One of the hardest things for writers is talking about themselves.

We can write our stories, but when it comes to talking about who we are on the inside, it’s like we have no idea what to say. It usually takes an outside perspective to articulate what we know but maybe never explored.

I had the privilege of that this morning.

One of my precious writers restacked one of my articles with a Note.

I was so curious about what she meant when she said, “still kept the wonder.” It led us on an incredible journey to study what the word “wonder” means. (It’s also the theme of the ladies’ event I’m speaking at on November 27. God and His perfect timing, hey?)

[It’ll be worth your time to check out Kimberly’s work here: ]

Here’s what I’ve learned about Biblical wonder so far:

• Wonders demonstrate God’s presence in humanity. They are called “wonders” because they stir awe, curiosity, and hope in us.

• Wonder isn’t something we can demand or force. It’s a gift that arrives unexpectedly and is most often an answer to prayer.

• Wonder is not always comfortable. It has a mysterious edge that stretches our faith.

And of course, because this is how God does things, the word Wonder fits perfectly to describe what happened with this publication in October.

So on October 8, I announced that I was transitioning from a Substack writer to offering my services as a writing coach. I’ve been meeting with God for months about how I could help Christian women called to write their stories but scared.

It’s an area I know far too well. It's hard to tell those stories when, as a child, you were drilled on keeping family secrets. But God’s desire is always redemption—He calls us back to His original design for our lives and invites us to use our pain to help others heal. Becoming a writing coach for such a specific group is redemption in action.

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The Unexpected Events that Invoked Wonder!!!

After I published that announcement, there was a lot of work to do. I knew what God was asking, but I didn’t really have an exact plan. It was more like, “Wait until He gives you instructions.”

And then one day He did.

He gave me the words for this Note:

I’ve never received so much interest in something I posted in a Note or article.

The day I posted that, I was fluctuating between 184 and 187 free subscribers. I would lose two, gain one. All of a sudden, new subscribers were far outpacing unsubscribers.

That Note is still going strong:

But it is far less about the stats than the comments I’ve received from women who are exactly who I’m called to help. Women I have been praying for for months.

The need was great. But I knew subscribers would only get so much help from me in the weekly free article.

So I started a campaign offering 10 women a free one-month trial. The offer will stand on the last Thursday of each month. Paid subscribers are invited to a women-only community chat and receive a weekly writing assignment to help them move from fear to first draft.

All ten spots were filled by Sunday evening.

We’ve been sharing our stories, making new friends, and checking out each other’s work. Monday morning, the group received their first writing assignment.

And this is where the wonder comes in.

I didn't expect this to speed up so fast. Well, okay, maybe I did. Before I left for holidays, God told me, “Rest now because things will be very different when you get back.” He was right; Substack is now my full-time job.

But I for sure didn’t expect how much the group would pour into each other. So many conversations are happening in there, all without my prompting. It's been edifying for me, too.

Yes, the number growth is incredible: at the time of writing this, I have 278 subscribers. I averaged 185 for months.

But it’s the stories. You’d have to be a cold fish not to be overwhelmed by the wonder of God’s goodness when you read what each woman in that community has overcome.

Each one is so unique, too. There are stories of persecution, danger, trauma, heartbreak, abuse, loss…

And yet every one of them shows up on Substack, writing!

Answering their call from a Holy, Wonderful God who adores us and wants us to be healed and free—to thumb our noses at evil by telling our stories so someone still sitting in the dark can be brought to the light. Through our words.

Come on!!!!

And then there’s the wonder of realizing that God has not only allowed me to read about these women’s journeys, but He’s giving me the privilege of helping them get from fear to first draft.

I’m no one special; I’m just someone who's been there and never gave up hope. Even in my darkest moments, I held onto the feeling that things would someday be better. My only part to play in His calling as a writing coach is to obey.

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What I Need From You

There are 278+ of you now, and I know this publication still isn't for everyone. Many of you came as devotional readers, and that’s wonderful. I appreciate all of you. I hope you can still get something out of the posts.

Also, quite a few men subscribe. You’ve probably realized that this is a space dedicated to Christian women, but we’re still glad you are here. You’re still welcome to read the free posts. I won’t assume by any stretch of the imagination that you don’t have stories you are afraid to tell. The free post can help.

But even though I can’t let you into the community chat, you can still do something meaningful.

I’d love your help funding one-month trial memberships for women who feel called to write but need a gentle, supported first step. I want to keep offering them for as long as I can.

If you would like to help me continue, I have set up a page on Buy Me a Coffee. You can head over there to choose a way to support women called to tell their stories but who need help getting started.

If you are a reader and not looking for a writing coach but still want to support this work, please also head over to Buy Me a Coffee.

Your support would allow me to keep serving the women God is bringing to me.

With heaps of gratitude,

Crystal

First, welcome to all the ladies who have joined the community this week. I am humbled and joyful that so many of you are here.

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I undid my friend.

She is struggling with the same thing I was a few months ago: believing she is worthy of love. Like me, she was taught she has to earn love.

I asked her this question about her husband:

Me: If your daughter made a huge mistake, would her dad love her any less?
Her: Of course not.
Me: Does she have to earn his love, or does he love her merely because she exists?
Her: “Merely because she exists…” Well. Now I have to sit with that and wrap my head around it.

This is a hard one for us girls who had to constantly work for any kind of positive interaction from our parents. We are the kids who left home certain we were unworthy of love. Not because we actually are unworthy, but because our parents' consistent harmful actions led us to that conclusion.

The legacy that my parents left me was fear, shame, self-doubt, and a mind wired to be on constant alert for the next bad thing. Everything could fall apart at any second. Rejection was always just around the corner. Their cruel words still haunt my thoughts 35 years after I ran away from home at age seventeen.

Every woman I talk to with this childhood says one feeling follows them around: fear of being seen.

It lies to us and leaves us believing that since we aren’t worthy of our parents’ love, we can’t possibly be worthy of God’s love.

And if we don’t believe we are worthy of God’s love, how could we ever be worthy enough to be used by Him—to write, to help others, to set the captives free?

There are two things I want to encourage you with today:

1. Grace has made you worthy to be loved.

2. So you don't need to earn anything to start writing.

Let’s talk more about each.

If you grew up believing love has to be earned, you might also believe that your calling has to be earned.

It’s like writing is a reward for being “good enough” in God’s eyes.

But it isn’t.

Your calling to write is a gift God entrusted to you to use for His purpose: to find healing for yourself so others can be helped through that healing.

You don’t have to earn the right to use that gift.

But you also can’t hide from it.

Fear convinces us we have to wait until we’re ready, that silence is safer, and that we have to prove ourselves before we speak. Oh, how each of those lies makes me feel just sick.

But here’s the thing: God already knows that you are struggling in this area; He’s not surprised either.

He was there when you were growing up and being taught that you could never earn love. And He never holds your feelings or negative self-thoughts against you.

But He does want you to heal from the hurt.

He’s been with you through the pain; now He wants to walk with you through the healing.

God asks for our obedience in our writing because He has a plan for your words.

He sees you, but He also sees the woman still walking through her pain and needing one of those lightbulb moments—one that will come from your words—that will start her healing journey.

Your obedience to God’s call will bring you freedom that you can’t even imagine right now, but it will also set your readers free.

Please don’t let the weight of that scare you, though.

You absolutely do not have to do this alone.

I started a writer’s community for women who know it’s time to step into obedience to God’s call but still feel a lurch in their stomach every time they think about what to write.

If you would like to try out the community for free for a month, leave me a message. This offer is for the first 10 women who message me.

I’ve put it behind a paywall so I can monitor who is in there. It is open to women only. You're welcome to introduce yourself or just hang out and observe.

Inside, you will find other writers ready to obey God’s call. We pray together, write scared together and celebrate every small step of obedience, no matter how wobbly. With your free trial, you'll also get weekly tools to help you overcome the fear holding you back.

So leave me a message, and let’s get you into the community.

, I can teach you how to write without getting sued by your family. But there’s something more important that has to happen first.

Let’s talk about it.

Have you ever read something or heard someone say something and suddenly a lightbulb goes off? Lightbulbs are those unexpected moments when your mind suddenly understands a new truth.

They’re transformational, aren’t they?

My lightbulb moment came when I heard, “She didn’t know that she doesn’t have to let her mother treat her that way.” My husband was talking about a friend.

Me: “She doesn’t?”
Him (after a long pause): “Wait, do you think you have to let your mom hurt you?”

That was the beginning of many late-night conversations. As a child, it was drilled into me not to question what was happening at home. If you did, there were consequences, ones that left you filled with shame. I was nearly 40 when I finally admitted out loud that what happened at home was wrong. It’s taken me another decade to work through every memory that randomly pops into my head—always at the worst times and always bathed in negative self-talk.

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And it’s been painful work—the enemy had control of me through painful memories and wasn’t going to let me heal from them that easily. Even with counselling, there was a residual fear that I couldn’t shake.

But then I heard something else that made me so sick and so angry that I decided I was done being afraid. One of my younger siblings told me about physical abuse they had endured until they finally ran away from home at 15 years old.

The lightbulb that went off this time was this: how could this person, who was supposed to love her children more than anyone else in the world, purposely choose to destroy them?

I was so angry. But it was a righteous anger. The same anger Jesus had when He flipped the tables over in Matthew 21:12-17. A grave injustice had been committed, preventing the people from worshipping God. Jesus had every right to be angry.

And so did I. A grave injustice had been committed against me and my siblings that has left each of us to struggle deeply to trust God, never mind having a proper Father-child relationship with Him.

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That was the day I stopped seeing our mother as someone with power and control over me. Her actions forced her children to be unable to be in contact with her physically, and now I had distanced myself mentally and spiritually.

That was also when I stopped being scared to write about my childhood.

A quick word of caution:

I want you to pause before you start writing down details—not because you need to be afraid, but because we have to be careful about why and how we are sharing these stories. You can do it without starting new fires, especially for siblings or other family members affected by the events. It’s more than changing names and blending events so you can deny in court that the book is about specific people.

