• Laughing so hard that you’re holding your belly, rocking back and forth and crying

• A kind compliment from a stranger

• Quiet moments to yourself

• Sunlight spilling across the floor an hour before the sunsets

• The first sip of a cappuccino when it’s still perfectly hot

• Slipping into clean cozy plush sheets after a long day

• Catching a familiar scent that brings back a good memory

• A song with the right lyrics coming on exactly when you needed it

• Warm laundry straight from the dryer

• Finishing reading something that lands and sitting quietly with it for a moment

• The sound of rain when you don’t have anywhere to go

• Stretching in the morning and feeling your body fully wake up

• Writing something down that makes your thoughts feel lighter

• Waking up a few minutes before you’re supposed to and realizing you have time to rest a little longer

• The breeze through the sliding door

• Finding money in a pocket you forgot about

• The way a mug warms your hands before you take a sip

• The feeling of crossing something small off a to-do list

• Receiving a genuine “thank you” that feels meant

• Seeing trees move in the wind while you’re standing still

• Watching the shadows on the ground from the trees

• The first bite of food when you’re really hungry

• Hearing your name spoken gently

• The glide of a pen that writes smoothly

• A message from someone you weren’t expecting but were glad to hear from

• Randomly running into people you haven’t seen in a long time

• Watching steam rise from a shower

• The quiet right after you turn something off (a sound machine, the fan, kitchen vent, bathroom vent)

• When the sky turns soft pastel colors instead of just dark

• A shared glance with a stranger that feels kind not awkward

• Sitting down after standing for a long time

• Realizing you’re comfortable and don’t need to adjust anything

• The smell of soap after freshly washed clean hands

• Remembering something you once worried about and noticing it turned out okay

• Hands out the window filtering the wind on a long drive

• Grass beneath your feet

The love you had before children is not the love that will carry you through after them.

The love before was built for freedom. For spontaneity. For the subtle assumption that time would always be generous.

It was a love that lived lightly in the body. You could stay in bed long past the sunrise, tracing familiar shapes on each other’s skin while the day ahead was waiting patiently outside the door. You could hop out for ice cream at 10 pm because the freezer was empty and the night felt open, no bags to pack, no one to arrange care for, no bed time routines. You could talk for hours without arriving anywhere, circling old memories, half-formed dreams, versions of yourselves you hadn’t tried on yet. Silence wasn’t something to fill it was something you rested inside together. You belonged wholly to each other in those moments, not divided by responsibility or anticipation. You could imagine yourselves endlessly becoming, because nothing was asking you to stay still.

The love after children is built for endurance.

It learns how to breathe under pressure. It is etched so deeply in your bones that it can tread through any season of life no matter how hard it gets. It has the kind of stamina that survives the one constant that many of us run away from — change.

After children, love stops being something that simply happens to you like a good day you fall into. It becomes something you practice. Its work. Real effort. Real work. Often when you are depleted. Often when the last thing you want is closeness and the only thing you want is silence or sleep.

It’s not a downgrade.

It’s a reckoning.

Parenthood will push you to the edges of your raw self, your personality, your identity, your patience. You are no longer loving each other at your best. You are loving each other while you are touched out, under resourced, hormonally altered, and especially in the beginning, letting go of old versions of yourselves you didn’t realize you already outgrown.

You begin to realize more and more that in your marriage, you are not just sharing lives, or bank accounts or homes… you are sharing each other’s nervous systems.

You begin to see how the other handles fear. Responsibility. Loss of control. You meet their childhood coping mechanisms. Their stress responses. Their tenderness and their edges. The 7 year old versions.

You see theirs and they see yours.

You stop meeting each other as lovers first.

You meet as two human beings becoming undone.

This is where the intensity may cause you to grow into a panic.

You may think something is wrong because suddenly the things that felt easy don’t feel easy any more. The desires don’t arrive on command anymore. The conversations become more logistical. The intimacy becomes more coordinated.

But what’s actually happening is more precise than that.

It’s that the fantasy we once had that mirrored the romantic dramas we watched in the movies…. dies. The one fueled by chemistry alone.

The one that believed love should always feel like being swept away off your feet.

And in it’s place, something sturdier is being born.

The love after kids is no longer lived lightly but it lives deeply. It is not performative.

It doesn’t care how it looks from the outside. It isn’t fueled by validation, admiration or applause.

It’s built from repetition.

From choosing each other again and again when there’s nothing to gain.

From staying present when your nervous system wants to escape.

From learning how to sit with the discomfort and in it together.

From learning how to resolve things in the ways you needed when you were children but were never shown.

Desire changes here too. It doesn’t disappear, it deepens. It becomes slower, it thickens. It becomes more responsive, less about being wanted and more about being felt. It becomes more meaningful and intentional.

You are no longer seduced by potential or what’s possible.

You are aroused by security and safety by the person who knows exactly how heavy your day was. He knows what kind of load you carried but still loves you the same. By the one who saw you crack open yet didn’t flinch. By the shared language forged through the trenches of ordinary days.

By the way you learn each other’s exhaustion; how you could tell by the set of a shoulder or the pause before a sentence when the other needs relief, not advice.

It’s walking through this fire together that transforms that old love into that new love. It’s mature, it’s deep, sexy, intimate, forgiving, playful, responsive, activating. It drives you. Inspires you.

And joy… real joy moves differently now.

It’s subtle, deep, palpable. More honest.

For me, it lives in the way my husband makes me hot tea in the morning when he hears me up coughing at night without asking. In the way he puts his palm on the small of my back when he walks by me while i’m cooking in the kitchen. In the looks we exchange over our sleeping baby or when our toddler does applies something we both taught her into action. In the way he shoulders unseen loads and house hold duties so my days can feel a little lighter.

Romance becomes less about escape and more about acknowledgment. Locking eyes across a messy kitchen island, sharing a laugh over something small and absurd, feeling chosen again and again in the middle of the ordinary. Conversations shortened but sharpened; dreams grew fewer but heavier with meaning. Silence still existed, but now it came late at night, earned, sacred, wrapping around you like proof of survival.

This love will require more of you than the first one ever did.

It will require you to be more emotionally intelligent. To know how to read the room and anticipate each others needs. It will require accountability when you slip or make mistakes (because you will). It will require courage to grow instead of calculating moves and keeping score.

You no longer imagine yourselves endlessly becoming - you watched it happen in real time, through each other, through them. Love after kids has you stay in the hardest moments and to grow anyway. It’s fuller, braver, and more astonishing than the freedom that came before.

This kind of love gives something back that early love cannot:

A sense of being deeply known fully as you are.

A feeling of standing inside something that cannot and will not collapse the moment it’s tested.

This is not the love that sweeps you away.

It’s the love that stays.

And loving this deeply is something brave to do.

Because if you’re fully devoted with all of your heart,

love after children isn’t built to come and go, it’s built to last.

And that’s the kind of love I’m after.

Warmly,