Growing up in church, I heard countless sermons about the power of testimony. It was one of those themes that seemed to surface again and again, woven through altar calls, Wednesday night services, youth retreats, and revival meetings. Someone would stand up in the sanctuary and tell the story of how God had met them in the middle of addiction, heartbreak, illness, or loss. By the end, there were usually tears. Sometimes there were raised hands. Sometimes there was an altar call. As a child, I don’t know that I fully understood what was happening in those moments, but I knew they felt different. Something shifted in the room whenever people stopped talking about God in the abstract and started talking about what He had done in their own lives.

Looking back, I think it was because their honesty gave everyone else permission to be honest too. When someone shared a struggle out loud, the rest of us no longer had to pretend we were the only ones carrying one.

Years later, after becoming a therapist, I’ve come to appreciate that there may be more happening in those moments than I realized. What churches have intuitively understood for generations is now being supported by a growing body of research. Human beings are wired for story. We don’t simply experience life. We make sense of life through narrative. We are constantly interpreting events, connecting dots, assigning meaning, and deciding what those experiences say about who we are and how the world works. The stories we tell ourselves become the framework through which we understand our relationships, our suffering, our identity, and even our faith.

That matters because difficult experiences are not always stored in our brains as neat, coherent narratives. Anyone who has experienced significant loss, trauma, or adversity knows this instinctively. Sometimes what remains is not a clear story but a collection of emotional fragments. A smell triggers a memory. A song brings unexpected tears. A certain conversation leaves us anxious for reasons we cannot fully explain. We know something affected us, but we struggle to put words around it.

One of the most fascinating findings in neuroscience is that putting experiences into language appears to help connect different regions of the brain involved in memory, emotion, self-awareness, and meaning-making. Experiences that once felt overwhelming or disjointed can begin to feel more organized when we tell the story of them. This doesn’t erase the pain. It doesn’t change what happened. But it does help transform an experience from something that simply happens to us into something we can begin to understand and integrate into our lives.

This is particularly important when it comes to trauma. We often talk about trauma as though it lives in the past, but for many people it doesn’t feel that way. A person may know intellectually that an event occurred years ago, yet their body continues to respond as though the threat is still present. Their heart races. Their muscles tense. Their nervous system prepares for danger. What others perceive as “dwelling on the past” is often a nervous system that has not yet learned that the event is over.

As I think about those testimonies from my childhood, I wonder if this is part of what made them so powerful. People weren’t simply sharing information. They were sharing meaning. They were standing in front of a congregation and saying, “This is what happened to me, this is what I learned, and this is where I found God in the middle of it.” Their stories became evidence that suffering was not the end of the narrative.

In a culture that encourages us to curate our lives, there is something quietly radical about telling the truth. Not every story belongs on social media, and wisdom should always guide what we share and with whom. But most of us need trusted spaces where we can stop performing and start being known. We need relationships where we can speak honestly about our disappointments, our grief, our fears, and our hopes without worrying that our humanity will disqualify us from belonging.

I’ve come to believe that healing often begins when we stop asking, “How do I get rid of this story?” and start asking, “How do I make sense of it?” The goal is not to erase the past. The goal is to understand it well enough that it no longer controls the present. As we tell our stories, we discover that we are more than our wounds, more than our mistakes, and more than the hardest chapters we have lived through.

And sometimes, in the process of sharing our own story, we become part of someone else’s healing. They hear their own experience echoed in ours. They realize they are not alone. They find language for something they have never been able to explain. They catch a glimpse of hope where they thought none existed.

Maybe that’s what those testimony services were teaching me all along. God doesn’t just work through miracles. He works through stories. Through ordinary people who are willing to tell the truth about where they’ve been, what they’ve survived, and how grace met them there.

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A few weeks ago, my husband and I were sitting in the living room discussing a decision that has become increasingly familiar to military families: where we might want to live next and how our choices today could shape our family years from now. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, one of us casually referenced something ChatGPT had suggested. Neither of us paused. The comment landed as naturally as citing an article, mentioning a podcast, or recalling advice from a friend.

What struck me later wasn’t that artificial intelligence had entered the conversation. It was that its presence felt entirely normal.

The truth is that AI has become a quiet companion in many of our household discussions. Sometimes it helps us think through financial decisions. Sometimes it helps us compare potential duty stations or explore career options. Occasionally it serves as a sounding board when one of us is wrestling with a difficult workplace situation. More often than not, an interaction with AI becomes the starting point for a deeper conversation between the two of us.

As a psychotherapist, I find that reality fascinating. As someone with ADHD, I find it entirely unsurprising.

People often discuss AI as though it were simply another technological tool, but that description feels increasingly incomplete. AI is not merely helping us access information; it is changing the way many of us think, process, create, and make decisions. For some, it is becoming a conversation partner. For others, it is becoming a coach, a brainstorming companion, or a source of emotional support.

That reality raises important questions, particularly for those of us who care deeply about relationships, faith, and human flourishing. Not because AI is inherently dangerous, but because every technology changes us in some way. The question is not whether artificial intelligence will shape our lives. It already is. The question is whether we are paying attention to how.

For me, part of the appeal is neurological.

