The last few weeks I have felt God shifting me into a new season.
Areas I have felt stuck in are beginning to flow. Writing. Speaking. Creating.
A new gentleness is coming over me.
Not through me (though I am working on that with Him too), but over me.
I can feel God gently shaping me into the woman I saw in the vision He gave me many years ago. Now, that I finally stopped trying to become her.
I feel like a burden has been lifted, but I’m not even sure how to describe it.
The closest I can come would probably be that it feels like… permission…to be.
Not as in “to be still”,
though it does include that too.
More like- permission to be… me.
Fully. Freely. Uniquely. Me.
Not attempting to recreate myself in this new decade of life, but simply free to be myself and flow in that “be”ing.
And with that… God has given me a new perspective of His creative process, which is actually freeing me!
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There’s a strange vulnerability that comes with beginning to come alive again.
Not surviving.
Not enduring.
Not simply “making it.”
Actually blooming. 🌷
I think sometimes hidden seasons become so familiar that when God begins calling us back into the light, we almost resist Him there too.
Not because we don’t want to breathe in fresh air and grow, but because somewhere along the way, we started associating holiness with shrinking.
For a long time, I thought spiritual growth looked mostly like reduction.
Less of me.
Less desire.
Less dreaming.
And to be fair, some things in us do need to die.
But lately, God has been showing me that resurrection is part of the gospel too.
And strangely enough, He brought back a memory I hadn’t thought about in years.
When I was little, I went to a friend’s house to decorate canvas shoes.
Her mom had planned the whole thing out. She had puffy paints and jewels and ribbons spread all over the table, along with magazine pictures showing us what the finished shoes were supposed to look like.
My friend carefully copied the example.
But I misunderstood the assignment.
I thought we were there simply to create.
So I made shoes that didn’t match the pictures at all. They weren’t polished or symmetrical. They looked like they’d been designed by a child—because they had been.
But I loved them.
At least until her mother looked at them and told me I hadn’t done what I was supposed to do.
And as small as that moment sounds now, and as much as it doesn’t even feel like a big deal at all— there is no bitterness there— I think something rooted itself in me, in that moment.
For years afterward… even until this last month… I approached God the same way.
Like there was a correct version of my life somewhere. A polished example picture I was supposed to recreate.
And every time I made a decision, created something, dreamed something, or stepped into something new, part of me kept nervously looking back at Him wondering:
Did I ruin it?
Did I put the wrong thing in the wrong place?
Did I misunderstand the assignment again?
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But recently, God has been replacing that picture with a different one.
A seed. 🌱
During my direct sales years, I really did bloom in many ways. Not just financially, but artistically and personally. I felt awake again. I felt creative again. I felt brave enough to dream! 🩷
And when that season ended, I honestly thought I had lost myself.
It felt like dying.
There’s a verse about a seed 🌾 falling into the ground before it can reproduce, and during that season, God gave me a picture of a sunflower 🌻 collapsing into the soil.
Its petals died.
But its seeds remained.
I knew that burial wasn’t punishment, it was planting. But it really did feel like dying. Like a part of me went quiet after that.
Not because I needed a title or position to complete me or make me more.
But because it felt like the medium through which I had been able to create, was no longer available. And so I haven’t been able to fully express myself.
I’ve been in a long, quieter season.
I’ve been creating, here and there, experimentally, through new mediums-
a blog,
a podcast,
a shirt business, now shared,
an encouragement network space-
But it’s been small.
And there’s nothing wrong with small beginnings…
But also—
I had been resisting growth.
Something in me was resisting it.
I had grown comfortable in my hidden season.
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This morning at church, I felt God draw me to the altar. Nothing particularly heavy was on my heart, so I knew it wasn’t just me wanting to be there.
But I felt drawn there.
And even though God can speak anywhere, I sensed there was something He wanted me to understand in that posture specifically.
The moment I knelt down and lowered my head toward the floor, I understood why.
He was positioning me.
My body.
I suddenly felt like a seed in the soil. 🌱
And all at once, I could see it differently.
The hidden seasons.
The losses.
The surrender.
The waiting.
The breaking.
They were not wasted.
That creative me…the dreamer-me…
she wasn’t dead forever.
She had been planted.
And I sensed Him whispering something so gently inside me:
That burial was obedience, in that season.
But blooming is obedience too,
and the season for blooming is here –
and now.
In this moment, I realized that I have been carrying a resistance toward becoming fully alive again.
As if the shrinking was holy…
but blooming is selfish.
As if hiding was humility…
and visibility meant pride.
But flowers don’t apologize for blooming. 🪻🌻🌷
Seeds don’t shame themselves for growing toward the light. 🌱🪴☀️
And I think that I had grown so accustomed to my buried season, my hidden season… that I had forgotten…
resurrection is holy too 🪨✝️
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God is the Artist of all creation!!
Including us!!
He doesn’t ask us to create ourselves,
in order to fulfill the callings He has placed on our lives.
He wants us to know,
that as we freely yield to Him-
in both burial, and blooming-
HE will bring the vision to pass!
God is so rich in his creative process!
He doesn’t just decorate us
on the outside.
He doesn’t just paint us –
or ask us to paint ourselves-
like a canvas or a pair of shoes.
He grows us –
transforms us-
blooms us –
from the inside out. 🌻
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Interestingly, and not coincidentally—
My friend Ashley sent me this picture of this plant just the other day—
God’s absolute perfect timing and confirmation!
I used to have a plant that was special to me, but it had died.
Ashley is very gifted at caring for plants, though, so instead of throwing it out- I gave it to her to see if she could do anything with it.
There was one tiny piece of it that she was able to salvage. And for the last year or more she has been lovingly tending to it. 🌱 🫶
And just this month! Explosive growth!!
It felt like a little God-painting—
a living picture of this very message.
He really is such an amazing Creator.
From Full 