By the way, it is highly unlikely that unhealthy family members would even go that far. They don’t want the truth exposed. They don’t want to have to face harm they caused, especially when they can’t deny it. It’s also very unlikely they will even read your book, so anything they say about your motives for writing your memoir is an attempt to regain the control over you that they have clearly lost.

Also, it’s much better to start writing once we’ve entered into healing with God than from a place where the hurt is still a raw, gaping wound. That way, we own the stories. We get to tell others about God’s grace toward us and take the limelight off our abusers (I will get into this more in future posts).

However, this post isn’t meant to teach you how to write in a way that won’t land you in court. It’s meant to say something that will hopefully make a lightbulb go off.

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Do this instead:

I want you to get to the point where you are no longer afraid to tell your stories because you no longer care about what toxic family members say or do.

I know, I know, you’re like, “Say what?” I can feel your insides wrestling right now.

But I promise, it is possible. With God’s help, I have done exactly that. But not by becoming cold or callused. Forgiving them is still required. Praying for them is still a command from God, so is renewing our minds and taking every thought captive.

What I’m going to teach you to do instead is to start replacing every ingrained lie with God’s truth about who you are in Christ. Because when you start to understand who He—the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts, your God, your Saviour, your Abba, He who loves you beyond measure—says you are, you will experience a transformation in how you see yourself, your life, and your story that you never dreamed possible.

Pardon my language here; I don’t know how else to say this, but I want you to start seeing what you went through as a child for what it was: bullsh*t. No child should have to beg for love. Not when the God of the Universe decided before we were even conceived that He wanted us and loved us.

My darling writer, here’s why I want to get you to that point: Because I know that once you do, nothing will be able to stop you ever again. You will answer God’s call to write, and tens of thousands of hurting women will have their own lightbulb moments because of your words. It’s time, .

And you know what? You don’t have to do this alone.

God is building a community of women called to write who are desperate to walk in His healing and freedom. I’ve put the Chat behind the safety of the paywall so I can monitor who's in there and what’s being said. I’ve kept the membership fee low, so everyone who wants to be there can be.

It’s a place where we can make new friends, share our publications, and pray for each other as we heal (without worrying about mansplainers or romance scams).

Plus, when you upgrade, you will receive a new fear-busting tool in your inbox each week that will take you from fear to first draft. That’s 52 steps closer to being courageous and ready to publish.

Upgrade now and let’s get you into the community!

Love always,

Crystal

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Have questions? Shoot me a message:

Feel free to invite other Substack writers to this publication:

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Hi , thanks for stopping in. Can I tell you something about writing that took me a long time to figure out?

Most of us aren’t stuck because we don’t know how to write our story.

We’re stuck because we haven’t faced it yet.

A young man that my husband and I mentored once asked me how he could write a book about his life. Travis was one of my biggest cheerleaders when he heard that I was writing my first book, and I was more than happy to help him start his.

So, I did what most first-time authors do when someone says they wish they could write. I gave him a copy of the massive binder full of how-to-write-a-book information I had gathered over the years. It was a 3” binder filled with articles I had printed from the best writing gurus and workbooks from writing courses I never finished. I photocopied it all for him, including the handwritten notes in the margins of everything I thought I would someday use.

Travis never did write a book.

In those days, I honestly thought I was being helpful. But I got it wrong.

He didn’t need to know how to write a book. At least not yet.

What he needed was help sorting through his pain so he could find the courage to tell his story. Sorting through our pain is holy work, but it is tender work too, and tender work is hard to do alone.

I wrote my first book before I’d worked through my own pain, and it showed. I wish I had someone in my corner when I was struggling with what to say (and not say) and how to say it—someone who had been there and knew that good writing doesn’t start with perfect grammar and polished paragraphs.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have asked Travis to tell me one story from his life. And I would have helped him figure out what he would say to someone in the middle of what he was going through.

That’s where the first draft starts.

By facing one story at a time, we can see them through the lens of someone who needs the lessons we learned. That’s what Paul meant when he wrote that God comforts us so we can comfort others.

Your story isn’t just yours.

It’s comfort waiting to be passed on.

Maybe you’re a lot like Travis, .

You’ve felt the nudge to write for years, but every time you sit down, the fear gets there first.

You don’t need more instructions on how to write. You need a safe place to bring your story to God, with women walking beside you who know exactly how that fear feels.

Join our community of Christian women called to write but too scared to start. Subscribe today, and let’s take the first brave step together.

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With so much love and grace,

Crystal

Hey , here’s a bit more on how I can help you:

Hi . I’m so glad you found your way here.

Tell me if this is you: You’ve known for years that you have a way with words. And yet something has been blocking you from putting them in the public eye.

Or maybe you’ve already started publishing as a Substack writer, but something still holds you back from saying what you want to.

If this is you, that’s okay; you are exactly where you need to be. And if you are ready, I’m here to walk with you.

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Let me tell you about the first book I published.

It was a guarded tell-all about my childhood trauma, how trauma affects us, and how I used journaling to come to terms with a lot of it. It turned out to be a tell-nothing, though, because no one read it. Or if they did, no one told me whether they liked it or not.

Except one lady. She read the book and cried the entire time. For the first time, she finally understood why her best friend of 30+ was the way she was: why she sometimes went silent, why she was furiously defensive about how she raised her own children, why she was forced to cut ties with certain family members.

Even though it didn’t go far, I’m glad I published it. But I tell you, the moment I got the email that the book was live on Amazon, I had a full-on panic attack. My mind was racing with What have I done? What if my family reads it? What if they come after me? What if my friends read it and never speak to me again?

Publishing online for the first time was almost as dramatic. Those first negative comments were like a punch in the gut. I really had to work with God not to take even the most visceral comments to heart.

I’ve learned so much in the last six years since setting out as a full-time writer. Mostly, I’ve learned that it is hard. Really, really hard. Not only because you have to sift through the many voices out there telling you the “right” way to do it, but because writing online is so utterly vulnerable. You are literally airing your dirty laundry so strangers can tell you how filthy it is.

Even as I write that, I wonder if it is even worth it.

But then I remember that two women strengthened their friendship because my words made sense of a broken, hurt-filled childhood. I’m sure someone else out there found comfort in my first, not-so-great attempt at publishing. Maybe someone was even inspired to take their pain to God and start working through it.

And that’s why I’ve worked so hard to overcome my fear of publishing online.

Somewhere in the world, a young woman is in the middle of what I have overcome. She’s hurting. She’s confused. She sees no way out. My heart breaks for her. But I also know that my story could help her in so many ways.

And , so can yours.

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How Writing Helps Us Heal

Do you remember the part of Joseph’s story when he finally confronts his brothers about what they did to him? Nowhere in the story do we see revenge, bitterness, or him shutting down.

Joseph tells them, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

Joseph isn’t saying that what happened to him was okay. He was betrayed, sold, and deeply wronged. He names the evil honestly. But he also shows that the enemy doesn’t get the final word.

God takes what was meant to break us and, without calling it good, brings good out of it.

The painful parts of your life may be the very places that God wants to bring light, recognition, freedom, or comfort to someone else. Not because the pain was good, but because God is good enough to redeem it.

And the way Joseph handled his brothers matters too. He confronted the truth of their actions and clearly named their intent: “you intended to harm me.”

It had to be done to restore the relationship, but also to highlight how God moved in Joseph’s story. Not facing the hard stuff doesn’t bring healing. Telling the truth about what happened is part of what God can use.

Joseph also spoke from a healed perspective. He had lived long enough with God to see that the story was bigger than the harm. He could recognize that God had been at work even in the years that made no sense. That’s such an important word for us as writers: most times God is not asking you to write from the middle of raw pain, but from the place where He has started to show you what He is doing with it.

Healing begins when we learn to see our story from God’s perspective and are willing to understand how it shaped us into someone God can use for the Kingdom.

In other words, we heal when we let God use our story as part of someone else’s healing.

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So where do we go from here?

We face our fears together.

I know that sounds scary, and I can feel your insides wrestling right now. That’s exactly where I was when I started this journey six years ago. I had huge issues that resulted from my childhood, and in the beginning, I didn’t want to face them. I just wanted Jesus to take all the hurt away so I could be normal and not live in constant fear.

But our loving God, our Abba, loves us too much to just wave His hand over us and make us all better. I’ll talk more about why the healing process takes so long in future posts. But for now, I’ll promise you that it is worth it.

Hey, even the fact that I now call the Father Abba shows how much He has healed my heart. I went from struggling to think of God as Father because of the hurt I endured from two earthly fathers to accidentally calling Him Dad one day. (He pointed it out to me right away, too. He was like, “You just called me Dad.” I tried not to make a big deal of it, and said, “Yeah, I know.”)

And , I so badly want you to feel this joy and freedom too, no matter what your struggles look like. I’m not pretending I have it all together. I still have so much to work through, but I think part of the good God wants to bring from the bad things that happened to me is why He has called me to coach other women writers.

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My Coaching Offer

I want to walk with you as you move from everything that holds you back from answering your calling to getting your story onto paper (or screen, of course).

My program is actually called From Fear to First Draft. It is the culmination of everything I have learned over six years of building a writing career. But it also includes lessons I picked up during my healing journey. I was 29 years old when the ability to keep the pain bottled up inside left me. That was also when I surrendered my life to Jesus as my Lord and Saviour—He obviously had something to do with it.

Here’s what is included and how you can get the most out of the offer:

1. You can subscribe to this publication for free. You will receive a short article in your inbox each week that will inspire you to continue your healing journey with God.

2. Next, please join the community being hosted in the Chat room called Writer’s Community with Crystal. This is a space for Christian women to connect, pray for each other, cheer each other on, or just quietly observe. Starting October 15, the community will be placed behind the safety of the paywall. I will monitor who is in the group and won’t allow anyone who is a detriment to the group to enter. This is only $15 each month, or you can pay for the full year at a 75% discount.