Living with ADHD often means living with a mind that moves faster than conversations can keep up. Ideas arrive in clusters. Questions generate more questions. Decisions branch into dozens of possible outcomes before the first thought is fully formed. For years I assumed everyone experienced this constant mental activity until I realized that many people do not spend quite so much time chasing multiple trains of thought simultaneously.

AI happens to be remarkably well suited for a brain like mine.

It responds immediately. It tolerates endless curiosity. It never seems annoyed by follow-up questions. I can ask it to compare doctoral programs, explain a theological concept, summarize research, brainstorm a business idea, and help me organize my thoughts before a difficult conversation…all within the span of fifteen minutes.

From a neuroscience perspective, that responsiveness matters. Human brains are designed to pay attention to rewards, and immediate rewards are particularly powerful. Every time we receive useful information, solve a problem, or gain clarity, neural pathways associated with learning and reinforcement become active. In other words, our brains naturally gravitate toward experiences that provide quick feedback.

AI provides feedback almost instantly.

By contrast, many of the things that contribute most significantly to our growth do not.

Marriage is rarely instantaneous. Friendship certainly isn’t. Prayer often feels anything but efficient. The wisdom we gain from Scripture, community, and lived experience typically unfolds over months and years rather than seconds.

I wonder if that is partly why this moment requires such intentionality.

We assume that because something is faster, it must also be better. Yet the most meaningful aspects of human existence have always resisted optimization. You cannot automate trust. You cannot accelerate intimacy. You cannot outsource spiritual formation.

The irony is that AI has actually highlighted this reality in my own life.

While it often helps me think more clearly, it also reminds me of what it cannot provide. It can organize information, but it cannot know me. It can generate empathy, but it cannot genuinely care. It can offer perspectives, but it cannot replace the wisdom that emerges when my husband and I wrestle through a difficult decision together. It can simulate conversation, but it cannot offer the presence of a trusted friend who sits with me in grief, disappointment, or uncertainty.

That distinction matters.

Technology can help us gather knowledge, but knowledge alone has never been the goal of the Christian life. The goal is transformation. It is becoming the kind of people who love God and love others well.

There is a subtle but important difference between using AI as a tool and allowing it to become a substitute for practices that were never meant to be replaced. When anxiety rises, it may be easier to open a chatbot than to call a friend. When uncertainty emerges, it may be tempting to seek an immediate answer rather than sit with God in prayer. When loneliness appears, it may feel more comfortable to engage with a system that never rejects us than to risk vulnerability with another person.

Yet the very friction we are tempted to avoid is often where growth occurs.

Prayer forms us precisely because it requires dependence. Relationships deepen precisely because they involve vulnerability. Community changes us precisely because other people challenge, encourage, disappoint, and refine us in ways technology never can.

Perhaps the challenge before us is not determining whether AI belongs in our lives. Like previous technological revolutions, its arrival is already reshaping the world around us. The challenge is learning how to embrace its benefits without allowing it to displace the relationships and practices that make us fully human.

I suspect my husband and I will continue referencing AI in our conversations for years to come. It will likely help us make decisions, explore ideas, and navigate the complexities of military life. In many ways, it already has.

But I hope it always remains what it was meant to be: a tool that supports wisdom rather than replacing it, a catalyst for connection rather than a substitute for it, and a reminder that while technology may continue to evolve, the deepest needs of the human heart remain remarkably unchanged.

We still need God. We still need one another. And no algorithm, no matter how sophisticated, can fulfill either role.

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When I write this word, I find myself taking a deep internal breath and sighing.

I sigh because surrendering my worries and fears to God felt like both work and rest to me.

Like release and resistance.

The honesty of that admission makes me want to hide my face a little, but it’s true.

I’d like to tell you I quickly surrendered every fear, anxiety, and worry.

But honestly, I didn’t.

And I didn’t because I misunderstood what surrender was asking of me. I thought surrender meant sitting still, or having peace before peace had actually arrived. I thought it meant somehow becoming unbothered by circumstances that were deeply bothering me.

Yet, just as He promised, Jesus continually met me with grace as I worked through my unbelief, my misbelief, and my misconceptions about how I thought I should walk through a hard season.

As I sifted through the chaff of my wilderness season and tried to make sense of what had happened and what was still unfolding, I began discovering unexpected places where God was present.

Unexpected places where faith was growing, where fruit was taking root and where surrender was quietly taking shape.

That, in many ways, is the purpose of this series. To trace those threads backward and see how God was weaving a path toward life and life more abundantly long before I could recognize what He was doing.

My surrendering season was certainly watering the fruit of patience. Or as some translations call it, long-suffering. Long-suffering feels like the more accurate description. It was long, and I suffered.

Scripture became one of the lifelines that carried me through that season.

One passage in particular captures what the wilderness felt like:

“Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him: But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” — Job 23:8-10

Job understood what I was feeling. I couldn’t see the purpose and didn’t understand why any of it was necessary.

But God knew the way that I took. And in time, I would discover that surrender and patience were doing a deeper work in me than I could perceive while I was living it.

Why Was Surrendering So Hard?

Surrender was so difficult for me because my nervous system had spent a very long time being fed all the wrong fuel.

How does one simply “let go” when all they’ve practiced is holding on tighter and when every instinct says brace yourself?

For much of my life, strength looked like endurance, tightening up, staying steady, pushing and refusing to crumble.

