The Inner Circle is a portion of a quote I read in “The Characters of Easter,” and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for only five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 19 of Lent 2025 – March 23

I am revisiting this book in Lent 2025 since I first read it in 2021 and reviewed it on THIS POST. Purchase your copy on Kindle for $2.99, paperback, or audio HERE.

The Inner Circle

Peter was in Jesus’ inner circle. He was one of the disciples closest to Jesus, present at his transfiguration with James and John (Matt. 17:1-8). Though the Gospels show him with his foot in his mouth, Jesus still kept him in the inner circle.

I had never considered the point in this quote until I read it in The Characters of Easter. Through watching The Chosen series, particularly this episode, and reading books like this one, I’m learning how Peter was Jesus’ chosen leader for his church, and how much Jesus loved him for who he was.

Isn’t it encouraging to consider that though Peter kept messing up, Jesus kept drawing him closer? Peter rebuked Jesus (Mark 8:31-34) and denied him (Mark 14:66-72). But even in these major faith blunders, Jesus kept reaching out to Peter, encouraging him about his destiny and purpose (Matt. 16:18) (John 21:15-25).

Drawn Into the Inner Circle

This is encouraging because God keeps drawing us closer as we wrestle with him. Peter had to lay down his pride, temper, and agenda to become the rock upon which Jesus built his church. He had to become a living sacrifice fully surrendered to God’s will, just as we do as true believers.

Because I’m coming out of a season of wrestling with God, I relate to Peter’s struggle. I see Peter’s passion and boldness. I appreciate that the scriptures don’t hide Peter’s imperfections, so we can relate to them. I’m encouraged to consider that while Peter struggled big time with God, he was also being shaped into a future leader of the church (Acts 2). Peter couldn’t have imagined the plans God had for him, even when he was seeing Jesus face to face. This truly encourages me as a believer 2,000 years later, who is trusting God to reveal better plans for me after my season of suffering.

I encourage you to read this book to gain a greater perspective on the characters of Easter, particularly Peter. I also encourage you to watch the full episode of The Chosen season 3, episode 8 for the full context of Peter’s struggle. These stories breathe life into our imaginations about who Peter was, and how he was so much like many of us.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote. I encourage you to share your thoughts about today’s quote in the comments below.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!

Instead of being afraid of the Lord is a portion of a quote I read in Susan Chamberlain Shipe’s book “40 Days of Lent,” and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for only five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 18 of Lent 2025 – March 22

Susan Chamberlain Shipe is a dear friend of mine. Though we’ve never met in person, or even chatted on Zoom, I affectionately call her my “Auntie” because we’ve been in the blogging space together for 15+ years. She’s a prolific blogger and author of several self-published books, including one on gardening that I featured on THIS POST. Today, I’m focusing on a quote from Susan’s Lenten book.

Instead of Being Afraid of the Lord

Susan’s book talks about the people, places, and events of the Passion in a down-to-earth way. She starts the book with a common feeling many of us have toward God:

“How many of us were taught if you do such and such, God will punish you in a terrible way? We’ve learned to be terrified of God. That my friends, is the last thing God wants us to be. Here’s a fabulous exchange – from fear to faith. Instead of being afraid of the Lord, receive the measure of faith he gives and live in it.”

Her quote makes me think of 1 John 4:18 NIV:

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Lent is a time for personal reflection. It’s a time to examine the reasons why Jesus came to die for us, individually. Lent is when I look at sinful patterns in my life, confess them, and repent of them. If you are doing this during Lent, perhaps you are also afraid of God’s judgment.

Meditating on 1 John 4:18 helps overcome my fear of punishment from God. In the past three years, during the hardest times of suffering, I have asked that all-too-human question when trying to make sense of my pain: Is this punishment for something I did wrong? I questioned whether the worst decision of my life, living together before I was married, was coming back to haunt me 20+ years later.

When I brought this up with my counselor, he took me back to the broken, unhealed person I was when I got married out of desperation, guilt, and shame. He said, “Surely you can see how far you’ve come since that time. You’re not the same person.” My counselor reassured me of God’s forgiveness for my costly choices, and we talked about how God has a purpose for my pain now, though I still can’t discern it.