3. Once you are a paying member, you will receive weekly coaching. This will arrive in your inbox on Monday mornings and include tools to support you on your journey. Most of the time, it will be an activity you can complete in 10 minutes. Sometimes it will be a book recommendation or another longer read. Once a week, I will post the activity in the chat as a discussion starter.

4. As I write this, I am working on an entire course for From Fear to First Draft. But I decided to do something fun with it. Instead of creating slides and downloads that get lost on our devices, I’m putting the entire course into a printed journal. We writers love a pen and paper, amen? I will let everyone know as soon as this is available to purchase.

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Here’s what you won’t receive from this program:

You won’t see more advice on how to write. I’m not an online guru peddling a course that makes me rich that you’ll buy and never complete. I’ve always hated that game, and it’s one I will never play. That isn’t what God has called me to as a writing coach.

The calling God gave me as a coach came right out of Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,^[a]
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
³ and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.”

God has broken my heart for the women who are still captive to the things I was: self-doubt, wondering whether I was worthy to be loved, acting out of fear of more rejection and abandonment, living in constant fear of losing everything good in my life; the list goes on.

But I know healing comes, and , I want the same for you.

Let’s work together for that crown of beauty instead of ashes, for the oil of joy instead of mourning. The garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair is glorious, and it’s going to look so good on you!!! Just think, , you will be called an oak of righteousness, a planting of the Lord, your writing a display of His splendour!

Start Here:

1. Become a subscriber…

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2. Join the Writer’s Community with Crystal…

3. Share this with other women who are called to write but feel like something is holding them back…

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P.S. If you’ve been carrying a story you’ve never dared to write down, message me and tell me one sentence about it. I’d be honoured to pray over it with you.

So last month, I shared that I would be transitioning from a Substack writer to offering my services as a writing coach.

Then I disappeared for three weeks on a much-needed rest. And it was even better than I imagined.

My daughter’s wedding went smoothly, despite the dismal weather at the beginning of the week. She had her dream outdoor wedding in Oma and Opa’s backyard overlooking a cornfield (so Saskatchewan) and the Bay of Fundy (so east coast). The day was warm, with enough cloud cover that no one was squinting in the photos.

The rest of the time was filled with spending quality time together as a family. It was the first time all of us had been together in three years, so the time spent together was precious. We toured, played with our grandkids, ate lots of fish, slept in, and stared at the ocean.

Brian and I also had the chance to spend individual time with each of our adult children, listening to their hopes, dreams, worries, and where they are in their walks with the Lord.

Something I had hoped for, but didn’t get as much as I wanted, was time to talk to God about the future of my writing and what becoming a writing coach would look like. I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t write anything in the notebook I brought for this purpose.

And yet…

God must have been talking to me in the background, and I must have heard Him in my heart, because when I finally got home to my whiteboards, I knew exactly what was coming next—something I hadn’t been clear about before we left.

(Or maybe He was saving it for now because resting was the more important task last month.)

So now I’ll share with you what’s happening.

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What’s Changing

Here’s what you will notice in the coming weeks:

A new name at the top.

Starting next week, this publication will use my name, Crystal Garrett, with the tagline Writing Coach for Christian Women. Still me, but with a clearer picture of who I’m here to serve.

New sections to help you find what you need.

• Rewritten by Grace: This name means so much to me. It holds my testimony and everything God did in me before I ever became a coach. This section will hold my devotionals, personal reflections, and deeper dives into scripture. I won’t be adding new material to this section very often.

• From Fear to First Draft: This is where the coaching happens. It will be the container for practical lessons, encouragement, and guidance for women called to write but too scared, overwhelmed, or uncertain of how to start. I will post here 1X/week.

• From My Desk: This is where I will share any news, upcoming events, or updates involving the publication. I will post here 1X/month (unless something exciting is coming that you need to know about sooner).

My website is evolving too.

Journals by Crystal will soon be crystalgarrett.ca. Rather than a storefront for my prayer journals, it will be home to the tools I create to support you. In the coming weeks, I will be adding a full course for From Fear to First Draft, as well as any downloads that are created as I hear from the community on what you feel you need for your calling to write.

In other words, the website will be where you pick up your tools, but Substack will be the table where we sit down together and do the work.

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An Important Notice:

Here’s why:

Substack has limited options for where we can connect as a community. The Chat feature is the best option right now. We'll share practical tips, talk, give feedback on each other’s first drafts, and post prayer requests. It will also be where I post videos and voice messages meant only for the community.

But it needs to be a safe place, so it’ll be a closed group. That way I can monitor who is in there and what is being said. If the group grows too large to feel comfortable, I have ideas for where we can move while still keeping the friendships and support we'll build in the coming days.

Everyone will still be able to read posts and articles for free.

Introducing From Fear to First Draft

I’m so excited to share this with you.

From Fear to First Draft is my flagship program. But it’ll be very different from the writing advice you are used to seeing—and so will the format.

Instead of a digital product you download and forget, or a series of articles you can’t find again, it’ll be in a tangible form you can keep forever.

Along with the teachings here on Substack, I am creating a hardcover print version of the course. It will contain everything you need to go from being scared to put your writing out there to getting a solid first draft on paper.

In other words, it’s a full course you can hold in your hands. We all know writers love paper and pen!

I chose a hardcover format on purpose. I wanted a linen cover in just the right size. It will sit next to your Bible, enticing you to pick it up and meet with God—something you return to again and again.

It is also exclusive to my subscribers. It won’t be mass-produced on Amazon. It won’t be in bookstores. It will be a journey that we walk through together, one page at a time.

But just a warning.

This isn’t the typical technical advice on grammar, catchy headlines, when to post, when not to post, blah, blah, blah… that you find everywhere else.

Nope, this is much deeper.

We are going to get to the root of what’s keeping you from stepping into God’s call as a Kingdom Writer.

Inside, we’ll walk through six parts:

1. Naming the fear honestly and tracing it back to where it began

2. Learning that you were never meant to carry this alone

3. Catching the old lies one at a time and exchanging them for God’s truth

4. Discovering the voice God gave you before anyone taught you to hush it

5. Writing your first raw, private draft with God, then shaping it into something ready to serve your reader

6. Naming your calling so you don’t quit when it gets hard

The course journal will be available on my website soon. I will let you know in the Chat as soon as it arrives!!

Subscribe now

An Invitation to Stay

I know this new direction isn’t for everybody. If you want to unsubscribe, I understand, and I’m so grateful for the time we’ve shared.

But even if you aren’t a writer, I hope you’ll stay.

Because wherever you are in your journey with God, naming your fears, bringing them to God, and renewing your mind is work that sets hearts free.

And if you have felt that quiet pull to write? Oh, friend. This community is for you.

Isaiah 61:3 talks about God giving us beauty for ashes, and calling us oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendour.

I believe that’s what happens when a woman finally writes her story from a place of healing. Her words become shelter for someone else.

You don’t have to do this alone.
So pull up a chair. Stay a while. Let’s grow together.

Take a moment to bring this to God in prayer. Ask Him what He’s stirring in you, and listen for His answer.

I’ll be waiting right here.

With love and grace,

Crystal

P.S. If you’ve been carrying a story you’ve never dared to write down, message me and tell me one sentence about it. I’d be honoured to pray over it with you.

Over the past two weeks, I have gained sixteen new subscribers.

First, welcome, and thank you from the bottom of my heart.

This made me realize that I should do a quick check-in with everyone since I won’t be posting any new articles until October.

That feels like a really long time, especially when you are a writer and words are breath and sentences are life. But I have very important matters to tend to—my youngest child is getting married!!! I got my dress, hubby got a new suit, and the suitcases are almost packed. We leave Tuesday and won’t be home again until early October.

Here’s why we’re going away for so long (even if leaving my business for 3 weeks is making me twitch a little):

The last five years have worn us out like no other season in life. This past year was the worst of all five.

Somehow, as you do life, you miscalculate how exhausting it will be to care for aging parents, never mind ones with debilitating illnesses. No one warns you how crushing it is to lose one of them. It has been one year since we laid my father-in-law to rest. It still doesn’t feel real. And it’s still hard, even when you know that he is in heaven with His Saviour, reconnecting with loved ones he waited many years to see again.

So, we decided to take a full three-week sabbatical to catch our breath and to be fresh for the next season.

The break will also give me a chance to meet with God for a more specific reason.

A while back, I shared that the Lord has given me a calling on my life that I wasn’t expecting. I had been meeting with Him at my whiteboards, writing out ideas for future Substack posts, when I felt Him telling me that it was time to transition to a writing coach, not for a general audience, but for Christian women who are afraid to start.

At first, this took my breath away. Then, I laughed. Next, I questioned. For a moment, I doubted. But it makes sense. All God is asking me to do is help women start the journey that He has already walked with me through.

No big deal, right???

Yeah, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m slightly terrified. But we all know the saying that if it doesn’t scare you a little, it's probably not worth doing.

At first, when I planned to meet with God during our sabbatical, I knew I'd be asking Him for an extra measure of courage. I’ve been invited to speak at a ladies’ church event at the end of November. I have an idea of what I want to talk about, but my stomach still flips a little when I think about it. I also know live videos and podcasts need to be part of my coaching community. I’ll be needing an extra measure of the Lord’s grace to have the courage to do either.

But this morning, I realized I need to ask God for something even bigger.

I’ve been listening to Dan Romer on faith, leadership, and kingdom entrepreneurship. He has a take on Kingdom business with a depth I have never heard before. This week, I listened to him talking about breakthrough. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I have been praying for breakthrough in homeownership for 12 years.

So when I heard Dan say the following, it made me sit up and take notice:

Goodness! Had I heard that a few months ago, I would have felt conviction. Now, I have evidence that there is absolute truth behind that statement.