But eventually my fight-or-flight response chose flight. And from that moment forward there was a great deal to do.

I had babies to care for, big moves to make and decisions to navigate. There was so much external doing that stillness… the thing I mistakenly thought surrender would look like, felt almost impossible.

It was so hard to surrender my fears and the tension between what was lost and what was in front of me.

There was much tension until there came a point where my situation felt so bleak, so beyond my ability to control, that there was nothing left to do but surrender to the only paths God was placing in front of me.

As if God was telling me, much like he did with Moses, to use what was in his hand! A Staff!

For me nothing was physically in my hand, but t I had plenty in my heart, in my head, and right in front of me. My Growth Plan devotional was one of those things.

I think about the lepers who asked one another:

“Why sit we here until we die?”

I knew I couldn’t stay frozen. I couldn’t remain parked in grief. So I took “the next right step”.

Then the next.

I surrendered to fully living in the moments God was placing in front of me. Even through the tears and the fog.

As I leaned into prayer and honesty with God, He gave me things to focus my mind and heart on and began opening doors of opportunity.

Doors that I never would have imagined could eventually lead me toward surrender.

Looking back now, I can see that every one of those doors was asking the same question:

Will you trust Me with what’s in front of you, even if you don’t understand what’s behind you?

I remember my second Christmas season alone with four children.

I can still hear myself saying: “The only place life makes sense right now is in the house of God.” So that’s where I went. I volunteered to help set up a Christmas gift-giving event.

I remember standing there organizing presents into categories. I could see my hands moving and my feet walking. It was as if my body had arrived, but my heart and mind were still trying to catch up with this unfamiliar reality.

I was foggy, grieving, and exhausted. And yet, somewhere deep inside I knew something… If I kept serving, I’d stay steady.

Not because service fixed my circumstances.

But because serving gave my pain somewhere to go.

Romans 12:21 says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” So that’s what I did. I traded my pain for goodness.

Strangely enough, my surrender looked a lot like serving.

I began helping with my parents’ work and ministry.

I worked a few days each week at a friend’s store. I led worship and I showed up, for my gospel community, for my parents and for my kids. This wasn’t busy work.

These were intentional decisions to live instead of languish.

As I participated in one thing, God illuminated the next.

Worship led to friendships. Friendships encouraged boldness. Boldness opened new opportunities.

This thread of surrender had tassels. And I grabbed hold of them wherever I could find them.

For a long time, I wondered whether I could have surrendered better. More gracefully, peacefully and faithfully.

Until one day it hit me. Wait. God honored the surrender of my tears too.

Every tear shed while trying to mother well, serve well, and keep moving forward.

Those tears weren’t evidence that I was failing at surrender. They were part of it!

I shed tears daily, but I also took steps forward in the directions He was pointing toward. . Looking back now, surrender was never one grand decision.

It was a thousand tiny choices. So you see, the thread of obedience got me moving. Surrender kept me moving.

Although that wasn’t what I thought surrender would look like, I continued to surrender as my humanity quivered. And somewhere in the serving, the grieving, the rebuilding, the worshipping, the mothering, the showing up, and the choosing to trust Him one day at a time, patience was quietly taking root.

Not the patience that waits calmly in a grocery store line. The deeper kind. The kind that learns to trust God’s character even when His timing feels mysterious, and his answers seem delayed.

My surrender and patience helped me open up enough to allow hope for a future—even if it wasn’t the future I had planned - to take root.

As I was reflecting on that realization, I suddenly remembered a scripture that perfectly describes what I was trying to put into words:

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
— Romans 5:3-4

There it was.

The very journey I had been tracing through these threads.

Suffering. Perseverance. Character. Hope.

And that’s where we’ll pick up next time.

Thread Three: Hope.

And the fruit of Joy.

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There’s always another thing: another project, another metric, another milestone, another late-night email answered just to prove commitment.

In high-performance cultures, accomplishment is rarely treated like a finish line. More often, it becomes proof that you can handle even more responsibility. If you’re good at performing, excellence eventually stops becoming what you do and starts becoming who you are.

In the Army, we institutionalize it with messaging like “Performance Matters.” On the surface, that makes perfect sense. Organizations need standards, accountability, and competent leaders. The danger comes when achievement becomes the primary source of identity and validation.

Sometimes the very systems designed to reward excellence create people who no longer know how to slow down.

The Dopamine Loop of Achievement

Most high performers don’t spend much time celebrating wins. They acknowledge the accomplishment briefly, then immediately move toward the next target: another award, another promotion, another “attaboy,” another impossible task to knock out the park.

The applause becomes fuel.

There’s also a biological component to it. Dopamine is often associated with pleasure, but it is more closely tied to anticipation, motivation, and reward-seeking behavior. The buildup before execution, the stress of the challenge, the rush of solving the problem, and the praise afterward can create a cycle that becomes addictive over time.

Eventually, some high performers become so conditioned to operating at full speed that peace itself feels uncomfortable. Rest starts feeling unproductive, and silence can feel like stagnation. That’s why vacations feel strange for some people, weekends create anxiety, and retirement becomes terrifying for others.