In this in-between time when my suffering still doesn’t make sense, I can meditate on God’s Word to hide his love in my heart. His perfect love will cast out any remaining fear I have, and give me hope that he will use my suffering for his glory someday.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote. I encourage you to share your thoughts about today’s quote in the comments below.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!

When Stress Dominates is a portion of a quote I read in Holly M. Andrews’ book “Heal Your Stress from the Inside Out,” and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for only five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 17 of Lent 2025 – March 21

I’m thrilled to be the editor, cover designer, interior designer, and book launch manager for Heal Your Stress from the Inside Out, the first book from my friend Holly M. Andrews. We met when we were fellow students at Covenant College, and now God has brought us back together in this creative collaboration.

When Stress Dominates

Is stress dominating your life? It has certainly dominated mine many times, especially during times of crisis and trauma. Holly has dealt with major stress in a high-ranking position as a government official, and she knows exactly what the struggles feel like as a wife, mother, and friend. Stress impacted every portion of her life, and she finally learned to break free from it by developing healthier habits.

Holly’s book is highly informative with lots of research. However, she presents the detailed information in an easy-to-understand way. She gives insight into how our bodies and brains suffer from the effects of stress, and how healthy habits can reverse the damaging effects of stress.

Though I’ve been committed to a healthy lifestyle for years, I learned many new and helpful facts from Holly’s book. Her encouraging wisdom is helping me sleep better, order my day with greater intention, and make better eating choices. I’m thankful Holly writes from a faith-based perspective so I can trust her advice even more.

I’ve been privileged to read the whole book as an editor, and I can’t wait for you to read it too. It will be releasing into the world soon, and I hope you will consider joining us for the launch in April and May. Learn more about the book launch HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote. I encourage you to share your thoughts about today’s quote in the comments below.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!

Will You Say Yes? is a portion of a quote I read in Kate Battistelli’s book “The After Party of the Empty Nest,” and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for only five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 16 of Lent 2025 – March 20

I’m facing the empty nest as a single mom, and it’s scary. I never wanted to be in this stage alone, but that’s the hard truth. For months, I’ve tried to deny this stage is coming as sure as the sun rises each morning. I blocked it out of view. However, when Kate Battistelli contacted me and asked me to be her virtual assistant, I couldn’t hide from this fact any longer.

It’s my job to read this book so I can pull quotes from it for Kate’s graphics. In a way, I’ve been forced to read it though I’ve been scared to face the truth. The good news is that this book is giving me the hope I’m seeking, even as a single mom.

Will You Say Yes?

It’s been hard to look at the future with any hope in the past three years of trauma and hardship. That’s why it’s hard for me to say yes that the future could hold any hope for me once my children aren’t here as often.

The current status is this: my oldest son moved out last year, and that was a taste of the empty nest beginning. My middle son lives with me, but we’re like passing ships in the night because he works full-time in the afternoons and evenings. My daughter is with me the most as she does online school. However, she’ll start college in the fall, and I’ll be alone more than I have been in over 20 years, as a young, neglected wife.

Soon after my divorce in 2022, my counselor shared something important with me. He said, “This isn’t going to be easy for you to hear.” So he let me prepare myself. Then he said, “Your children are not your emotional support system.” He explained that as teenagers, they were all preparing to spread their wings and fly. I would need to depend on my friends for the support I needed, and let my children grow up without suppressing them. So far, all three have said I have done this fairly well. But because my children have been my main source of joy in my difficult life, it has been challenging to let them go the way I need to do.

The After Party of the Empty Nest

The last thing I was thinking about the empty nest is that it can be a party. More like a funeral, if you would have asked me a month ago. However, Kate’s warm, encouraging words are letting hope into my heart. She even has a chapter just for single moms. As I prepare her social media posts and read the content, I’m gently led forward in faith that things will be not just okay, but good, even while my nest empties. I’m grateful she’s showing me how I can celebrate some new things I hadn’t even considered before. That’s why it can feel like a party instead of a funeral.

