Holy Chuckles

I left the Ark with answers to questions I didn’t even know I had, only to find myself in a White Castle drive-thru receiving wisdom I definitely didn’t order. And somehow those tiny little burgers sent me down a whole damn rabbit hole about truth, God, who I am, and how much of my life I’ve spent letting other people tell me things I should have gone to the source for myself. The road kept doing what the road had...

I thought I was heading to Kentucky to see the Ark. Instead, I kept meeting little pieces of light along the way. A woman at a coffee window whose energy lifted mine. A man on a bus who told me half his life after I simply asked, “How are you?” And one enormous boat that reminded me I am not behind, I am not late, and I do not have to rush what God is still building in me. Because some things take time. Some things aren...

I thought I was planning a road trip.

Turns out I was packing a whole damn suitcase full of old patterns and taking them with me.

Control. Performance. Procrastination. Fear. Irritation.

They all showed up somewhere between a Rand McNally, a Kentucky license plate, a coffee angel, a Cracker Barrel roach, and a hotel shower that apparently required WD-40 and pliers.

But this trip taught me something important: just because an old pa...

For the first time in my life, I gave myself one of the best birthday presents a gal could ever receive: a birthday road trip.

A road trip leading nowhere but to myself.

I stayed on back roads and discovered places I never would have seen from the highway. And somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t just discovering towns and people. I was discovering little pieces of myself too.

I cast myself in a Criminal Minds episode...

Holy Chuckles is officially ONE YEAR OLD.

And somehow, so am I.

Okay, fine. I'm 51. 😂

A year ago, my life looked completely different. I had quit my job, started talking into a microphone, and was somewhere between trusting what I felt God asking me to do and looking around for the nearest set of padded walls.

And now, one year later, I can finally see what was happening.

I wasn't just st...

Apparently waiting for me this week was a half-man, half-fish who looks NOTHING like Jason Momoa, a Russian boxing ring, a conference room full of executives I didn't know I had hired, and a childhood Monopoly problem that suddenly made a lot more sense.

Sounds about right. 

This week, one word sent me somewhere I wasn't expecting:

Provision.

Because I have spent a lot of time learnin...

My moving day was supposed to be the beginning of a brand-new chapter for me.

Instead, my apartment wasn't ready, the movers weren't moving, the temperature inside my Lyft driver's Tesla was 100 and hell, and when I finally tried to escape by watching a show, the remote decided it didn't want to remote.

And somehow, in the middle of all this chaos, my new friend Ichabod decided to show bac...

Imagine showing up in this world and immediately being handed everyone’s patterns.

Patterns you didn't create. Patterns you didn't choose. Patterns that were already here before you were.

Welcome to the family. 😂

The more I looked at the things I was born into, the more I realized how easily someone else's story can start feeling like my identity.

There were things I learned to beli...

Phinehas, your wife is pregnant.

Why are you on the battlefield?

I couldn't stop asking that question.

Until I realized I wasn't just looking at Phinehas.

I was looking in a mirror.

I knew what it was like to run into battles that weren't mine. To perform so I could feel important. To ignore what was actually mine to carry while getting accolades for my “heroic” efforts somewhe...

I've spent a lot of my life looking for who was responsible.

Who hurt me. Who taught me wrong. Who led me somewhere I didn't want to go. Who made me feel like I wasn't enough.

But I'm done needing a villain.

Not because no one hurt me. Not because everything that happened was my fault. And not because I'm pretending the past didn't happen.

Because I don't need someone else to be guilty for...

For a long time, I thought healing meant waiting for my circumstances to change.

But this week I realized something completely different.

Sometimes God doesn't encourage us by changing what's happening around us.

Sometimes God encourages us by letting us see how much we've changed.

A simple dinner at a restaurant became an unexpected reminder that kindness doesn't mean silence, growth isn'...

Have you ever found yourself in a place you never wanted to be?

I thought the hardest part was the place itself.

What I didn't realize was that the real battle wasn't where I was living...it was what was happening inside of me.

This week I discovered that sometimes God doesn't change our circumstances first.

Sometimes the invitation is to let our hearts change while we're still living in t...

This week I realized my growth and healing most of the time makes me uncomfortable. Then I realized when I am uncomfortable, I start reaching for things outside of myself. Sometimes it's food, sometimes it's fixing other people's problems, sometimes it is trying to control the outcome instead of sitting in the stillness of the growth to actually listen and grow.

The more I reflected, the more I realized that the battles I could see...

For months, I've been living inside a system that no longer matched who I was becoming.

Everything around me felt chaotic.

Plans changed.

People changed.

The timeline changed.

In the past, I would've spent all my energy trying to fix the chaos around me.

This time...I did something different.

I stayed focused on what was mine to do.

I packed.

I trusted.

I listened.

I kept moving forward.

A...

For the last nine months, I thought I was studying the story of Samuel.

I wasn't.

Somehow, a little boy from an ancient story was quietly helping me understand my own.

Over the last few weeks, something inside me finally shifted.

I realized I had built an entire life around being needed.

Fixing.

Performing.

Rescuing.

Carrying burdens that were never mine.

Not because anyone asked me to...

...

What if God wasn't creating the consequence? What if God was simply revealing where the path was already leading?

For most of my life, I thought life was just life—sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes somewhere in between. I understood consequences, but only when it came to doing something wrong. If I did bad things, bad things would happen. If I was good, good things would happen.

But reading 1 Samuel 3:12-13 challen...

While living in 1 Samuel 3:10-11 this week, I heard a story about a little boy playing a video game who said, "I don't like being this big because I can't see myself."

That simple statement connected to something God had already been showing me.

Samuel's job wasn't to do something. His job was to listen.

In this episode, I explore li...