Without constant stimulation and achievement, many high performers experience symptoms that resemble withdrawal:

• Restlessness

• Irritability

• Anxiety

• Emotional numbness

• Difficulty connecting with family

• Feeling “lazy” while resting

Ironically, the same traits that drive exceptional performance can quietly erode emotional health if left unchecked.

The Cost Nobody Calculates

High performers often measure professional outcomes while ignoring personal deficits. You can dominate at work while becoming emotionally unavailable at home. You can provide financially while being absent mentally. You can achieve externally while deteriorating internally.

Organizations usually experience the best parts of high performers: execution, reliability, and composure under pressure. Families often experience what’s left over: exhaustion, distraction, irritability, and emotional distance.

A race car without brakes isn’t impressive for long.

High Performers Need Governors Too

Many leadership cultures focus almost entirely on acceleration:

• Produce more

• Move faster

• Execute harder

Healthy cultures, however, require both acceleration and regulation. Some people need a spark plug while others need a governor.

High performers especially need trusted people around them who can function as external speedometers…people willing to say, “You’re doing too much,” or “Your family needs you present, not just successful.” The challenge is that high performers are usually the last people to realize they’re burning out because many become highly skilled at functioning while depleted.

That’s why wise leaders don’t simply reward output. They monitor sustainability.

High Performance Isn’t Always Loud

When people picture a high performer, they often imagine someone charismatic, dominant, outgoing, and loud. But high performance doesn’t belong to one personality type.

I’m an introvert by nature with selectively extroverted tendencies. In professions like the military, introverts are often mistaken for lacking confidence or executive presence. That assumption is flawed.

Some introverts aren’t quiet because they lack confidence; they’re quiet because they don’t need constant external affirmation to validate their competence.

Sometimes the highest performer in the room is the calm thinker during chaos, the steady hand in crisis, or the person who doesn’t panic when everyone else does. High performance is not always loud.

So How Do You Balance It?

Not by abandoning ambition, but by realizing sustainable excellence requires rhythm rather than constant acceleration.

A few things help:

• Celebrate completion before chasing the next goal

• Separate identity from output

• Treat recovery like part of performance

• Protect family time like mission-critical time

• Keep people around you who tell you the truth

Eventually, every high performer faces the same question: What happens when the applause stops?

If identity is built entirely on achievement, silence becomes terrifying. But if life is built on faith, family, purpose, character, and service, you realize something important:

You were never meant to function like a machine. You are more than hardware.

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I didn’t know the last thing I would do before my life as I knew it unraveled was send my devotional manuscript to the printer.

I had no idea that moments later, I would walk into a situation that would alter the trajectory of my life so deeply that I would not touch that phone again for over a year.

And I certainly didn’t know that the Fruits of the Spirit devotional I had spent four years writing would become one of the very things that carried me through the wilderness that followed.

But perhaps that is how God works sometimes.

Quietly preparing us long before we realize survival will be required.

I think sometimes we wait too long to tell our stories. We wait until healing is complete, until the ending is clean and until the testimony sounds polished enough to inspire someone else.

But some stories are still trembling while they’re being told. I know this storyteller (me!) is trembling inside with each key stroke.

My name is Brittany Miles. I am a mother, educator, storyteller, and someone learning that testimony does not always arrive wrapped in clarity or clean and polished. Sometimes it arrives in whispered prayers through heartbreak, and in the fragile decision to keep walking when life no longer resembles the picture you once painted in your mind.

These writings will make up a series I’ve called…The Threads I Followed Through the Wilderness.

Threads of obedience.

Of surrender.

Of transition.

Of continuity.

Of redemption.

And woven through each of them: faith, prayer, motherhood, scripture, memory, hope, identity, and the slow, sacred work of becoming.

They aren’t abstract theological ideas packaged safely after survival, but the actual things I clung to while walking through the wilderness itself.

Just before leaving behind the life I had built for what would become over a year, I was finishing Growth Plan, a Fruits of the Spirit devotional I had worked on for nearly four years.

Side note before I continue: yes, I know this passage of scripture is traditionally referred to as the Fruit of the Spirit, singular, not Fruits, plural. The choice to intentionally frame it as Fruits was symbolic for me. A metaphorical depiction of how we would slowly break down and “ingest” each attribute one at a time, allowing every fruit to be individually explored, digested, practiced, and cultivated within our lives.

Okay… back to it.

Four years of writing. Four years of dreaming. Four years of curating and investing in graphics long before Canva was even a thing. Four years of slowly gathering the threads God had been weaving through my life to create the finished work:

The Growth Plan: A 9-Week Journey Through the Fruits of the Spirit.

And then suddenly, everything around me began to unravel.

What I did not realize at the time was that God was preparing me before the wilderness fully arrived.

At the beginning of that transition and heartbreak, while driving through my town with tear-streaked cheeks, I was listening to a woman on a podcast share her story of walking through heartbreak and rebuilding. In the middle of describing her unraveling, she explained that she had asked God what she should do next.

And His response was this:

“Make the last thing I had you doing in that season the first thing you do in this one.”

Hearing those words emotionally and spiritually stopped me in my tracks. I felt them deep inside, almost as if they were an instruction meant specifically for me.

And the last thing He had me doing… was completing that devotional.

That realization felt like marching orders.

No matter how tumultuous my external circumstances felt, I knew I needed to dig in and get a tangible draft completed. I even joined a mini online masterclass about getting your “thing” printed because something inside me knew I needed to move quickly and obediently.