I don’t have my house yet, but since meeting with God at my whiteboards, there have been breakthroughs in so many other areas that I still have to pinch myself sometimes:

• I went from being scared to call God the Father anything except Father to now joyfully calling Him Abba.

• I can hear His voice more clearly than I ever have.

• His opinion about me is so clear now that I no longer doubt my value as His daughter and an ambassador of Christ.

• After six years of trying to do it on my own and spinning in circles, I have a clear blueprint for my writing.

• A promised move on the horizon.

• And so much more that I will share in the coming months.

Each of these revelations has added a new layer of confidence. I know so much more is coming, but even more important is how each arrived—by abiding.

When my kids were young, we would spend 10 wonderful days every summer at church camp. It was usually at the end of July. Every May, I would feel the Lord pressing on me to start working through an area of my mind that needed to be renewed (Romans 12:2). I would start right away, and by the end of camp, a false belief I had about myself had been broken off.

But this summer, I’m not looking for something to be broken off. This year, I’m looking for something to be added—another revelation, this time from a book I found in a thrift store:

“God is coming across heaven and earth for you….Ready to give you a righteous confidence.

Righteous confidence comes from abiding, deep assurance of God’s presence in your life. Being sure of His unwavering interest in your heart and family and endeavours. He goes ahead of you. He surrounds you with the fortress of His love. This kind of righteous confidence comes from spiritual maturity, and I like to think of spirtual maturity as dancing.

So my dear friend, no matter where life has you this day, lift up your weary head. Look into the eyes of your Father. Hear the music of His passionate love for you. When God is in the room, all the wall flowers get to dance…

Looking out from His arms, Angela.”

—When the Wallflowers Dance (Becoming a Woman of Righteous Confidence) by Angela Thomas

My dearest subscribers, I am ready to dance. I don’t need more courage; I need righteous confidence. I have been a wallflower for long enough. I’ve let past hurts keep me from stepping out onto the dance floor long enough.

So, I’m taking the book with me to dig deeper into what that means. I’m already seeing the fruits of learning to truly abide—to make it a discipline, never again an afterthought or a way to get myself out of yet another mess. And I already know that what I learn will become a critical component of the program that I’m building for you.

So, if you are also ready to dance, to look out from His arms, then start talking to God about what’s next. You already know He’s called you to write. I’ll show you how to let go of the fear and step out onto the dance floor.

Friend, I want to start by saying something I mean completely.

You don’t have to pretend you’re not tired.

If you’ve been carrying the weight of the past alongside the ordinary demands of today, and the fog still won’t quite lift, I see that. And I don’t want to rush you past it.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a slow breath. Let your shoulders drop.

Don’t try to fix anything just yet. Just notice what’s actually true for you right now, without judgment.

Ask yourself gently: Where am I feeling stuck today?

You might notice:

• a low, persistent tiredness that sleep doesn’t seem to touch

• a fog that makes it hard to feel present, hard to feel hope

• a sense of disappointment — with life, with how long healing is taking, with yourself

• a feeling that the past has its hands around your ankles, and you can’t quite get free of it

• a heaviness that comes from carrying things you never asked to carry

Just sit with it honestly.

You’re not behind. You’re not weak. You’re a person who has been through real things—and those things left real marks.

2. Realign

I want to come to Romans 8:28 with you carefully today, because this verse gets used in ways that can actually wound rather than console.

It is not saying that everything that happened to you was meant to happen.

It is not saying that your suffering was a divine appointment, or that pain was sent to teach you a lesson, or that what was done to you was somehow God’s plan all along.

Some of what you’ve been through happened because people—damaged, unhealed, broken people—made choices that affected you. That is simply true. And naming it plainly is not a lack of faith. It’s honesty.

So what is Paul saying here?

He is saying something quietly extraordinary.

He is saying that God—the God who is sovereign over every detail of creation, who wastes nothing and overlooks nothing—can take the hardships, the losses, the disappointments, the suffering, the thousand changes of life that no one would have chosen, and work them together for real good.

Not shallow, surface good. Spiritual and eternal good.
Not because the hard things were good. But because God is that good.

This is consolation. Not explanation.

God doesn’t stand at the door of your past and offer you reasons. He enters it with you. And slowly, tenderly, sometimes unexpectedly, He begins to gather what was broken and shape it into something that blesses you and others far beyond what you could have managed alone.

Think about that for a moment.

The very places that hurt you most—the experiences that formed those protective patterns in your mind, the memories your brain still works to keep you safe from—those are the places God can move through most powerfully.

Not because pain is good, but because redemption goes deepest where the wounds went deepest.

The story you’ve been living through? It can become the very thing that reaches another woman still standing in the middle of her own fog, wondering if she’ll ever get out. Your healing can carry healing. And in the giving of it, you are healed further still.

That is how grace works. Strangely and sweetly, in ways we didn’t expect and couldn’t have engineered.

You are not stuck. You are in process. And process, no matter how slow it feels, is movement.

The fog is not the end of your story. God is still in it with you.

3. Return

Let these anchors hold you today. Read them slowly, one at a time.

God can bring real good from this — not because it was good, but because He is.
I am not stuck. I am in the hands of a God who wastes nothing.
Grace can gather what was broken and turn it into something that heals.
The fog I’m walking through is not my destination. There is something beyond it.
My past does not have the final word. God does.
Healing is happening, even in the places I can’t yet see.

Come back to these as often as you need today.

Prayer

Father, I’ll be honest — some days the weight of the past feels heavier than the hope of what’s ahead. I’m tired. I’m trying to see through the fog. And sometimes I wonder if I’m making any progress at all. But Your Word says You work all things together for good — not that all things are good, but that You are working. Even this. Even the parts that were never Your will, the things that happened because someone else’s pain spilled over into my life. You can take all of it and turn it into something real, good, and lasting. I choose to trust that today, even when I can’t feel it. Keep working, Lord. I’m not going anywhere. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, God doesn’t explain away the hard things — He enters them with you, and He is faithful to gather every broken piece into grace that heals you and reaches others further than you know.

Friend, can I ask you something gently?

When you think about coming to God—really coming to Him, with the messy, complicated, ordinary things on your heart—do you hesitate?

Not because you don’t believe in Him. But because something deep inside you still isn’t sure you’re welcome.

I want to sit with you there today.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a slow breath and let yourself settle.

Don’t rush past this moment. Just notice what’s actually true right now, in the quiet.

Ask yourself honestly: What does coming to God feel like for me?

You might notice:

• a sense of unworthiness that makes you hold back before you’ve even begun

• a feeling that your prayers are too small, or too selfish, or too repetitive to bring to God again

• a habit of cleaning yourself up before you come to Him, as though He needs you to arrive presentable

• a fear, buried but real, that authority is unsafe; that asking for what you need might be met with dismissal or disappointment

• a distance between you and God that you didn’t choose but don’t know how to close

Just sit with whatever is honest.

Some of those feelings didn’t start with God. They started with people. With early lessons about authority that taught you that asking was dangerous, that needs were inconvenient, and that you had to earn the right to take up space in someone’s presence.

You carried those lessons forward. And without realizing it, you brought them into the room with God.

2. Realign

Here is what Ephesians 3:12 says, plainly and without condition.

In him and through faith in him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

Not after we’ve earned it. Not once we’ve sorted out our past. Not when we’ve finally stopped struggling with the same old fears.

Now. Through Jesus. With freedom and confidence.

The word boldness here is worth sitting with. It doesn’t mean rashness. It doesn’t mean charging into God’s presence carelessly. It means speaking out our minds plainly and freely, without grovelling, without fear. It means coming without hesitation.

And that access is only possible because of Jesus. He is the way in. Through His mediation, we have an audience with the Father—not just permission to speak, but full acceptance. Of our person and of what we bring.

Here’s something I want you to hear, because it matters:

The enemy knows that if he can keep your thoughts tied up in old sins, past failures, and the weight of your story, he can convince you that you’re too unworthy to pray, too far gone to ask, too broken to expect God to answer.

That is not humility. That is a lie dressed up as reverence.

God is holy, yes. But He has made a way for you to come close. That way is Jesus.

And the invitation is not cautious or reluctant—it is confident, warm, and wide open.

Now, if the image of a throne room feels far away, if it makes you feel small rather than welcomed, I want to offer you something.

Sometimes God meets us in the picture that actually helps us draw near.

Perhaps you could imagine this: a quiet room, lined with books. A fire burning low. Two chairs facing each other. And God sitting in one of them, leaning forward gently, His face soft and full of warmth. He’s not waiting to judge you. He’s not impatient. He’s already turned toward you before you’ve said a word.

That’s not too small a picture for a holy God. He is the one who stoops down to listen. He is the one who counts the hairs on your head and knows the thoughts you haven’t voiced yet. He is near in ways we don’t always have language for.

You can come to that room. You can sit down. You can speak plainly. You don’t have to be afraid that He’ll turn you away.

And if all you can manage today is, Lord, I don’t really know how to come to You—that is enough. That is a prayer. And He will meet you right there in the honesty of it.

3. Return

Let these anchors hold you today. Read each one slowly.

Jesus made a way for me to come close. That way is always open.
I don’t have to earn access to God. I already have it through Christ.
I can speak plainly and freely. He is not afraid of what I bring.
Fear does not have to be the thing that keeps me at a distance from my Father.
God is not like the authority figures who made me feel unwelcome. He leans in.
I can come without hesitating. I am already accepted.

You don’t have to stand at the door any longer. Come in.

Prayer

Father, I’ll be honest — coming to You doesn’t always feel easy. Something in me still hesitates. Still wonders whether I’m welcome, whether my prayers are worth Your time, whether I’ve done too much or not enough to deserve Your ear. But Your Word says I can come with freedom and confidence — not because I’ve earned it, but because Jesus made the way. So today, I’m choosing to come. However imperfectly, however quietly. I sit with You. I bring what I’ve been holding. And I trust that You are leaning in, that Your face is kind, and that nothing I carry is too much for You. Teach me to stop hesitating. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, you were given access to God, not one day when you’re good enough, but now, through Jesus, with all of your honest and unhesitating self.

