Finding Strength for Hard Days

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2 Corinthians 12:9 – But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

I sat down at the radio mic, staring at the same buttons and wires I see every day, but today they looked like a mountain I could not climb.

Just before walking in the studio, something happened that knocked the wind out of me. Honestly, that day I did not know how I was going to do the show.

I always try to pray before I go on air. It is a ritual that grounds me, a breath of connection with God before I speak into someone else’s morning. I’m a hot mess, and I know I can’t do anything without the Holy Spirit.

But even prayer felt out of reach. All I managed was one long breath and a half-broken whisper: “God, I need You to take over. I cant even pray. Holy Spirit, I am just so weak. Please come. I need you to take over.”

By the time I lifted my head, nothing about the situation had changed. The hard thing was still hard. But I knew Jesus was there. And His words in 2 Corinthians 12:9 came to life: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

We forget that sometimes, don’t we? We forget that it’s not our polished prayers or strength that move the heart of God. It’s our weakness, offered up as-is. He meets us there. He always has, and He always will.

So, if today feels heavy for you too, don’t dress it up. Don’t put on your “fake fine,” either. Just be honest. Whisper “Lord, take over.” And He will.

Because He’s just that good.

 

A MOMENT TO REFLECT

  • Where in your life right now do you feel weak—and how might God’s grace be enough in that place?
  • What would it look like to stop trying to fix everything and instead simply whisper, “Lord, take over”?
  • How does 2 Corinthians 12:9 change the way you see your struggles?
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A Simple Place To Pray

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Psalms 145:18 – The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

That kitchen table had lived a thousand lives. It held cereal bowls on rushed mornings, piles of homework, Sunday dinners that stretched into the evening, and more than a few hard conversations. The wood was scarred, the legs uneven. It was ordinary in every way.

But what happened there in the mornings was not ordinary. Before anyone else stirred, Mom sat at that table. A mug of coffee in her hands. A Bible spread in front of her. Quiet prayers whispered into the stillness. Some days she read. Other days she simply waited. But every day, she met God there.

Her children carried that picture with them, even if they did not know its weight at the time. Years later, one of those kids would find out.

She became a single mother herself, raising three children, juggling bills that outnumbered the dollars in her account. She felt worn down before the day even began.

She did not know what to do, so she did the only thing she remembered: she sat at her own kitchen table.

Coffee steaming. Scripture open. Her prayer was barely more than a sigh. And there, in the middle of her thin strength, she discovered what her mother had found.

“The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” — Psalm 145:18

God’s mercy is new each morning. It’s available, and whether or not you feel strong enough or good enough, you can still find it.

So friends, remember the church is not the only place revival happens. Sometimes it happens at the kitchen table where bills are scattered and cereal spills. God wants to meet with us in the ordinary, everyday.

The truth is, every one of us has a table. The only question is, will we sit down and meet Him there?

 

 A MOMENT TO REFLECT

  • Where is your “kitchen table” — the ordinary place where you can pause and meet with God?
  • What small rhythms could you begin (coffee, prayer, Scripture) to invite Him into your everyday moments?
  • How does knowing God is near to all who call on Him change the way you see your ordinary life?
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Let The Gardener Work

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John 15:1-2 — I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and He prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.

It’s just after sunrise, and I’m sitting on the balcony of my apartment with a blanket over my knees and a mug of coffee in my hands. The air is crisp enough to make me pull the blanket tighter.

Everything is still except for the gardener below, tending to the landscaping.

It’s the perfect time for honesty. I close my eyes and whisper the same prayer I’ve been bringing to God for what feels like forever.

“God, can you please just put me back together?”

I want to be whole. I wanted to be the way I remember being before life started chipping away at me.

I take a deep breath and open a book I love. On the pages, a quote from Jon Rodel catches my eye:

“What if, instead of breaking down, you are actually breaking through?”

Oh my goodness. That is so good. It makes me want to run around.