When that instruction settled into my spirit, mixed with the deep knowing that a shift was coming, I spent the next two days preparing a sample draft to send to the printer. I edited. I formatted. I prepared pages I had poured years of my heart into.

And then, quite literally, the VERY last thing I did before standing up, walking out of my room, and stepping into a moment that would completely pivot the trajectory of my life… was send a message to the printing company.

I set my phone down.

Little did I know, I would not touch that phone again for over a year.

Almost as if the devotional itself had not been interrupted by the devastation… but had instead been preparation for surviving it.

What I thought was ending was, in many ways, training.

The pages I had written about peace suddenly had to become the peace I practiced.

The words I wrote about joy had to survive sorrow.

The lessons on patience, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control were no longer devotional concepts sitting safely on paper. They became the thread I followed through the wilderness itself.

And perhaps that is the beauty of the fruits of the Spirit.

Love.

Joy.

Peace.

Patience.

Kindness.

Gentleness.

Self-control.

These are not just devotional concepts meant for easy seasons of life. They are steadying things to become familiar with no matter what we find ourselves walking through.

And so, over the coming weeks, I would love for us to walk through this journey together. We will attune our hearts and minds to the attributes of the Spirit one thread at a time.

If you would like to begin the Growth Plan journey alongside me, you can visit The Fruits in Bloom Collective Facebook page below to learn how to get started and follow along through the accompanying video reflections and community discussions.

Link: Fruits in Bloom Collective Facebook page

Because this was only the first thread… if obedience was the thread that carried me into the wilderness… Then surrender along with patience (sometimes stated as longsuffering) was the thread that met me once I arrived there.

Thread Two: Surrender… coming soon!

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For a long time, I exhausted myself trying to fit into rooms where I never fully felt safe, seen, or understood. I kept thinking if I just worked harder, explained myself better, stayed quieter, achieved more, or made myself easier to accept…maybe I would finally feel like I belonged there.

And honestly? Sometimes the answer is not that something is wrong with you. Sometimes the table is wrong.

Neuroscience keeps showing us that rejection and exclusion are not small things to the brain or body. The nervous system processes social rejection through some of the SAME neuro pathways as physical pain.

For me, this manifests as:

• Overexplaining.

• Overperforming.

• Masking.

• Code-switching.

• Staying hyperaware of everyone else’s comfort.

• Shrinking myself to avoid being “too much.”

• Silencing parts of myself to stay accepted.

And the dangerous part is that, in the past, sometimes I confused proximity with belonging. Just because I am allowed in the room does not mean the room is healthy for me. Some tables only value what I produce. Some only tolerate edited versions of me. Some reward self-abandonment. Some have forced me to betray my convictions just to stay included.

I don’t want belonging that costs me my nervous system.

I want spaces where I can breathe.Where I don’t feel the need to perform. Where my body is not constantly bracing.

I’m learning that every opportunity is not alignment. Sometimes rejection is protection. Sometimes exclusion is redirection.

We were not designed to spend our whole lives begging for belonging.

We were designed for connection, yes, but healthy connection. Mutual connection. Honest connection. Spaces where we can be fully human and still fully loved.

My new goal is not to sit at every table. The goal is to find the ones where I do not have to abandon myself to stay seated.

We are always told, “Don’t forget where you came from.”

While that message is rooted in humility, it rarely addresses how to handle growth. It also suggests that if your thinking evolves beyond how you were raised, you risk becoming the odd one out.

The foundation built in your adolescence serves as your initial GPS for growth. The MapQuest directions you started with will not get you to a destination that requires Google Maps. If you used printed directions from 2002, you might still arrive, but what would you miss along the way? Roads change. Cities expand. Traffic patterns shift.

The cast you were molded from was meant to be a starting point, not a destination.

As we grow, our maps update. We learn alternate routes. We navigate around obstacles. We adjust for delays. We share our location. This is our natural inclination to break the mold, even when it is uncomfortable.

Change is constant, but tradition is comfortable. As a Southern-raised man, I know how strong that pull can be. There is a certain way things are done, and not much room to deviate. Many environments are built on compliance more than curiosity.

So what happens when that mold no longer fits your destination?

Some people never step off that track. Over time, they become their own roadblock.

We Are Meant to Be Reformed

We are meant to break molds, and sometimes to be reshaped entirely.

There are many things my current wisdom would redo from my younger years. My faith, my family, and my career have all shaped me into a different man. Still, some people only see the old version.

Scripture reminds us:

“But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred… so the potter formed it into another pot.” Jeremiah 18:3–4

Life will mar you. The question is whether those experiences define you or refine you.

You are not confined to your past. But you do have to accept that not everyone will respect your growth. Some people will always see you as who you were.

The Molds We Inherit and Repeat

The mold you lean into is often the one you replicate.

I see this clearly as I raise my children. I catch myself asking, “Why am I doing this?”

Is this what my child actually needs, or is it just what I know? Is there a better, more informed way?

We do the same thing in our careers.

We label molds as policy, SOPs, best practices, or “this is how we’ve always done it.” Before you know it, you are operating like a floppy disk in a cloud-based world.

