You aren’t weak.

You aren’t incapable.

You aren’t unable to do hard things.

Come now. Listen for His voice with me. The one who calls you His treasure. The one who made you for amazing, beautiful-beyond-your-dreams things.

You can, you know.

But not alone. We can’t do these amazing things alone—all these acts of love. The thing He has in front of you to do? Yes, do that. But also let Him show you that other thing—the thing He’s dreamed up just for you but you haven’t realized fully yet. Know that you can do that thing too.

You see, God delights in equipping you to do hard things. He delights in the two of you doing all things (maybe especially the hard ones) together.

And when the doubt comes—because it comes like a charging bull, doesn’t it, intimating and thundering and fierce, crushing our confidence, making us convinced that we can’t do much more than simply get through a day—we have a few choices. We can buckle under. Or we can stay overwhelmed. Or, we can fight.

Friend, join me, for the sake of our hearts, and fight, now, fight. Lift up your head. There is more for you this day. More energy. More goodness. More joy. More hope.

It is not time to cower. Your God is before you. Your God is with you. Your God is mighty to save you. Your God is tender and good and strong and powerful. You can do all things with Him. Because of Jesus, you can do all things.

I speak these words over us—over your heart and mine—as I grab God’s hand. I ask Him to help me transition from a season of displacement, where the lack of living in our own home for seven months—plus illness—has made me weary, distracted, and complacent, to a season of rootedness.

My Father, with your Life in me, I declare Life over myself. This will be a season of pressing into Your love. A season of risk and vulnerability and encounter and healing. Yes, yes, yes.

I need my Lord. I am hungry for the gentle but wild rhythms of spending my days with Him, expecting Him in kindness and goodness and beauty. I also crave the scary, risky moments of feeling totally in over my head and depending on Him for courage, ideas, and strength.

We need to do hard things. We need to do things that require our Father in all ways. Doing things our way, on our own, leaves us tired. This weariness we feel? Some of it might stem from striving, independence, and pride.

Let me be resolved, Father, to submit to You. Let these beautiful rhythms fill my days:

Pray. Be vulnerable with You. Give You lots of space to speak.

Practice unhurrying. Listen, deeply. Again, slow down.

Pay attention to beauty. Be in it. Be of it.

Consecrate my mind, my ideas, my words, my conversations, my work, my relationships, my dreams, my body, my plans. Help me trust that You will help me turn to You with I mess up, that Your heart in mine will help me to obey.

Surrender my hands to You, my work to You, my dreams to You.

Pursue healing—invite You to go all the way with me over and over and over again. I know there is always more healing You want to give us. I know we are never done until we are fully ourselves, in heaven, with You.

What, friend, does showing “resolve” mean to you? What is something that you feel needs attending to right now? What is the state of your heart? What trials have you been facing and how do these trials affect your present attitude? What is it you might resolve to think, be, tweak, hope, or change? Consider writing a poem about something you are resolving to do—or not do—right now.

With much hope and expectation,

Steady Now

I want to hold all you show me 
deep inside, 
in a memory vault with firm walls and 
indefatigable capacity to 
never lose people’s stories,
those whose courage to fight 
trauma though it hurts them
makes me forget 
my struggles for just a bit.
So play them now, these
stories queued one by one so
my resolve only grows
to join the soldiers who 
are rooted in Goodness,
fuel for the heart I am 
impatient to find.