Friend, I want to speak gently to the part of you that has been trying so hard.

The part that keeps believing that if you just had more faith, if you were a little better, a little less broken, a little further along, then perhaps healing would finally come. Then perhaps peace would stay. Then perhaps you’d feel like someone God could truly love without reservation.

If that sounds familiar, I want you to stay here with me today. Because what I have to say might quietly change everything.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a slow breath and let yourself simply settle.

You don’t have to perform anything right now. You don’t have to arrive here with the right feelings or the right words.

Just ask yourself honestly: Where am I still trying to earn something from God?

You might notice:

• a sense that healing is for people who are further along or more deserving than you

• a feeling of being unseen, as though no one—not even God—fully understands the story that brought you here

• a wall you’ve kept up for so long that it just feels like part of who you are

• a difficulty receiving love that seems too good and too unconditional to be real

• a quiet grief about the parts of yourself you’ve never felt safe enough to show anyone

Just notice. Without judgment.

You built those walls for good reason. They kept you safe when safety wasn’t guaranteed. That took courage, even when it looked like hiding.

2. Realign

Here is what I want you to hold today.

Ephesians 2:8–9 is one of the most quietly radical truths in all of Scripture. It says plainly that salvation is not earned. Not by goodness, not by effort, not even by faith itself—because faith is not a work you perform that God then rewards. Faith is simply this: casting your unworthy self onto the mercy of a kind and gracious God.

Not a strong, sorted, put-together self. An unworthy one.

And the word that drives it all is grace. God doesn’t only save “good” people. He saves sinners. Not because of what they have managed to produce in themselves, but because of His kindness—His freely given, completely undeserved, relentlessly pursuing kindness.

Verses 6 and 7 tell us that He raised us up with Christ so that through the ages to come, the world could see what His kindness towards us looks like. We are the demonstration of His grace. Not the recipients of grace once we’ve sorted ourselves out—the living, ongoing, unfinished proof that grace is real.

But here is the tender part I want you to sit with.

When you’ve been in survival mode for most of your life—when you learned early that you were the only one who could keep yourself safe, that the most vulnerable parts of you could only be protected by you—trusting even God with those places is hard. You built walls around your true self, the person He created you to be, because the world made that feel necessary.

And now, even when you want to let God in, part of you still hesitates. Not because you don’t believe in Him, but because trust that deep doesn’t come easily when life has taught you that vulnerability costs too much.

He knows that. And He is not offended by it.

Here’s what I want you to hear: surrender is not something you manufacture on your own. It is itself a gift. The very capacity to open your hands, to lower the walls, to say I can’t carry this anymore—that comes from Him too.

You don’t have to be strong enough to trust.
You just have to be honest enough to say you want to.

God wants your heart. Not your performance, not your perfect faith, not a version of you that has healed herself clean before coming to Him.

He wants the real you—the guarded you, the tired you, the part of you that still wonders whether His love actually reaches this far.

It does.

Grace can reach the parts you’ve kept hidden. It can find the walls you built to survive. And as you let Him in—slowly, tenderly, one honest prayer at a time—He will complete what He has already begun.

Not because you earned it. Because that is who He is.

3. Return

Let these anchors hold you today. Read each one slowly.

I don’t have to earn grace. It was given to me before I was ready for it.
God saves me not because I’m good enough, but because He is kind enough.
The walls I built were never meant to stay forever. I can let them come down with Him.
I am seen — not despite the parts I’ve guarded, but in them.
Surrender is a gift. I don’t have to produce it. I just have to be willing.
He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it.

You are not too hidden for grace to find. It already has.

Prayer

Father, I’ll be honest with You — receiving love this free and this unconditional is harder than it sounds. I’ve spent a long time keeping the most vulnerable parts of myself out of reach, even from You. Not because I didn’t believe You were good, but because I learned early that open hands get hurt. Today, I want to choose differently. I bring You the walls. I bring You the parts I’ve protected for so long. I bring You the story I’ve never fully surrendered. I trust that You are kind enough, patient enough, and powerful enough to reach what I’ve been hiding. Do what only You can do, Lord. Finish what You’ve started. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, you don’t have to earn your way into God’s healing. Grace was never waiting for you to be good enough — it was already reaching for the parts of you that you thought were too hidden, too guarded, too far gone.

Friend, I want to talk to you about something that doesn’t often get named.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes when you know the truth—genuinely know it—and still can’t seem to make it stick.

You read the Word. You pray.
You remind yourself of what God says.

And for a moment, you feel it. But then the old thought creeps back. The old fear resurfaces. And you’re left wondering whether something is wrong with you, whether you’re failing at healing, whether you’ll ever truly get there.

That quiet discouragement? I see it. And I want you to stay with me here, because I have something important to say to you today.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a slow breath and let yourself simply be present.

Don’t try to solve anything yet. Just notice what’s actually happening inside you right now.

Ask yourself gently: Where am I pulling back?

You might notice:

• a weariness that makes even prayer feel like effort

• a sense of spiritual dryness, as though the well has run low

• a fear that you’re not doing enough to get better—or that you’re doing it all wrong

• a frustration with yourself for already knowing the truth and still struggling to hold on to it

• a quiet temptation to shrink—to stop trying, stop hoping, stop expecting change

Name it honestly. There’s no shame in any of it.

In fact, the very fact that you’re still here, still reaching, still wanting to hold on, that tells me something: The Spirit in you has not given up, even when you feel like you have.

2. Realign

Here is the truth Paul writes to Timothy, and I want you to hear it slowly.

God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity.

Not you. Not any believer.

That shrinking, that dread, that impulse to pull back from the difficulty—it didn’t come from God. It’s most certainly not what the Holy Spirit produces in you.

What the Holy Spirit produces is power. Love. A sound mind.

The original language here is vivid. Power to fight—not just to endure passively, but to actively press forward in the battle.

Love that holds steady when fear would otherwise drive us to retreat.
And a sound mind—a composed, clear, self-controlled mind.
Not one controlled by old patterns, old wounds, or old fears.

But here is where I want to stay with you for a moment, because this is where so many women get discouraged.

The battle to heal your thought patterns—to replace old neural pathways with truth—is a real battle. It takes time. And it is not won by simply willing yourself into better thinking. You are human. That kind of self-powered change is not enough, and it was never meant to be.

So what do you do when you know the truth but can’t seem to hold on to it?

You stop trying to hold it in your own strength. And you bring yourself to the Word instead.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the Word of God is alive and active. It is sharper than any double-edged sword, reaching into the places we cannot reach ourselves.

That is not poetic language. It is a real description of real power.

When you open the Word and bring your tired, struggling mind to it—when you read it, believe it, and let it speak into the exact places that still need healing— something happens that you could not manufacture on your own.

The Word does what the Word does. It reaches. It changes. It heals.

You don’t have to make the truth stick. You have to keep coming back to the One who is the Truth, and let Him do what only He can do.

That is not passivity. That is courage.

It is the daily choice to show up and bring your mind under the living Word of God rather than shrink back into silence and hopelessness.

Healing is possible. I want you to hear that without any qualification.

God knows the way through. And He will show you.

You don’t have to have it all working perfectly today. You just have to not pull back.

3. Return

Let these anchors hold you today. Read them slowly, one at a time.

God did not give me a spirit of fear. I do not have to live like He did.
The Holy Spirit in me produces power — not shrinking, not dread, not defeat.
My healing does not depend on my effort alone. God’s Word carries its own power.
I can come back to the Word again today. That is enough. That is the fight.
A sound mind is what God has for me. I can trust Him to lead me there.

You are not failing. You are in the middle of a real battle. And the Spirit in you is not cowardice.

Prayer

Father, I’ll be honest — some days the truth feels like it slips right through my fingers. I know what You say. I want to believe it all the way down. But I’m tired, and sometimes the old thoughts feel louder than the new ones. Thank You that You didn’t give me a spirit of fear. Thank You that Your Spirit produces power, love, and a sound mind — even when I don’t feel it yet. Help me not to pull back. Help me to keep coming back to Your Word and trusting that it’s doing what I can’t do for myself. Bring healing to the places in my mind that are still learning what it means to be safe, loved, and whole. I trust You with the process. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, you don’t have to make the truth stick by sheer willpower — you just have to keep bringing your mind back to the living Word that has the power to do what you cannot.

Perhaps one of the hardest callings the Lord can place on someone’s life is to set the captives free. Well, I mean, we’re all called to set the captives free. We’re Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:18-20), and since that’s what He was here for (Luke 4:18), it’s a given that we would do the same.

But what if I’m someone who has been captive most of her life?

Even after salvation, my thoughts were stuck in a never-ending replay of what people did to me. Even after years of working on my “stuff,” the last few months have felt like a never-ending resurgence of lies and thoughts that I thought I had long dealt with.

Is it even possible for me to lead someone out of her strongholds when I seem to be trapped in my own?

But only this morning, the Holy Spirit directed my attention to a video where I learned that I’m not the only creative person feeling this way. I listened to a Christian artist/pastor describe my life for the past six years in his own experiences. His hindsight has brought me immense clarity. So, maybe there’s something more to what I’ve been feeling like has been a torturous holding place.

Six years ago, I graduated with my BA in English from a small Christian college. I was 45 years old when I didn’t get to walk across the stage (it was 2020, blah!). While my 20-some-year-old fellow grads were planning their careers, I was trying to find a way to work for myself so I could just stay home. The courses woke a sleeping giant inside of me—the one that wanted nothing more than to write words that would appear on the shelves of bookstores. So, the day after graduation, I set out to write my first book.

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But college doesn’t teach you how hard publishing will be.

None of the profs talked about literary agents, hybrid publishing models that will “work for you” as long as you keep topping up on their overpriced services, being forced to take demeaning jobs to pay the bills, or online platforms that flow with milk and honey until taken over by AI, bots, and scammers.