In the Army, we often say we can add to doctrine but not take away. At its best, that mindset should push leaders to build on the past while shaping something better for the future.

Leadership requires the ability to re-sculpt. You have to adjust your approach based on the environment, the people, and the mission.

When Life Forces a New Mold

I thought having a second child would be easier. We already had our parenting mold, right?

Wrong.

We had a foundation, but the details were completely different. Each child requires a different approach.

Marriage works the same way.

The person you married years ago is not the same person today. Interests evolve. Priorities shift. Life changes. One of the biggest mistakes we make is trying to force a new version of someone into an old mold.

“Remember when you used to…”

“When did you start doing that?”

“You never liked that before…”

If you find yourself saying those things, recognize what is happening. The potter is still working.

The new version will not fit the old mold, and it is not supposed to.

The Danger of Staying the Same

Not every pot gets formed.

Pride and ego are two of the biggest disruptors of growth. They create an environment where accountability and coachability disappear.

We dress it up as “standing our ground” or “sticking to our guns,” but the truth is simpler. We are choosing comfort over growth.

You have to embrace new techniques, new perspectives, and new ways of thinking. If you do, you will be surprised by what you can create.

Like any work of art, not everyone will appreciate your evolution. Your new mold will not be for everyone. But that is the point.

Beauty has always been in the eye of the beholder.

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I was 29 years old when my first husband passed away. He was 30. It wasn’t a quick loss. Since meeting him when I was 14 years old, I felt like I watched him slowly slip away from me little by little.

I grew up in the church. In fact, it’s where I met him. Youth group, choir, “Holy Ghost parties…” he was an integral part of my adolescent years. When he died, it felt like the carpet was pulled out from under me, and with it, my identity. I was angry. I was angry at him, and I was angry at God. I mean, life was hard enough, and now I was a 30-year-old widow. I spent a good part of my youth acting as his caregiver, and I had nothing to show for it…no husband, no career, no children, nothing.

Frankly, this was probably the time I was the most honest with God. Growing up as a “church kid,” you learn how to pray a certain way — the fancy words, the poetic cadences, memorized Scriptures, moans — but in this season of my life, none of that seemed to matter. It felt empty, and I was desperate to be rescued from the despair I was encountering.

Feeling like my prayers were hitting the ceiling and catapulting back down over my head like cracked eggs, I decided I needed a “faith break.” It was time to go out and find ME. Since I spent the better part of my youth doing what I felt was the right thing to honor my late husband and God, I decided it was time to explore the things I never had a chance to. If you knew me during this season, you know it got messy and risky, and if I’m honest, pretty exhilarating. I won’t bore you with the details…I’ll save that for another post. But I definitely had my loved ones biting their nails, worrying about me.

What started off as rebellion turned into a beautiful love story of encounter. I was taught that God is so holy you leave Him behind when you partake in unclean things, so imagine my surprise to be running away from my faith and seeing Him chase after me.

One of the places I visited often during this season of my life was New Orleans, LA — or NOLA, as we call it. I lived in Canada at the time, but I would find ways to escape to NOLA more times than I care to admit. If you’ve ever experienced Bourbon St., you’d know how wild it is. Though it has its hallmarks of debauchery, it’s also full of beautiful culture, history, diversity. I loved it — the musty smell, the people, the drinks…especially the drinks. It was a good escape.

On one of the nights we were there partying, we ended up in a hole-in-the-wall strip club. And when I say “hole-in-the-wall,” I mean it. From Bourbon St., you could barely see it. These types of adventures were not uncommon for me back then. After all, I left my faith and my grief in Canada — or so I thought.

This time was different, though.

As soon as I walked in, I felt uncomfortable. I just chalked it up to the libations (Grenades, anyone!). There was a woman on stage dancing while our group was laughing, drinking, and having a good time. Despite my many attempts to ignore this gut-wrenching feeling that something wasn’t right, I just couldn’t shake it. As the woman was dancing, I couldn’t stop staring at her — don’t get me wrong, she was beautiful, but my eyes couldn’t stop seeing her sadness. Deep sadness. I could identify it because I know it well…I felt it, too.

And that’s when it happened. The Holy Spirit showed up and spoke to me. Can you imagine thinking you’ve thrown your faith to the wind, and God shows up uninvited to remind you that He sees you…but not just you — the half-naked woman on the stage, too?

The Holy Spirit ministered to my soul that night right there in the strip club. So much so that it was one of the initial sparks that led me to become a therapist, my marketplace ministry, and why I can share it today.

I left the strip club changed that night. Not immediately, but gradually. Then, I don’t think I had the capacity to fully unpack what happened. God in the strip club? Nope, that didn’t track with my version of Christianity at the time. God is with me, but only as long as I’m “acting right.” It didn’t compute.

It’s funny because the Scriptures are filled with stories of God running after His children… but our brains are wired to see threat, not pursuit.

We scan for danger, not love. We remember pain more than provision. We brace for abandonment…even when we’re being chased by grace. That’s why His pursuit can feel unfamiliar…even unnoticeable…even uncomfortable.

In Matthew 18, Jesus talks about the Good Shepherd leaving the 99 sheep to find the one that was lost. I’ve heard this passage preached every which way but loose growing up, but I never heard many people talk about where the one lost sheep may have been. A cave, maybe?