But it doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say, “God is peeling back the parts of us that we do not need anymore. The fear. The pride. The toxic relationships. The toxic actions that we have inside of us. The brokenness. The things that once held us together, but now hold us back. And in their place, God is building something new. You’re not changing. God says you’re becoming, becoming who I created you to be full of light, full of love, full of courage and grace.”

As I read, I thought about the gardener below pruning a rosebush.

From the outside, it looks cruel—cutting back healthy branches, stripping leaves away. But the gardener knows the blooms will come back brighter and stronger for it.

That’s how this feels. It’s like He’s peeling away the things that once held me together but now hold me back.

Now, I know that when my life feels like it is falling apart, God is still working on me. Some days, I still reach for the glue to try to put the petals back on the leaves. But more and more, I’m learning to leave my hands open. To let the Gardener work without rushing Him.

The coffee is cold by the time I finish thinking about these things. But you know what? I can’t help but smile.

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The Bible That Prayed

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Isaiah 55:11 — It is the same with My word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.

She almost didn’t find it.

There was no spotlight on it. No labeled box. As she searched through the closet, she pulled a stack of old blankets down, one by one, until something hard and flat slid forward and landed in her lap.

It was her grandmother’s Bible.

The leather was the color of coffee left in the pot too long. It was cracked at the edges, soft in the middle. The spine sagged under strips of tape that had yellowed after decades.

She carried it to the kitchen table and sat there for a moment, just running her fingers over the cover. Then she opened it.

It was beautiful in the way only old things can be. The pages were soft as tissue. Corners were bent from years of folding.

And then the names.

There were dozens. Scrawled in the margins. Squeezed into the white space between verses. A cousin she hadn’t thought of in years. A neighbor who passed away before she was born. A church friend from decades ago.

Every name was written by a verse. A promise. It was like her grandmother had gone through the whole Bible and decided that no one she loved was going to leave this earth without being prayed for according to God’s Word.

She felt tears come before she even realized it. She took it home for safekeeping, and that night, she opened her own Bible.

It had clean pages and plenty of white space.

So, she started writing names and started praying.

And here’s the part that gets me—some Bibles are read through, while others are prayed through. If you believe prayer is powerful, imagine just how much more powerful it is to pray for people according to God’s word.

Because God’s word will not come back empty-handed.

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The Simple Secret of Prayer

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Psalms 145:18 — The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

I’ve got a story to tell you. It’s about an old man who kept an empty chair next to his bed.

He didn’t have many visitors, except for the nurse and a young pastor who stopped by once a week. On one visit, the pastor noticed the chair and asked gently, “Were you expecting company?”

The old man smiled. “That chair is for Jesus,” he said. “Years ago, a friend told me that prayer isn’t complicated. It’s just talking to Jesus like He’s sitting right next to you. So, every day, I pull up a chair and talk out loud.”

He chuckled and added, “It might sound a little silly, but I’ve never once felt alone since I started doing it.”

The pastor was quiet for a moment, moved by the man’s honesty. Over the next few visits, they would pray together that way—like Jesus was right there in the room. And somehow, it changed the way the pastor prayed, too.

Then one morning, the man passed peacefully in his sleep. The nurse said he was found with his hand resting on that empty chair.

Now we don’t know much else, but maybe we don’t need to, because that is the kind of friendship Jesus invites us into. Real, near, and present.

So, friend, if today feels heavy or quiet or lonely…pull up a chair.

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Rock Bottom Redemption

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Romans 1:16 — “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

The doctors said I would not wake up. My brother stood by my hospital bedside preparing for the worst, and still—somehow—I opened my eyes.

No one expected me to make it. I had overdosed in New Jersey, far from my family in Florida. My mom had died not long before, and my godmother was the one trying to hold my life together. She had promised my mom she would tell me about Jesus.

I thought it was sweet—maybe a little pushy—but I never took it seriously.

The truth is, I never knew Him. I had heard the stories. I saw a few videos, but I had no relationship with Him. Instead, I was pursuing what I wanted—modeling, acting, and partying in the city.

