Embracing the Journey

State of My Heart: Calmer, grateful, and beginning to see something changing.

Today’s Reading

Genesis 26–27
Matthew 8

Today marks one full week.

Seven days since I decided to start reading the Bible again – not simply to finish it, but to pay attention.

Seven days of reading.

Writing.

Questioning.

Praying.

Noticing.

And today, I realized something has already started to change.

The Fear Was Gone This Morning

Yesterday was heavy.

I woke up with anxiety that seemed determined to stay with me all day. Nothing terrible had happened, but my brain kept trying to convince me something would.

I prayed.

I redirected.

I spent time with my family.

I wrote.

And when I finished writing last night, I felt better.

This morning, I woke up and realized that underlying anxiety was gone.

I didn’t immediately start wondering what would happen at work.

I didn’t try to predict the day.

I just started doing the little things I’ve been practicing.

Reset my thoughts.

Pray.

Thank God.

Repeat.

When work began, I tried to approach it the same way.

There are still people around me carrying enormous uncertainty right now. Some are afraid. Some are losing their jobs. Some don’t know what comes next.

I can’t fix all of that.

But I can pray for the strength to be steady for the people who aren’t able to feel steady right now.

Last night, I specifically prayed for the strength to lead and guide my team through this uncertainty.

Serving others keeps coming back to me.

And that makes sense.

Because that has always been my heart.

Throughout the day, whenever fear tried to creep in, the thought was almost simple:

Breathe.

Stay with the process.

Have faith.

Nothing was magically solved.

But by the end of the day, there were some positive updates.

And I was grateful.

Fear Has Been Here From the Beginning

Then I opened Genesis.

And there it was again.

Fear.

Isaac becomes afraid because of Rebekah’s beauty and tells the men around him that she is his sister rather than his wife.

Immediately, I thought of Abraham.

His father had done essentially the same thing.

Different generation.

Same fear.

Same human instinct to protect ourselves by taking control.

Then there were the wells.

Isaac’s servants reopened the wells Abraham had dug before him.

That image stayed with me.

There are patterns we inherit.

Some worth returning to.

Others worth breaking.

And Genesis 27 gave me another example.

Rebekah wanted Jacob to receive Isaac’s blessing, so she created a plan. Jacob participated in the deception, disguised himself as Esau, and lied to his father.

Again:

Uncertainty.

Fear.

Human intervention.

Trying to control the outcome.

Yet somehow, through all of these incredibly imperfect people, God’s larger story continued.

That may be one of the most comforting things I’ve learned this week.

God doesn’t only work through people who get everything right.

He works through human beings.

Fearful ones.

Impatient ones.

Confused ones.

People who sometimes trust Him beautifully and sometimes make an absolute mess of things.

People like us.

Fear or Faith?

I think that’s something I want to keep watching as I continue reading.

What do people do when they don’t know what’s going to happen?

Because I’m noticing two responses again and again.

Fear says:

Do something.

Control this.

Protect yourself.

Figure it out now.

Faith seems to say something very different:

Wait.

Listen.

Trust.

Take the next right step.

That doesn’t mean doing nothing.

I’m learning that distinction too.

There are things I can do regarding my current situation.

I can research.

I can reach out.

I can advocate.

I can support people.

I can prepare.

But there’s a difference between taking a faithful next step and desperately trying to manipulate an outcome because I’m terrified of what will happen if I don’t.

I want to learn that difference.

And Then Jesus Got Into the Boat

Matthew 8 brought me straight back to something I’ve been trying to find my way toward for years.

Jesus and His disciples are crossing the lake when a furious storm develops.

The disciples are terrified.

Jesus is sleeping.

They wake Him, convinced they’re going to die.

Jesus asks them:

“Why are you afraid, you of little faith?”

Then He gets up and calms the storm.

And everything becomes still.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that image.

Chaos everywhere.

Waves crashing.

People panicking.

And Jesus was there the entire time.

The disciples’ fear didn’t mean Jesus had abandoned the boat.

The storm didn’t mean they were alone.

They just couldn’t see past the storm.

Something I Remember From 18 Years Ago

My relationship with God didn’t really begin when I was a child.

I grew up Catholic. We went to church on Sundays and holidays. I believed in God.

But believing God existed and actually knowing Him became two very different things for me.

That changed about eighteen years ago, during one of the most difficult periods of my life.

One day, while I was at church, a woman from a visiting church approached me.

She said something I’ll never forget:

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

She gave me some Scripture pamphlets and a bookmark.

I didn’t understand exactly what she meant.

But something about that encounter stayed with me.

From that point forward, I wanted to know God.

Not simply what I’d been told about Him.

I wanted to understand for myself.

And when that relationship became real to me, I remember experiencing something that I have spent years wanting to find my way back to.