On that night, Jesus didn’t go after His long-lost sheep in a cave. He met me in a strip club. How scandalous is that? Not the altar, not Sunday School, not a prayer meeting…but a STRIP CLUB.

As I continue to unpack that time in my life with the Lord through therapy, it’s becoming quite clear that God does not run from our pain but into the fire with us. He’s not scared of the mud — He conquered it.

That night in the strip club reframed everything I thought I knew about God.

He wasn’t waiting for me to clean myself up. God wasn’t standing at a distance with His arms crossed, disappointed. He wasn’t confined to church walls or “holy” moments. He came for me. Right in the middle of my grief. Right in the middle of my anger. Right in the middle of my running. And not just me…He saw her, too.

The God I thought I had to perform for…was actually pursuing me. The God I thought I left behind…never left me. So now, I read those Scriptures differently.

God doesn’t just leave the 99. He steps into the places we think disqualify us. He walks straight into the mess, the confusion, the rebellion…the chaos…and calls us by name.

Not to shame us. Not to expose us. But to bring us home. And if He met me there…in a rinky-dink strip club, in my grief, in my anger…there’s no place He won’t go to find you.

This is a collaborative space. If you want to be a contributor, we would love to chat with you about it. Subscribe & send us an email at info@iamwellwoven.com!

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that routine saves lives.

Not just in the Army…at home too. When our first kid was born, we became almost obsessive about it. Bath time at seven.

Dinner together when I’m not working late. Saturday mornings daddy cooks breakfast. Small things, but they mattered. They still do. Our oldest doesn’t fully understand why we do half of it, but she knows when something’s off. Kids that age are more perceptive than we give them credit for.

And after nearly two decades in uniform, I can tell you…a man without structure is a man without a foundation. I’ve seen it in Soldiers and I’ve seen it in fathers. Same result either way.

So, I believe in routine. I’ve built my family and career around it. But I’ve also learned that routine has a cost.

For the most part, it gives structure to our days and predictability to our lives. And it creates a rhythm we can rely on. A quiet assurance of what comes next. And in a world that often feels chaotic, that kind of predictability is powerful.

For a man leading his family, routine is more than convenience, it’s responsibility.

Your wife and your children should be able to depend on you. They should feel the consistency of your presence, your leadership, your protection. There’s an unspoken confidence that forms when a family knows: “Daddy’s got us.” And in that confidence, there is peace.

But here’s what we don’t talk about enough: The cost of it all.

Because life doesn’t remain predictable. Challenges come. Pressure builds. Circumstances shift. And suddenly, the very routine that once created stability now becomes a standard you’re expected to uphold no matter what.

That’s where the weight sets in.

You’ve built trust. You’ve established consistency. Now you must deliver, even when life doesn’t go according to plan.

And it won’t.

Scripture reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We all have moments where we miss the mark. The question isn’t if you’ll fall short, it’s: Who do you become when you do?

What version of you shows up when the plan breaks? What tone do you set in your home when things go wrong? What temperature do you create in moments of stress?

Because your family doesn’t just experience your routine, they experience your response.

Consistency, discipline, and grace are the currencies that sustain a healthy routine.

• Consistency builds trust

• Discipline sustains performance

• Grace repairs what inevitably break

Without grace, routine becomes pressure. Without discipline, it becomes chaos. And without consistency, it becomes meaningless.

In the Army, we don’t just call it routine, we call it a battle rhythm. In garrison, a strong battle rhythm brings order and predictability. It aligns teams, clarifies expectations, and keeps operations running smoothly.

However, in combat, we must disrupt the rhythm. If you stay predictable, you become vulnerable.

So you adapt. You adjust. You change tempo to stay effective in a dynamic environment.

Life requires that same awareness.

Not every season of life is the same. Some seasons are peacetime, where consistency and structure are exactly what your family needs. Other seasons are war, where flexibility, resilience, and adaptation become essential.

The mistake many of us make is trying to apply the same routine to every season.

But strong leaders at home and in uniform must understand this: You don’t abandon routine. You adapt your battle rhythm.

With that, I find that routine is a gift but it’s also a responsibility. It creates peace, but it also creates expectation. So the real question isn’t just whether you have a routine…

It’s this: Do you have the awareness to adjust it when life demands it and the character to lead well when it breaks?

Because in the end, your family, your Soldiers, or your team won’t remember your perfect routine. They’ll remember how you showed up when it wasn’t.

We’ve all heard it, whether whispered in a church pew or shouted across social media:

“You don’t need therapy. You just need to pray.”

Or its cousin:

“You just need more faith.”

Let’s pause there.

Needing help doesn’t mean your faith is weak… it means you’re human. God didn’t design us to do life alone. Even Moses had Aaron. David had Jonathan. Jesus had twelve.

Therapy offers a sacred space to process the parts of life that can’t be fixed with a social media quote or a Sunday sermon. It’s where you can unpack grief, explore trauma, set boundaries, and discover how your story is still unfolding…with God right in the middle of it.

Sometimes we treat faith like a bypass around suffering, as if being spiritual exempts us from sadness, anxiety, or burnout. But Scripture shows us something different.

Elijah was so depressed he asked God to take his life. Job lost everything and sat in silence for days. Jesus Himself wept and sweat blood in the Garden.