That world swallows you fast, and I let it.

Until it almost killed me.

In that coma, something happened that I still cannot fully explain. I saw Him. I saw Jesus. He came close and wrapped His arm around me like a friend and said, “Are you done?”

I knew what He meant because I was. I was done with the running, the pretending, and the pain.

And when I said yes, everything changed.

Jesus brought me back—body and soul. I woke up, confused and stunned, with hospital socks on my feet and my brother’s jaw on the floor. Since then, every day has been part of the comeback. I still mess up, still grow, but now I walk with the One who rescued me.

No, my life is not perfect, but it is His. He took the talents I once used for shallow things and turned them into tools for His story. I speak up because I cannot stay silent. I live for Him, not out of duty, but joy.

We get to live for Him. That is the honor of it all, and I will never be ashamed of that.

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Chain Breaking Honesty

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James 5:16 — “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

I kept checking the boxes.

Read my Bible? Check.

Said my prayers? Check.

And still I felt weighed down. I’d lie in bed at night and wonder, “What is wrong with me?”

I didn’t want to admit it, not even to myself, but the truth was, I was struggling with a sin pattern. It was one that kept cycling back up in my life, and it came with this private shame I could not shake.

And I had gotten good at covering it with “good Christian things.” I thought if I could stay busy enough with God’s stuff maybe it would go away.

But the guilt only grew heavier.

One Thursday, I went to my weekly Celebrate Recovery group really discouraged.

That night, someone read this verse out loud:

James 5:16 “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”

I had heard that verse before, but I never noticed that last part.

Not just forgiven. Healed.

I knew how to ask God for forgiveness. I believed grace covered me when I failed.

But healing? Until that night, I did not realized that confessing my sin out loud to another human being could bring healing.

After the meeting, I pulled someone aside—someone I trust—and I told her the truth. The real, honest, ugly version of it. I confessed what I had kept buried and asked if they would pray with me.

She didn’t flinch at what I said. She just listened and then prayed.

I can’t explain it in any logical way, but the heaviness lifted. Something unknotted deep inside. I didn’t feel exposed—I felt safe. And free. It was like God used her voice and her prayer to reach a part of my heart that had stayed locked for years.

That’s the power of confession. It’s not a religious ritual. It’s not about earning grace or checking off a spiritual box. It’s about real, biblical healing.

James wasn’t writing theory—he was giving us a map out of the stuck places. Confess to each other. Pray for each other. Be healed.

If you’re exhausted from trying to fix yourself, maybe it’s time to stop hiding and start healing. Tell the truth to someone safe. Invite Jesus into the places you’ve been managing on your own.

You’re already forgiven, but you were made for more than that. You were made to be healed.

And it starts in the light.

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Where Broken Meets Beautiful

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Titus 3:5 — He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

If I could go back and sit across from the younger me, I do not think I would try to fix her. I do not think she would have believed me, anyway. She was stubborn. Wounded. Tired. She was doing the best she could with what she had, and at the time, it was not much.

I was twenty-five when I lost my mom. I remember the hospital room, the chill of it, and the way time slowed in the hours before she passed. When she was gone, I walked out carrying this hollow kind of silence inside me. That grief stayed. It followed me everywhere I went.

And I wish I could say I handled that pain well. I did not. I ran from people who loved me. I tried to outrun the ache. And when I could not, I tried to bury it by numbing it.

A series of choices—and a thousand little escapes—turned into chains of drug and alcohol addiction. I was not proud of who I was becoming, but for a long time, I did not see a way out.

But if I could say just one thing to her—the girl who buried her mom and then buried herself not long after—it would be this: He is real.

God. He is not just a word people toss around when they do not know what else to say. He is not just a name in a book.

He is real. He is real in hospital rooms. He is real in addiction. And He is real enough to save you when you have gone over the edge.