There’s something else the profs never warned us about: how utterly vulnerable writing is.

The first snippy comment I got wilted me like a flower. It was on a well-written, articulate piece I had written from the heart. The comments really hurt—enough that I thought about giving up completely.

But I soldiered on, determined to become a published author, and decided on self-publishing. After months of research on the effects of childhood trauma on neural pathways and journaling to heal negative thinking, I published my very first book. It was an autobiography of sorts. I thought that by telling my story, I could help some poor young women out there find the healing I had found in God.

Holding my words in my hands in the form of a book was a feeling like nothing else. I started telling everyone I knew about this incredible feat I had accomplished. I felt so proud and so brave. But I also felt deeply exposed.

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Do you want to know what’s even worse than snide comments? When numerous of your friends, coworkers, and family members buy your first book and not a single one ever mentions it again. Only one admitted that they hadn’t actually read it. My own household hasn’t even read it. If the book stank, no one had the heart to tell me.

But from that same book, a reader’s best friend said that she finally understood the woman she had known since childhood. She cried the entire time she read it out of grief for what her best friend had endured. So, I continued, but this time sticking to safe, surface-level topics.

I started publishing how-tos and fluff pieces on Medium, carefully avoiding any “religious” talk lest I get shadow-banned. I had just started earning a good income there when Medium changed its CEO. With him came new rules, an algorithm that seemed to favour a subset of writers, and widespread accusations of AI use. Top names that were earning $100K/year were now making less than a dollar a month. Brilliant minds started leaving Medium in droves, and many ended up here on Substack. After the exodus, all that was left were scammers running the top-ranking articles through AI and republishing them as their own. The pay-to-write model had its day but was unsustainable in the long term.

With the exodus came a new wave of writers who tried to stick it out on Medium by writing about Substack. That’s how I ended up over here. I got convinced by publications that Substack was the new gold rush.

My first publication was “Life in Writing: A Journey Into Making Money Online.” It didn’t last long. I couldn’t figure out how to make any money online. I tried print-on-demand, KDP, and affiliate marketing—all lessons in what not to do. It honestly felt like the only writers making money online are those teaching desperate writers how to make money online.

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Eventually, I got a job in a small marketing department as a copywriter. I was so excited—clearly the only thing standing between me and success was that I knew absolutely nothing about marketing. I quickly discovered that copywriting will quickly devour the creative writer’s soul. But not only was I bored out of my mind, but God’s call was getting LOUDER and LOUDER.

I wrote about that outcome for this guest post for Just One More Chapter. You can read about it here, if you want to hear more details:

Just One More Chapter

The Power Of Story When We Go From Drifting To Trusting

Today’s guest, Crystal Garrett, shares not only her moving testimony of how God anchored her during a season of distance, but pairs it with a powerful practical application that personally impacted my heart and my home. After reading Crystal’s initial submission, I felt like I had discovered hidden treasure. Not only had she unearthed intimacy with the Heavenly Father…

Read more

5 months ago · 9 likes · 5 comments · Megan J. Conner and Crystal Garrett

Long story short, I published my first book and then walked away from it. No marketing, no meet and greets planned, no ads made, just crickets. Then I walked away from writing about God as well.

And why?

I wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable with the world.

So I did everything I could to avoid what I knew God was asking of me: to help women heal from the same hurt I was carrying. If you read the story above, you’ll see the drastic measures He took to get my attention again.

And so began Rewritten by Grace.

My first few articles are lumpy. I wasn’t sure what to write about or how to write it. In my attempts to make some money online, I published a few prayer journals. (I’m currently remaking them. They were rushed, I had just quit my job, so I was desperate, and the designs sucked—hey, all part of learning to trust God.)

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Then, in November 2025, I felt God telling me to work through one of the journals. I thought, “Sure, I can take pictures, it’ll be good for marketing.”

Well, I wasn’t expecting to become completely undone.

Every day, as I dug into the passage, learned from commentaries, and did word studies, my mind was blown away by what I was learning. It was like being in Bible college again. It was rich and deep, and my heart was returning to God. I was only a few days in when I realized that this was too special not to share. So, I turned it into a Lent devotional and posted it in March 2026.

[I’ve converted it to a print version if you are interested: The Heart of It All.]

Posting a daily devotional really helped me find my rhythm as a writer again. The topics were already decided, and it forced me to show up every day for my readers instead of hiding behind excuses. To my delight, the devotionals were well received. I even had a lady from my church come and tell me how much they were helping her. It was a layer of confidence that I needed.

Two more devotionals came after that, both from the prayer journals: My Identity in Christ and the current posts for The Daily Renewal. And they’ve been good.

While preparing for My Identity in Christ, I came across a YouTube video on renewing our minds. It was a reminder of the richness that I had published in that first book, and I longed to pick up the topic again. From there came The Daily Renewal, a deep dive on how to stop negative thoughts, the cruel self-talk, and the lies we were trained from childhood to believe about ourselves. But once again, I got ahead of God and put it behind a paywall in hopes of earning some income.

[You can take a look—as of today’s post, I have taken the paywall off all of them.]

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And that leads me to what I never thought would happen:

God is now calling me to teach Christian women how to write.

However, (big however) it’s not what you’re thinking:

1. You already have good grammar.

2. You already have a story.

3. If you are on Substack, you definitely have the platform and a ready-and-waiting audience.

Rather than teaching you what everyone else on the internet is teaching, I think it's going to look more like taking you on the journey I’ve been on for the past six years—letting you know that I see everything you are going through right now, and offering you hope and encouragement to stay the course.

It is my hope that my hindsight will be what you need to get through your struggles and still answer God’s calling on your life to write in a way that heals you, worships Him, and helps others.

I’m still working out what this will look like. God has been doing a huge work in me these past six years, and I feel like I’m on the edge of what will become my life’s work.

Just to let you know, I will be taking all of July to work out the details with God. I’m receiving input from the Holy Spirit and people He has led me to at a rapid-fire pace. Most days, it’s like trying to drink from a firehose.

So, my time on Substack will be limited to once a week (or when I can make it), and I’ll try to keep you in the loop with what I’m learning. I’m hoping to have a plan in place for the restructuring in August, with a probable launch at the beginning of October.

For now, I will say that I am excited. Something new is coming, and without a shadow of doubt, I know that if God is in it, it’s going to be good.

If you have any questions, please message me:

“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honour him.” —Psalm 91:14–15

Friend, can I sit with you for a moment?

Not to fix anything. Not to rush you somewhere better. Just to be here with you, in the exact place where you’re struggling to catch hold of peace and wondering whether true joy is something that will ever really belong to you.

Maybe you’ve been carrying a quiet sense that you’re not quite worthy of it. That peace is for other people — people who haven’t made the choices you made, who haven’t thought the things you’ve thought, who haven’t needed quite so much rescuing. And maybe, underneath all of that, there’s a gentle ache that asks: will I ever really feel okay?

I want to stay in that question with you today, rather than talk you out of it.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a slow breath. Let your body settle if it can.

Bring your attention gently inward, without judgment.

Ask yourself honestly: What does peace feel like to me right now?

You might notice:

• that peace feels just out of reach, like something you briefly touch and then lose

• a low hum of unworthiness that makes it hard to believe you deserve rest

• a tiredness from trying to hold yourself together by sheer effort

• a longing for joy that feels almost too fragile to name out loud

Just sit with whatever is true.

You’re not behind. You’re not too far gone. You’re simply here—and here is exactly where God meets us.

2. Realign

Here is what I want to gently offer you today, from Psalm 91:14–15:

God doesn’t protect just those who have perfectly maintained their peace. He protects those who have set their love upon Him.

That word—love—is the hinge the whole promise turns on.

Not performance.
Not spiritual achievement.
Not a record clean enough to merit His attention.

Love.

And this is not a formal, distant kind of love.

God is not a system of truth to be studied from a safe distance.

He is a person. He has a heart. He delights in being known, not just known about, but known the way you know someone you’ve spent real time with—someone whose presence you’ve sat in, whose voice you’ve come to recognize, whose character you’ve grown to trust through the seasons.

That is what it means to acknowledge His name.
Not to recite it. To know Him.

To have set your love upon Him so that your thoughts return to Him, your will begins to bend toward His, and you come to Him not just in crisis but in the quiet ordinary moments too.

And when that is the posture of your heart—even imperfectly, even incompletely—the promise speaks:

He will rescue.
He will protect.
He will answer when you call.
He will be with you in trouble.
He will deliver you.

Friend, that includes your mind. That includes the thoughts that formed in survival. That includes the shame that still surfaces and the joy you’ve been afraid to hope for.

He can heal all of it. Not as an impersonal force applying truth to a problem, but as a Father who knows your name, who knows exactly what you’ve been through, and who is not deterred by any of it.

Full healing is possible.

I know that might feel like a lot to take in. You don’t have to feel it yet.

But I want you to hear it: real, lasting peace and joy—the kind that doesn’t depend on everything going right—that is available to you. It grows slowly, in the soil of love and nearness and coming back to Him again and again.

You don’t have to earn your way into steadiness. Love can lead you there.

3. Return

Let these anchors hold you today. Take them slowly.

I can set my love upon God, and that is enough to bring His rescue near.
God is not a system. He is a person who knows me and delights in being found by me.
I don’t have to have it all together to call upon Him. I just have to call.
He can heal what was formed in survival. Nothing in my past is beyond His reach.
Peace and joy are not too much to hope for. They are waiting for me in His presence.

Come back to these as many times as you need today.

Prayer

Father, I’ll be honest—peace hasn’t felt easy to hold on to lately. Some days I wonder if I’m too worn, or too far behind, or not worthy enough for the joy You promise. But You don’t ask me to be worthy. You ask me to love You. To come close. To call. So here I am, coming close again. Heal the places in my mind that still carry the weight of what I’ve been through. Redeem what was done in survival. Lead me—slowly, gently—into the steadiness You promise. I want to know You, not just know about You. I want to love You with my whole heart. Begin there, Lord. That’s enough of a prayer for today. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, you don’t have to reach a certain level of worthiness before God steps in. You just have to love Him and come near—and that love, set upon Him, is what leads you back to steadiness every time.