Faith isn’t about pretending things are okay. It’s about trusting God even when they’re not. And therapy can help you walk through those “even when” moments with tools, truth, and support that align with your values.

What Faith-Informed Therapy Isn’t

Let’s clear up a few misconceptions:

• It’s not Bible-thumping or behavior-policing.

• It’s not someone lecturing you on how to be a “better Christian.”

• It’s not a replacement for church, prayer, community, or your relationship with Christ.

Faith-informed therapy is simply this: a space where your beliefs are respected, your spiritual questions are welcome, and your healing is approached holistically from a Kingdom persoective — body, mind, and soul.

So, can you talk to God and a therapist? Absolutely.

In fact, a therapy session can be used to create space to hear from God with a trusted ally.

Matthew 18:20 says wherever two or three people come together in Jesus’ name, He is with them. It doesn’t say “two or three… unless it’s therapy.” Somewhere along the way, we decided Jesus belongs in sanctuaries but not in sessions.

But if His presence is tied to people gathering in His name, then He shows up wherever that happens. Even there. Especially in vulnerable spaces like therapy.

While prayer changes things, therapy helps you process them. While faith gives you hope, therapy offers you the skills and accountability to be steadfast in the healing.

God can heal your body. But if your habits don’t change, you won’t know how to carry the healing. A miracle isn’t meant to replace stewardship. This is where therapy can help.

Prayer and therapy can work together…with a therapist who lives and honors Kingdom values.

Looking for values-informed therapy that aligns with your faith and worldview? WellWoven Integrative Care would love to walk with you. Call us at 502-430-1404 or email us at info@iamwellwoven.com

I used to be really good at cutting people off. Like… really good. Oftentimes, no explanation. No second chances. I just stopped engaging.

If something felt off, if I felt hurt, misunderstood, or uncomfortable, I was out. I was stayed polite, but disengaged emotionally. And if I’m honest, I wore it like a badge of honor. It felt like strength. Like self-respect. Like I had “boundaries.”

But healing has a way of shifting how you see things. And, boy, have I shifted on this. Because what nobody told me is this: Sometimes cutting people off is not always boundaries. Sometimes it is avoidance. And avoidance has teeth.

As I’ve done my own work, both personally and professionally, I’ve had to sit with something uncomfortable.

The times I cut people off were not always about protecting my peace. I was protecting myself from discomfort, vulnerability, and the possibility of having to repair something. Cutting people off meant I never had to say “Hey, that hurt me.”

It meant I did not have to sit in awkward conversations or work through misunderstandings. It meant I did not have to risk being disappointed again.

But it also meant I never gave relationships a real chance to grow. And that part is harder to admit. Somewhere along the way, everything became “toxic.”

And to be clear, some relationships are unhealthy, unsafe, and harmful. Those absolutely require distance or ending the relationship. But if we are honest, sometimes we use the word “toxic” a little too quickly.

Sometimes what we are experiencing is miscommunication, emotional immaturity, unmet expectations, different personalities, our own past traumas or triggers, or simple discomfort. And discomfort is not always danger.

When cutting people off becomes the default, we can miss out on things we actually need in order to build healthy relationships — especially the beauty of being fully known, not just in our easy moments. Not always, but sometimes.

Over time, this can quietly lead to something we do not always expect. Isolation. Not the peaceful kind of solitude we talk about on social media, but the kind where relationships feel short-lived, fragile, or hard to maintain.

One of the biggest shifts in my life has been learning about repair. And honestly, teaching it. In the work I do with individuals and couples, I see this all the time. People are not struggling because conflict exists. They are struggling because they do not know what to do after something goes wrong. Repair is what happens after the rupture. And rupture is normal.

Repair sounds like:

“I didn’t realize that hurt you. Can we talk about it?”

“I see how I showed up, and I want to do better.”

“That was not my intention, but I understand the impact.”

“Can we try again?”

It is not always clean. It is not always comfortable. But it is where trust is actually built. Not in perfection, but in how we come back to each other. Without repair, even good relationships fall apart.

Even as a therapist, I am not writing this as someone who gets it right each time. I am human.

I am writing this as someone who is continuously rejecting the instinct to immediately leave the moment when something feels off without being curious, speaking up, and working through things when it is safe to do so. And I challenge my clients to do the same.

I have had to grieve some relationships I cut off too quickly. Relationships that, looking back, might have been really meaningful if I had the skills I have now.

That is a hard realization. But it is an honest one.

This is not a message to stay in situations that are harmful, unsafe, or abusive.

There are absolutely times when the healthiest thing you can do is walk away.

Discernment matters.

There are ways you can learn to tell to tell the difference between when to repair and when to let something go, because that line can feel really blurry. I’ll post some resources about that soon…stay tuned.

If this is something you are navigating

If you are in a situation where you feel unsafe, overwhelmed, or unsure, please do not navigate that alone.

Some resources:

• National Domestic Violence Hotline (U.S.): 1-800-799-7233

• 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988

• Or reaching out to a trusted friend, therapist, or local support. Feel free to reach out to us if you’re looking for therapy or coaching support.

Boundaries matter. But so does connection.

And if every relationship ends the moment it gets uncomfortable, it might not be peace you’re protecting…it might be our capacity to stay, be known, and build something real.

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