I wish I could have wrapped that girl up and told her again and again until she believed it. But the truth is, I would not go back and undo anything. Not even the hardest parts because God did not waste a single moment. He used every scar, every mistake, every loss. All of it became part of a story I never expected—a story of grace.

And if that is where you are right now—if you are grieving, if you are stuck in something you don’t want to admit, if you think God is only for people who have it together—I want you to hear me clearly: You are not too far gone.

God is real. And He is not scared of your story. He steps right into the middle of it, and when He is through, what is left will not be shame.

It will be grace.

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The Gift Inside the Interruption

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James 4:8 — “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.”

What in your life right now feels like an interruption? What is a distraction to you?

I was reading the other day about Jesus’s walk to Golgotha—His path to the cross—and I had to stop and sit with it. The scene is hard to take in. His back had already been torn open from the flogging.

He was bruised, bleeding, and barely able to stand. The crowd was loud, vicious. Dust kicked up under the weight of every step, and Jesus—exhausted—stumbled under the heavy beam pressing into His raw skin.

That was the road to Calvary.

And somewhere along that brutal road, a man named Simon happened to be passing by.

Simon had come all the way from North Africa to Jerusalem for Passover. That was no small trip.  He had come for worship, tradition, maybe time with his family. And then—without warning—he was swept into this scene of violence and confusion.

And before he could piece it all together, they were pointing at him. “You. Carry this man’s cross.”

I tried to picture it. Was Simon annoyed? Confused? Embarrassed? Did he feel the eyes of strangers on him, wondering what he had done to deserve this? Scripture does not tell us what Simon said or how he felt—but I can’t help but wonder if this man knew what he was about to be a part of.

Because no one walks beside Jesus like that and walks away unchanged.

And what amazes me is that Simon’s interruption was life changing, not only for him, but for us too. He was part of this powerful, magnificent, life-changing story of the crucifixion of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And it makes me think—how many times have I complained about things I never asked for. A change in plans. A difficult person. A road I did not want to walk. But what if those are not just disruptions? What if they are invitations to draw nearer to God?

Friend, I do not know what has interrupted your life lately. Maybe it is something you never saw coming. Maybe it feels heavy, or lonely, or just plain unfair. But what if—right in the middle of it—God is drawing you close?

You do not have to have it all figured out. You do not have to wait until it makes sense. But what would it look like to take one small step toward Jesus, even while the dust is still settling and your arms still ache from the weight of what you carry?

Ask Him what He is doing through it. Let Him speak to you in the silence, in the waiting, in the in-between. You never know how God will use that distraction to change you forever, and maybe even the course of history.

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Speak Even If They Aren’t Listening

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Colossians 4:5-6 – Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

I was on a flight from New York City, heading home to visit my family in Florida, and I remember the man sitting beside me as clear as day.

There he was—this big, friendly, joyful African American man with his Bible open on the tray table in front of him. He smiled and said hello, and we started talking like old friends. Turned out he was a pastor.

I was young then, rambling on and on about my dreams of becoming a movie star, and he listened like every word mattered.

Then he paused and asked the simplest, most disarming question: “Do you know who God is?” Not in a forceful way. Just kind and curious. Then he asked, “What if what you want is not actually the best thing? What if God has more?”

I laughed—not because it was ridiculous, but because I knew what I wanted. And I honestly did not care.

That sweet man did not even flinch, like he had seen a hundred versions of me before. He just smiled again.

“I’ll be praying for you,” he said.

That flight was twenty years ago, and I have thought about him more times than I can count. I never got his name, but I wish I could find him now. He was the first person who dared to interrupt my self-made plan with the possibility of something more.

And he did it with kindness.

I would love to tell him what God has done. I would love to tell him his prayer was not wasted.

So let me tell you—if you are loving someone, praying for them, or sharing what you believe and it feels like they are not listening, please hang in there. That moment matters more than you know. The kindness. The courage. The seed planted in faith. It might take years to grow, but God knows how to bring it to life.

Keep showing up. Someone like me is counting on it.

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