Friend, can I ask you something gently?

Why do you think that fear keeps coming back?

You’ve prayed. You’ve stood on truth. You’ve done the work. And yet — here it is again. That familiar tightness. That whisper of shame from something you remembered. That old feeling that you are not safe, not settled, not truly seen.

I want to sit with you on that question today, not to answer it quickly, but to walk you somewhere quieter.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a slow breath and let yourself simply be present.

Don’t push the fear away. Don’t scold yourself for feeling it. Just notice it honestly.

Ask yourself: What is this fear actually saying right now?

You might find:

• a memory that surfaced and brought shame with it

• a sense of being exposed, as though someone could see the worst of you

• a feeling of being unsettled without being able to say exactly why

• that familiar fight-or-flight hum that tells you something isn’t safe

Notice it without judgment.

And then notice one more thing: how long have I been carrying this particular fear?

Some of the thoughts that put us in survival mode weren’t formed yesterday.

They were shaped in harder seasons, by harder moments, by experiences that taught us the world wasn’t safe and that we had to protect ourselves to survive.

Your nervous system learned those lessons well. It kept you going.

But those old patterns — as useful as they once were — were never meant to become permanent.

2. Realign

Here is what I want you to sit with today. Not rush past. Sit with.

“I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”

Not by your performance. Not by your perfect responses to life’s hard moments. Not after you’ve finally stopped feeling afraid.

By name. Right now. As you are. You are His.

Isaiah 43:1 is a layered and tender thing.

• It speaks of intimate knowledge—the kind that comes from having formed you, from knowing exactly how you were made and what you’ve carried.

• It speaks of loving friendship—the warmth of a God who doesn’t hold you at arm’s length but draws near.

• It speaks of protective possession—the security of belonging to someone powerful enough to actually keep you.

And it speaks of family.

When God calls you by name, He’s not speaking to a stranger. He’s speaking to someone He adopted into His household, someone who now bears the family name, someone He delights in above all else.

True believers are precious in God’s sight. Not occasionally. Not when they’ve sorted themselves out. Precious. His delight is in them.

Can you believe that today?

I don’t mean can you recite it. I mean, can you let it land somewhere a little deeper than your head?

Because here is where so much of our fear is rooted: not in the present danger, but in old thoughts formed in seasons when we truly were not safe, by people who truly did not protect us.

Those thoughts became patterns. And those patterns still fire, even now, long after the original threat has gone.

God is not afraid of those patterns. He is not impatient with them. And He is not waiting for you to fix them on your own before He draws close.

He already knows your name. He has already called it. The invitation is simply this: Will you let Him begin to heal the places those old thoughts were formed?

You don’t have to stop being afraid first. You just have to come.

3. Return

Let these anchors hold you today. Read each one slowly.

I am known by God — not in general, but by name, specifically, personally.
I belong to Him. That is not a title I have to earn; it is a truth I can rest in.
My fear does not define me. I do not belong to it.
God’s knowledge of me is not a threat. It is the safest place I have ever been.
He is patient with the healing. I don’t have to rush.

You are His. That is where you start, and it’s where you return.

Prayer

Father, I’ll be honest — I don’t fully understand why this fear keeps coming back. But I’m learning not to be ashamed of that. You already know why. You formed me. You know exactly what I’ve been through and exactly what those experiences taught me to believe about safety, love, and belonging. Today, I choose to bring those places to You rather than hide them. You called me by name. You said I am Yours. Help me to believe that deeply enough to stop living as though I’m still in danger. Begin healing the thoughts that keep me in fight-or-flight. I don’t have to be afraid. I am Yours. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, you were summoned by name, redeemed by love, and claimed as His own, and not one ounce of your fear has the power to change that.

Friend, I want to sit with you in this moment — not rush past it, not paper over it with a tidy phrase.

Something feels out of control right now.

Maybe you can’t name exactly what it is. Maybe you’ve been carrying a quiet confusion about what God is doing, why this season feels so unsettled, why the ground doesn’t feel as solid as it should. You’re doing your best. You’re holding on. And still, something inside you feels like it’s slipping.

That’s a hard place to be. And I want you to know — you don’t have to have it figured out to come here.

Today’s Renwal

1. Notice

Take a breath and let yourself simply be present for a moment.

Don’t try to solve anything yet. Don’t reach for an explanation.

Just ask yourself gently: What is it that feels out of control right now?

You might notice:

• a confusion about what God is doing in this particular season

• a sense that something in you is being pulled apart without your permission

• old fears surfacing that you thought you’d dealt with

• walls going up again, or coming down in ways that feel vulnerable and frightening

Notice without judgment.

You might find yourself thinking, "I don’t understand this. I don’t know why it feels this hard. I thought I was further along than this.”

That’s honest. And honesty is a good place to start.

2. Realign

Psalm 34:19 doesn’t tell us the righteous will have an easy life. It tells us something far more useful: the righteous will have many troubles — and the Lord will deliver them from them all.

Not some of them. All of them.

Here’s what I want you to hold onto: not every trouble has the same source.

Some troubles come from the outside—the pressures, the people, the circumstances beyond your control. Some of the heaviness in your mind has been stirred up by an enemy who cannot take you from God, but who delights in making you feel as though you’re already lost.

But some of what you’re carrying right now? It may be something God is actively working in you, not against you.

I know that doesn’t always feel like good news in the middle of it. But let me tell you something I’ve had to learn the hard way.

The walls we built to survive—the ones that kept us safe when we were hurting, when we were exposed, when we didn’t know if we’d be okay—those walls don’t always come down quietly. Sometimes letting God take them down feels like the most frightening thing He’s ever asked of us. Because we built them for a reason.

But here’s what I had to reckon with: I couldn’t be fully free from what was done to me while I was still living as though it was being done to me right now. The walls that once protected me were keeping me in a kind of internal captivity, shaping my relationships, my stability, my capacity to trust.

That’s not punishment when God starts moving on those places. It’s deliverance.

He’s not tearing you apart. He’s carefully, lovingly dismantling what no longer needs to be there, so that you can walk in the freedom He’s already paid for.

The confusion you feel? It’s often what refinement looks like from the inside.
The loss of control? Sometimes that’s what surrender looks like before it becomes peace.

He is not done. He is not distant. He is delivering you—from this, too.

3. Return

Let these anchors hold you today. Read them slowly.

The Lord delivers the righteous from all their troubles — not some, not most, all.
What feels like chaos in me may be God’s careful work, not His absence.
I don’t have to understand this process to be safe inside it.
I can let the walls come down — God will not leave me exposed.
I am not losing control. I am learning what it means to be held.

You are not abandoned in this. You are being delivered through it.

Prayer

Father, I won’t pretend I fully understand what’s happening right now. This season feels unsettled, and I’ve been trying to hold myself together. Thank You that You don’t ask me to have it all figured out before You step in. Thank You that You deliver the righteous from all their troubles: not just the tidy ones, not just the ones I can explain. I bring You the confusion. I bring You the walls I didn’t realize I was still hiding behind. I bring You the fear that comes with letting them down. Do what only You can do, Lord. I trust that this is not punishment, it is Your faithful, loving hand. Deliver me from everything that’s keeping me from walking freely with You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, the Lord who promises to deliver you from all your troubles has not overlooked this one. He is at work in the very place that feels most out of control.

Friend, I know that voice.

The one that doesn’t shout—it just settles. Quietly, steadily, until it’s the loudest thing in the room. You’re not enough. You can’t do this. Look at the mess you’ve made. And somewhere underneath the discouragement and the exhaustion, there’s that familiar pull to shrink. To hide. To go very still and hope no one notices, including God.

I want to sit with you here for a moment before we do anything else.

You are not imagining how heavy this feels. And you are not alone in it.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a slow breath and bring your attention to what’s actually happening inside you right now.

Not to fix it. Not to argue with it. Just to see it clearly.

Ask yourself gently: What is the loudest thing my mind is saying about me today?

You might notice:

• a creeping sense of defeat that’s been building for a while

• a harsh inner voice that sounds more like a verdict than a thought

• the weight of feeling like everyone else is coping better than you are

• a deep tiredness that isn’t just physical

Notice where this takes you. When “not enough” feels loud, what do you want to do? Hide? Go quiet? Pull back from God?

That pull to withdraw? That’s exactly what Paul is describing in Romans 8:15. Fear that makes us flee. Inadequacy that makes us want to disappear.

Just name it softly: I feel like I want to hide. I feel like I’m not enough.

That’s an honest place to start. And God can work with honest.

2. Realign

Here is the truth that gently interrupts that voice today.

You are not living under a spirit of slavery.
You are not under a law that demands your perfection before you are allowed to come near.

You received a Spirit of adoption—which means you belong. Not because you’ve earned it, but because He chose you.

And the one who chose you didn’t leave you alone with what feels lacking.

Here’s what I don’t want you to do, though:

I don’t want you to try to simply speak peace over yourself like a technique—to repeat “I am enough” until it sticks. That can become its own kind of striving, and striving is exhausting.

The deeper counter to inadequacy isn’t a better inner monologue. It’s dependence.

It’s the quiet, humble acknowledgment that you can’t do this in your own strength, and you don’t have to. It’s gratitude that redemption already happened, that the heavy debt was already paid, and that the Holy Spirit living inside you is not waiting for you to become sufficient before He steps in.

He is already there, bringing the wisdom, the steadiness, and the strength that you simply don’t have right now.

So when the lie says you are not enough, you don’t have to fight it with self-belief.

You can answer it honestly:

Maybe not. But the Holy Spirit in me is more than enough for what I need today.

That’s not denial. That’s dependence. And dependence is exactly what adoption invites.