I encourage you to get your own copy of The After Party of the Empty Nest today. If you aren’t in that stage, gift it to a mom whose senior is graduating this year. Perhaps order copies for a moms’ group at your church to help them prepare for this phase while their kids are in junior high. I know it will be a blessing to each woman who reads it and needs encouragement for this phase, just like I do.

Order your copy HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote. I encourage you to share your thoughts about today’s quote in the comments below.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!

It Wasn’t the Wall is a portion of a quote I read in Levi Lusko’s book “Blessed Are the Spiraling,” and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for only five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 15 of Lent 2025 – March 19

I wish this book had existed three years ago when I hit the worst wall of my life. It’s a book about hitting the proverbial wall and the potential to spiral downward into despair. But it’s more about seeing the possibilities ahead as we cling to faith in those hard moments.

I’m reading a preview copy of this book that releases April 1, and I encourage you to order your copy HERE.

I’m only through chapter 2 at the moment, and it’s speaking loud and clear to me. Here’s why.

It Wasn’t the Wall

I’ve told my pastors thank you for talking about the hard things of life in their sermons. Every year since I’ve been a member, they preach on hitting the wall, as Paul Scazzero talks about in the must-read book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Because the EHS courses are part of the spiritual formation track for people at my church, both of my pastors talk about the wall frequently.

A wall is not an everyday inconvenience. It’s something very challenging that shakes your faith, such as a death, divorce, tragedy, or major situation change. When you hit a wall, your faith doesn’t work like it used to do. As my pastors have said, 85 percent of people either bounce off the wall, try to go around it, or stay stuck. But God invites us to go through it on a path of self-reflection, grief, and personal growth. If we go through that painful process, we can be stronger on the other side of the wall and better equipped to love God and serve others.

I hit that wall in 2022 when divorce shattered my world. I’ve spent three years in the dark night of the soul, a concurrent theme often discussed in my church. My faith was shaken to the core, and it didn’t work the same way anymore. But I hung on through the spiritual disciplines, waiting to see some light in my path. Mostly, I saw the wall as an enormous obstacle that only God could remove when he deemed the time to be right.

Blessed Are the Spiraling

Levi Lusko hit his wall in the form of a midlife crisis. He was forced to slow down, accept his limits, and reconnect with God in new ways. Since I’m only in the beginning of the book, I know I’ll learn more as I keep reading. But I know that he has faced huge trials, such as the death of his daughter, losses in his ministry, and the FBI confirming threats on his life.

The quote before this one in the graphic shook me up:

How do you feel when you slam into the upward plane of a new phase?

Upward plane? As I said before, I have only seen the wall as a big obstacle. I didn’t often think about climbing up the wall, though I even wrote a popular devotion about this in 2021, right before my world fell apart.

Back to today’s quote. If I see the wall as a stair, that changes my perspective. A stair is meant to be climbed. If I bump into it and bloody my nose, I need to heal. But I shouldn’t stay stuck on the stairstep. I need to start climbing again.

I love that God doesn’t require us to climb walls or stairs in our own strength, especially when we are bloodied. Instead, he encourages us from David’s psalm:

“In your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall” (2 Samuel 22:30).

This is the truth I’m pondering today, along with more quotes from Levi’s book:

• The gloomy mountain you now look at in fear and terror, once it is aflame with the glory of God, will transform before your eyes.
• There is significance in the spiral. It is not meaningless. The goal is to get closer to the center as you go around and around in smaller and smaller circles.
• You can view [transitions] as catalyzing forces preparing you for the coming attractions of joy and development.
• Round and round you are meant to go, tighter and tighter in smaller circles, toward what really matters. The worthless burning away, the Worthy remaining. And at the end of your journey, you will find not something, but Someone.
• In your life, as you face what seems to be a free-fall swan dive toward the bricks, believe that the death will lead to a resurrection.

Order your copy HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote. I encourage you to share your thoughts about today’s quote in the comments below.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!