09/03/2026
Sometimes it is only when we look back that we realize just how little control we had over the outcome.
Think of one of those moments in your own life.
A situation you couldn’t fix, an outcome you couldn’t predict, a time when you simply couldn’t see the way forward.
Yet here you are.
Hold that moment in your thoughts as you continue through these slid
I remember this feeling clearly.
I had gone along with a situation that I did not initiate, and eventually found myself facing an outcome that could have changed everything.
I knew the choices I had made. I knew what could be lost.
And I could not see how I was going to stop what seemed to be coming.
There are moments when our own strength suddenly doesn’t feel like very much.
I couldn’t explain the change by pointing to some great thing I had done.
The outcome I feared did not come.
For me, God’s grace became more than a word.
It was an unexplainable rescue from a situation I could not see myself coming out of—as though I had been falling without anything I could grab to pull myself back up.
I didn’t earn that grace.
But I would eventually have to decide what I would do with it.
I didn’t recognize this when I wrote these words.
God was already part of my life.
I prayed.
I believed.
I called upon Him.
I was grateful for His grace.
But alongside that faith was still a strong belief that the strength I needed ultimately had to be found within myself.
“Trust Him... and search within.”
Years later, I can read my own words and see something I couldn’t see as clearly then:
God’s grace was already present in my story, even while I was still learning what it meant to truly depend on Him.
For me, one of the first places I noticed this was patience.
I knew I could be short-tempered and quick to respond.
Simply telling myself to be stronger or trying to distract myself from what I was feeling could only go so far.
So I began doing something different.
I waited.
I prayed.
I recalled Scripture and allowed God’s Word to check my thoughts before I responded.
Slowly, my attitude and responses began to change—and those responses were received differently too.
It was something simple, but it showe