Draw near. Don’t hide. Come just as you are, into the presence of the Father who already knows your name.

3. Return

Let these simple anchors hold you today.

I am not a slave to inadequacy — I am God’s adopted child.
I don’t have to hide when I feel small. I can come near.
The Holy Spirit in me is sufficient for what I cannot do on my own.
My healing doesn’t depend on my perfection. It depends on my willingness.
I can say, “Abba, Father” — even here, even now, even like this.

You don’t have to be enough. You just have to come.

Prayer

Father, this voice of not enough has been so loud today. I confess that my first instinct is to hide — from others, and sometimes even from You. Thank You that You didn’t give me a spirit of fear or slavery. You gave me Your Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, who calls me Yours. Help me to stop striving and start depending. Where I feel depleted, bring Your strength. Where I feel condemned, bring Your truth. I don’t want to hide from You anymore — I want to run toward You. Teach me what it means to be Your child today. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, you don’t have to be enough on your own. You have a Father, His Spirit inside you, and an open invitation to come near rather than hide.

Friend, I know what it feels like when your mind won’t settle.

You’ve tried to rest in what you know is true. You’ve prayed. You’ve reached for peace. But the thoughts keep coming — looping, circling, pulling you back into the same tired pattern. And somewhere in the middle of it all, there’s that weary whisper: I feel like I’m stuck in a cycle.

You’re not imagining it. You are stuck. But not because you’re beyond help.

You’re stuck because there are too many voices, and not all of them deserve your attention.

Today, we practise something quieter. We practise recognizing the one voice that is actually safe.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a breath and gently bring your awareness to what’s actually happening in your mind right now.

Don’t try to fix it yet. Just observe.

Ask yourself honestly:

What is the loudest voice in my mind today?

You might notice:

• a repetitive, critical thought about yourself that won’t seem to stop

• a fear that keeps resurfacing, no matter how many times you address it

• a spiral that started with one small thing and has now taken over

• a deep tiredness from trying to reason your way back to peace

Notice it without judgment.

Just acknowledge: There are thoughts here demanding my agreement, and I’m exhausted by the cycle.

That’s a real and honest place to start.

2. Realign

Here is what Proverbs 1:33 offers you today—not a formula, but a promise. The one who listens to God’s wisdom lives in safety, at ease, and without the torment of destructive fear.

Not the one who forces herself into peace. Not the one who white-knuckles her way through every intrusive thought. The one who listens.

That is a different posture entirely.

Wisdom is not a harsh taskmaster. It’s a steady, guiding voice—one that helps you slow down before a thought becomes an accusation.

One that trains you to pause before you react, to consider before you spiral, to ask is this actually true? before you let a thought set up permanent residence in your mind.

When you take a thought captive and bring it to God’s truth, you’re not suppressing it. You’re testing it. You’re allowing wisdom to help you distinguish between what is real and what is fear speaking in disguise.

And here’s something worth sitting with: when you honour God’s voice over the loud, critical ones in your head, you are choosing His opinion of you over your own self-criticism.

That is not a small thing. That is a shift in authority.

The cycle begins to slow when you stop giving every intrusive thought the same weight as God’s truth. They are not equal voices. One was designed to protect and steady you. The other is noise.

You don’t have to follow every thought that arises. You’re allowed to listen to the safer one.

3. Return

Let’s come back to stillness. Let these anchors hold you today.

God’s wisdom is a steady voice, and I can learn to recognize it.
I don’t have to follow every intrusive thought to its conclusion.
Wisdom helps me slow down before a thought becomes an accusation.
His opinion of me is truer than my self-criticism.
I can live at ease—not by force, but by learning to listen.

You’re not stuck forever. You’re learning. And wisdom is patient with the process.

Prayer

Father, my mind has been so loud, and I’m tired of the cycle. Thank You that You don’t ask me to fix my own thoughts through sheer willpower. You offer something better — Your wisdom, steady and true, to guide me back to safety. Help me slow down today before I react. Help me bring these thoughts to You rather than just spinning inside them. Teach me to recognize Your voice above the noise. Give my mind rest, and let that rest reach into my body too. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, you don’t have to follow every voice that speaks in your mind. God’s wisdom is steady, safe, and always waiting for you to listen.

Friend, I want to sit with you for a moment, right where you are.

Maybe something triggered a memory today—an old conversation, a name, a place, a feeling—and suddenly your mind was back there.

Replaying. Reviewing. Re-experiencing something that happened long ago as though it is happening right now.

Your chest tightened. The shame came back. The embarrassment. The disappointment with yourself.

And now you’re here, trying to hold yourself together, feeling like things are slowly slipping out of your control.

I want you to know something before we go any further: this does not mean you’re broken. It means your mind is doing what it has learned to do. And today, gently, we’re going to practise something different.

Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a slow breath and just observe what is actually happening in your mind right now. Don’t try to fix it yet. Don’t judge it.

Just ask yourself honestly: What is my mind replaying?

You might notice:

• a memory of something you said or did that still brings a wave of shame

• a painful thing that was done to you that your mind keeps returning to

• a moment of disappointment with yourself that feels bigger than it probably is

• a spiral that started small but has gathered speed

Just name what’s there. Not to dwell in it, but to see it clearly.

You are allowed to acknowledge: This hurts. My mind keeps coming back here. I feel like I’m losing the ground beneath me.

That’s honest. And God can meet you in honesty.

2. Realign

Now, let’s step back together and gently realign what’s happening with what is actually true.

Walking in freedom—the kind Psalm 119:45 describes—means moving in a wide, unconfined space. Not the cramped, airless loop of a memory that plays on repeat.

Not the tight walls of shame. A wide place. Room to breathe. Room to live.

And here is something I want to offer you, not to minimize your pain, but to gently invite you out of the replay:

Bringing God’s truth to a painful thought is not about plastering a Bible verse over a wound and pretending it doesn’t hurt. That’s not what we’re doing here.

What we’re practising is something slower and more honest — pausing with the thought, looking at it, asking what it’s actually carrying, and then bringing it to God so that His truth can begin to work its way into the broken place.

The more you do this, the less power the thought holds. That is how freedom grows.

But there’s something else worth sitting with today.

If Christ’s death set us free from the power of sin, that freedom reaches further than we often let it. It speaks not only to the sins we have committed, but also to the sins committed against us.

The shame that is not ours to carry.

The replay was never meant to be our permanent address.

Think about it gently, without pressure:

And for the people who hurt you—if they have never acknowledged it, if they may never think about it again—why are we living inside it on their behalf?

This isn’t about excusing what happened. It’s about recognizing that the replay keeps you in a cage Christ already unlocked.

You don’t have to stay in there.

3. Return

Let’s come back to solid ground. Let these simple anchors steady you today.

I do not have to keep replaying what Christ has already redeemed.
God’s truth, brought gently to this wound, is slowly healing it.
I am allowed to walk in a wider place than this memory.
I am not losing control — I am learning to release what I was never meant to carry alone.

You are safe here. You can put the replay down.

Prayer

Father, I’m tired of going back there. I don’t always know why my mind keeps returning to it, but I trust that You do. Thank You that Your freedom is not just a concept — it is a real, wide-open place You are inviting me into. Help me to bring this memory, this shame, this replay to You honestly today. Not to push the pain away, but to let Your truth speak gently into the broken place. Teach me to walk in the freedom You paid for. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, Christ’s freedom is wide enough to reach not just what you have done, but what has been done to you — and you are allowed to stop living inside the replay.

Friend, I know how frustrating it is when your mind feels like a runaway train.

You might be sitting there in the quiet, whispering through tired tears, “I know the truth, but I just can’t seem to hold onto it right now.”

When spiralling thoughts take over, it is so easy to feel completely helpless against them. You feel the familiar panic, the old shame, or the sudden dread, and you assume that because the thought is in your head, it must be true.

But I want to remind you of something incredibly freeing today: you do not have to agree with every thought that enters your mind.

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Today’s Renewal

1. Notice

Take a gentle breath and look at the thoughts racing through your mind right now. Notice how quickly they try to demand your agreement.

What is that loud, spiralling thought actually asking of you?

You might notice:

• an old fear trying to pull you back into panic

• a harsh accusation echoing a past wound

• a lie trying to convince you that God has abandoned you

Don’t judge yourself for having the thought. Just observe it. A thought appearing in your mind does not make it true, wise, or worthy of your agreement.

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2. Realign

Let’s realign that mental exhaustion with the truth of your freedom.

Paul reminds us in Romans 6 that we have been set free from the reign of sin and are now fully alive to God. But he also warns us about what we offer ourselves.

While the old master no longer owns you, the old, self-protective patterns will still try to speak. They will still try to order you around.

True freedom is not always a sudden, effortless feeling of peace; often, it is the quiet, holy practice of resistance.

When an anxious or condemning thought arises, you are allowed to pause and ask: Where did this thought come from? What does it want from me? What story is it trying to pull me back into? Which old pattern, wound, or lie is it echoing?

You don’t have to let every passing thought have authority over your fragile heart.

By God’s divine grace, you have the power to resist, to interrupt the spiral, and to actively renew your mind in partnership with Him.

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3. Return

Let’s return your mind to the solid ground of God’s authority. You are allowed to talk back to the lies and refuse to give them a seat at your table.

Hold onto these simple anchors today:

I do not have to agree with every thought that enters my mind.
I have the authority in Christ to resist what is not true.
My freedom is found in choosing to align my mind with God’s voice.

You are safe to interrupt the spiral. You can choose what you agree with today.

Prayer

Father, my mind gets so easily overwhelmed by spiralling thoughts. I confess that I often just accept whatever fearful or condemning idea pops into my head. Thank You for setting me free and making me alive to You. Give me the courage and the grace to resist the old patterns today. When I can’t seem to hold onto the truth, please give me the strength to pause, interrupt the lie, and bring my thoughts back to Your unchanging love. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Friend, freedom is not the absence of fearful thoughts, but the God-given power to resist them and choose His truth instead.