Freedom.

My circumstances weren’t suddenly easy.

In fact, I was living through one of the hardest seasons of my life.

But the worldly fears that had once felt enormous suddenly didn’t seem quite as powerful.

I remember thinking:

If I truly believe I’m saved… what am I so afraid of?

Life continued.

I changed.

There were seasons when I stayed incredibly close to God and others when I drifted away.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve always remembered how that freedom felt.

I’ve always wanted to find my way back there.

Today, Jesus sleeping while the storm raged around Him made me remember it.

Maybe I’m Not Trying to Go Back

And now I’m wondering something.

Maybe I’m not supposed to recreate exactly what I felt eighteen years ago.

Maybe I’m supposed to understand it differently now.

I have eighteen more years of life behind me.

More love.

More loss.

More mistakes.

More responsibility.

More people depending on me.

More reasons to be afraid.

Maybe faith at this stage of my life isn’t about never feeling fear again.

Maybe it’s about recognizing fear sooner and remembering where to take it.

And that brings me back to the biggest thing I’ve noticed after one week.

I interrupt fear faster.

But I think something else may be happening too.

Maybe I’m beginning to rewire the way I respond to fear.

Yesterday is a perfect example.

I spent much of the day with this underlying feeling that something bad was coming. My brain kept trying to convince me that today – the beginning of another work week – would bring whatever it was I was afraid of.

Then today came.

And when I woke up, the anxiety was gone.

The thing I had spent yesterday preparing myself emotionally for didn’t happen—at least not in the way I had feared.

And I think it’s important that I don’t just move past that.

I need to remember it.

I need to reconnect those dots for myself:

Do you see what happened?

Yesterday your fear told you a story about tomorrow.

Then tomorrow came.

And the story wasn’t true.

That immediately brought me back to something I had just read in Matthew 6:

“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

Maybe this is part of learning to stay in the day I’m actually living instead of continually suffering through imagined versions of days that haven’t happened yet.

The fearful thoughts will probably still come.

But now I have another experience to bring back to them.

Another reminder.

Another opportunity to pause and say:

We’ve done this before.

Stay here.

Today is enough.

Maybe that’s part of what I’ve been trying to find my way back to all these years.

Not a life without storms.

A life where I remember Who is in the boat.

One Week of Noticing

Seven days ago, I started this because something inside me told me to write.

The next morning, my world at work changed.

Since then, I’ve read about temptation.

Guidance.

Waiting.

Promises.

Kindness.

Grief.

Fear.

Faith.

And somehow, every day’s reading has given me something to carry into whatever that day held.

I don’t know what happens tomorrow.

I certainly don’t know what happens with my job.

But tonight, one week into this journey, I know something I didn’t fully recognize seven days ago:

My circumstances haven’t changed very much.

But the way I’m responding to them already has.

And there’s one more connection I don’t want to lose.

Earlier today, while I was learning more about how the Bible itself came together, I came across a thought that stopped me:

God reveals Himself over time, and people respond one faithful step at a time – even when they cannot yet see the whole picture.

Something about that opened my eyes.

Maybe that’s it.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been experiencing without having the words for it.

I’ve spent so much of my life wanting to understand the whole picture.

What does this mean?

Where is this going?

Why did this happen?

What happens next?

But maybe spiritual growth doesn’t work that way.

Maybe God doesn’t hand us the entire picture.

Maybe life continues revealing lessons as we’re ready to understand them.

We experience something.

We learn.

We grow.

Years later, we look backward and suddenly understand something differently because we’re different.

And then we take another step.

Maybe that’s why reading these same Scriptures years later feels completely different.

The words haven’t changed.

I have.

And perhaps as I continue growing in faith, I’ll keep seeing things I simply wasn’t able to see before.

One faithful step at a time.

I can’t see the whole picture right now.

Especially in this season.

But maybe I don’t need to.

Maybe I just need enough faith for the next step.

And maybe that’s the beginning of what I came here looking for.

Questions I’m Leaving With

When uncertainty comes, am I taking a faithful next step – or trying to control an outcome because I’m afraid?

Which patterns from the people before me are worth reopening like Isaac’s wells, and which ones am I being called to break?

Can I learn to trust God’s presence even while the storm is still happening?

When fear tells me a story about tomorrow, can I remember all the times tomorrow arrived and that story wasn’t true?

And if God really does reveal Himself over time, what might I see differently after another week, another year, or another eighteen years of learning to notice?

Today’s Takeaway

Faith doesn’t mean there won’t be storms.

Maybe it’s learning that I don’t have to let the storm inside me become louder than the God I believe is still in the boat.

And when I can’t see the whole picture, maybe I don’t need to.

Maybe I just need enough faith for the next step.

Until next time… keep noticing.