January 2025

I don’t feel equipped to lead you. I didn’t have a written message for you nor did I really plan ahead but when Deserray reminded me that I was on the schedule, I realized that the time I’d been spending reflecting on my last year while cleaning my horse barn, I had been unknowingly preparing for this morning. God doesn’t call the equipped, he equips the called. And today, I felt called to share a message from Isiah that I’d been mulling over for the last 2 weeks. While this is a bible study, I’m going to shift and format this to be more storytelling & I hope you walk away feeling hopeful for the coming day, week, months and even year.

So let’s open this with a short prayer together. 

Lord, as we wake this morning, thankful to be above ground again, let us remember the value and purpose of our presence here in our earthly bodies. Let us see the children we tend to as blessings instead of work. Let us find purpose in the small, mundane tasks that will fill our days caring for them. Let us be open to the message you’ve put on my heart today and use them to soothe the aching soul so many of us battle. May your love blanket us all a little extra today. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

Every January for years now, I have chosen a word for my year. I don’t set resolutions but I choose a word that gives me clarity and focus for the year, setting intention to the coming months. That word sits on my laptop, on my phone and for a while there I sometimes even wrote it on my mirror in dry erase as a reminder. In 2024, my word was growth. I wasn’t focused on growing our business as much as I was focused on stretching and growing myself. I wanted to be focused on seeing opportunity and be willing to grow into who I needed to be to pursue that opportunity. My family raises livestock for a living but we were in a position where we were exhausted and we either scaled way back because we were still working off the farm, or we scaled way up to replace our off farm income. I was willing to grow so that we as a family, could move forward, not backwards.

And grow we did. We built a butcher shop & launched a poultry division on our ranch. I had poured myself into focused, intentional growth that resulted in a 40% increase in revenue, a trend we have pulled off consistently for the last 4 years. But last year, come mid year, I felt reactive and out of control. I felt that with every yes to someone else, I was saying no to my family.

We were in a season of absolute overwhelm managing employees ( a new task for me), regular chores, children and our home and honestly for the first time in my adult life, I felt as though I had truly bitten off more then I could chew. I was in tears most days, waking up at 5am and not going to bed until midnight 7 days a week.

I was exhausted. It was all consuming, painful, failure filled and HARD.

When Sept rolled around and my kids went back to school, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I had basically missed an entire summer with my tiny people. And if you’ve got older kids, you know those suckers are fleeting. Babies don’t keep. Summers of playing tag in the yard, tball and swing sets are short lived. 

And I had worked one entirely away, 7 days a week for the whole summer. So I cried. And I cried some more.

Thankfully, the bulk of that summers work was our butcher shop, which is seasonal. It closed after Thanksgiving until late spring and in the last few weeks, I’ve done so much reflecting. I had promised myself I would spend the month of December focusing on what brings me joy and soothes my broken soul. I’ve sat on the back of my horse, the only place where my mind quiets to silent, more times in December than I did in all the rest of 2024. 

& I had an epiphany while cleaning the stalls of those horses. There was light bulb moment when I had a visceral reaction, already stressed thinking of our 2025 schedule. I immediately recognized the reaction and decided right then, that I wouldn’t be repeating my failures. 2024 had nearly taken me out, but instead, I wanted to refine what I was doing so that 2025 didn’t fall into the same pattern. I wanted to cut out the things that maybe I was good at, or brought a great income to our business, but didn’t serve my broken heart. I needed to hone in on what aligns best with the Christ centered life I had been working for but lost sight of and let go of the rest, even if it makes people mad, lets people down or isn’t the popular choice. 

In those same moments, I remembered a verse that spoke about refinement through struggles. 

Isaiah 48:10 shares how God refines us: “I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.” 

In the depths of motherhood, I have felt the deep ache of monotony. Being lost in the trenches of the piles of laundry, dirty dishes, crying babies and fast showers. And while I am out of the young phase of motherhood, I often reflect on the years spent changing diapers and nursing babies with a bittersweet smile. Those years felt a lot like gods furnace, turned up so high that by the end of the day, I was a sweltering, angry mess. Do you ever notice that when you are going through something hard, your less admirable qualities seem to rise to the surface? You are more irritable, depressed, unloving, or the like.

For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10). 

As we begin 2025 and we see the highlight reel of so many others on social media, I want you to know that if you did nothing other than survive in 2024, that’s ok, too. Maybe you were in the furnace with me, being refined by our creator as we are forged into a more Christlike version of ourselves for this year.

The fire refining us might have burned around us while the one inside us barely flickered, just a sight embed of the light we once held. Or, it might have been blown out by the daily struggle. 

As we make choices for tomorrow, let them be with the reminder that the fire around us needs to be let in. We need to feel it, use it, harness it and let it shape us. But instead of using the pressure of heat to become volatile, angry and impatient, may we melt into christ, leaning on him to remember who we are; a sinner worth redeeming. 

Instead of focusing on the rush of todays schedule, the overstimulating noises, piling bills and overwhelming to do list, what if we simply sat in the fire and figured out what needed refining in each of our lives that would result in a more Christ like home? 

If you are feeling constantly rushed, what do you need to let go of to be more present in this season? 

I want to wrap up with this: if you’re someone who struggles with comparing yourself to someone else you see on social media, I challenge you this January to refine who you follow for at least the next 30 days. Use this time to reflect over your struggles & if you are spending hours scrolling, I challenge you to use those hours to simply invest in your loved ones. Play board games, teach your kids a new skill, love bigger, bolder and braver by simply being YOU. Being someone who makes a living utilizing social media, that’s probably not the best advice but the truth is, your mental health is highly influenced by what you see & god didn’t put you here on this earth to covet someone else’s life. When our focus is on others, we fail to see the value of our own worth and friend, you’re worth the world to the people in your home. And those, alongside the man upstairs, are the only ones who matter.

So let’s end by praying together:

Dear Heavenly Father, 

May we take this Monday and chose to see the greatness in the small things. May we see the mundane as beautiful, giving our all to the tiny tasks we check off our list every day. I ask that you fill every woman here today with the confidence to walk forward through the fire they face with bravery, knowing you stand beside them as it shapes and refines them in their journey. I ask that you give them the grace they need to see themselves as worthy and enough as is, in this moment, with all their flaws and sins bare to you. I pray that you’ll give them a new perspective to see our failures as a lesson, not something to be ashamed of. I pray you lift them up to feel hope, when the fire around them feels all consuming. And if nothing else, I pray you give every woman here the gift to wake up tomorrow, and simply try again. 

I Jesus name we pray, amen. 

I thankful to have been here today to share the hard together and would love nothing more than continue to live a Christ centered life alongside you now as a friend. Thanks for joining me this morning everybody!. ❤️