Tag Archives: life

Aug 22 2025
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wildflowers don’t care where they grow

I’m a person that loves a good routine. Rhythms and rules have served me well over the past 10+ years of my life, and have set good boundaries in place that built a lovely playground for me to frolic in. And the frolicing has been delightful!

So imagine my surprise when those routines, rhythms, and rules stopped working. I can’t pinpoint an exact date, but over time life became stagnant. The workouts stopped serving me. The mornings got dull. The literal path I would always walk lost its luster.

Amy Poehler writes in her memoir, “Yes Please”, that significant life change is like, “spreading everything you care about on a blanket then tossing the whole thing up in the air.”

Amy was specifically talking about the process of divorce for her, but the image rings true for me. No, I wasn’t going through a significant life change. Mostly everything was as it had always been*. Sure, some things had shifted around, but the foundational level of my life remained intact.

And yet, everything was on a blanket being tossed in the air.

It’s a strange thing when the systems you’ve built to support your life stop serving you out of nowhere and without warning.

Insert a sabbatical after nearly 13 years of full-time ministry.

This was definitely not part of the normal rhythm of my life.

I’d planned and prepared for my sabbatical for a few months before June 2nd actually came around. On that Monday morning, I was on a plane to a week long retreat for rest and care at a center whose mission is to serve those who serve.

I arrived and my host for the week showed me to my room. The Flower Room. Little did she know that I’d had the song Wildflowers by The Greatest Trio of All Time** stuck in my head for the last 8 months.

The refrain of the song that had been front and center of my mind, that Dolly, Linda, and Emmylou so effortlessly sing is, “Wildflowers don’t care where they grow.”

I’ve always loved Missouri wildflowers. I grew up with a grandma that would drive along dirt roads just to look in the ditches during a very specific two-to-three week period in June. She wanted to look at the wildflowers. And so I wanted to look at the wildflowers. Don’t tell her, but I wanted to look at them so much that I recently got a tattoo of a flower so I can see one anytime I want.

I got back from my week away and went to visit my family in Southern MO. I took a ride along the gravel road at the perfect time and wouldn’t you know, the wildflowers were growing in the ditch along the field.

You can’t convince me there’s a more beautiful sight than a Missouri ditch in June.

And again, that line – wildflowers don’t care where they grow – would not leave my head.

In the midst of forcing the same routines and rhythms into my life and seeing no change, God met me in the beauty of His creation with the invitation to let go.

Let go of what I’m “supposed” to do.
Let go of what used to work, but doesn’t anymore.
Let go of the old wineskin.
Let go of the expectation that I should be_____(fill in the blank).

If wildflowers don’t care where they grow, I don’t have to either.

My favorite Doctor of the Catholic Church (as a non-Catholic) is St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She saw herself as a “small wildflower, simple and hidden but blooming where God has planted her.” She believed in the simplicity of doing ordinary things with extraordinary love.

She didn’t care where she grew. But she grew. Being watered and tended to by a good Gardener. She didn’t need routine or rhythm. She simply gave herself over to Love and let Love do His work.

And that’s what 40 days off work and a ditch in Southern MO taught me.

My responsibility is to give myself over to Divine Love. Sure, I’m rebuilding some rhythms and routines and rules, setting up a new playground to frolic in. But I’m (hopefully) doing it with my good Friend Jesus, a kind and careful Gardener who tends to my soul.

I hope and pray that the ditch of my heart (can we take the metaphor there?) doesn’t look like it did 10+ years ago. I hope there’s a more vibrant ecosystem of wildflowers that have taken root and display immeasurable beauty. Even if it’s just for two or three weeks a year.

And I hope and pray that the ditch of my heart only continues to gather more life and beauty as the years and seasons come and go.

I hope this wildflower learns to not care where she grows. Only that she does grow.

*I did write a book during this time and if there’s anything I know about putting yourself out there and being vulnerable, it’s that the enemy will come for you. So I guess I should recognize that there was *some* change going on 🙂
**my personal opinion, but it is the correct one

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Feb 09 2024
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honoring where you are, today

I never in my life thought I would be a group fitness class girlie. So much so that I loudly declared in August of 2019 that I would **never** go to a gym that only offered group fitness classes. The ego of a former collegiate athlete is so cute sometimes.

Cut to 3 months after that declaration, I was in a group fitness class. And I have quite literally never looked back. I can’t get enough.

Side note: I’ve learned to stop saying I’ll never do something.

One of the things I’ve come to deeply appreciate about these classes is that instructors/coaches/hype girls will start the class with a standard rundown of what’s about to happen and wrap up their intro speech with a version of, “Every day is different, so honor where you are, today.”

While their encouragement is to engage in the class the best way you and your body can for that day, it struck a different chord with me last week.

One of the downfalls of being a person in the world today (I think I can generalize what I’m about to say…) is that we’re expected to beat yesterday. “The only competition you have is yesterday’s version of yourself!”
“You’re only as good as your next rep!”
“Last quarter your numbers were higher than they are currently…”
“You were fine last week and nothing has changed, so what gives?”

The hustle lyfe tells us that our growth patterns have to look like this:

When realistically, it looks like this:

I think we all know that the point of life is progress, not perfection. I think we all know that it’s not linear. But the stories I often tell myself communicate that if I’m not winning the day, then I’m failing. And not only failing, but potentially a failure. If I’m not better than I was yesterday in all aspects of life – spiritual, mental, physical, emotional, financial – then I’m not trying. I’m lazy. I’m wasting what God has given me.

We don’t leave much space for grace, and growth, and learning.
For ourselves and for others.

Some days we need a breath. Our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our pocketbooks (do we still call them pocketbooks??) need a chance to rest. To settle for ‘barely getting by’ instead of a PR.

In even writing ‘barely getting by’ I feel like I’m missing my own point.

A break, a breath, a rest is written into the fabric of the universe. 

"By the seventh day God had finished his work. On the seventh day he rested from all his work. God blessed the seventh day. He made it a Holy Day because on that day he rested from his work, all the creating God had done. This is the story of how it all started." - Genesis 2:1-4 (MSG)

It all started with honoring the day, today.

In honoring where I’m at today, I’m admitting my humanity and the reality that I cannot live a life of striving. I’m honoring the holiness of the opportunity to rest and trust that God holds all things together by the power of His Word. I’m admitting that I have limitations, and that I, in fact, am not God. It’s not a failure if you don’t win the day.

I want to celebrate when I crush it, because I love crushing it.
But I also want to celebrate that I remain whole and held when I don’t.
I want to honor God’s great and abundant love for me that I have simply because He said so, not because I beat who I was yesterday.

Instead of asking myself what can I accomplish today, I want to start asking how I can honor who I am today. How can I honor where I’m at in the story of God’s love. How can I honor the world that God has placed me in. Do I want to grow spiritually, mentally, physically, etc? Yeah. Of course. I’d love to use a heavier kettlebell sometime in the future. But if that gets in the way of honoring the story I’m living in, then nah. No thanks.

I’m sure there’s more to say, and different ways to say it, but this is what I have for today. Honoring where we are starts right now.

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Oct 11 2023
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back to my roots

This January will mark 10 years of writing random thoughts and opinions on this here blog of mine. My first post, ringing in the new year of 2014, introduced my desire to have a discussion on singleness in the church. I survived purity culture and was ready to thrive. And I think I have…thriven? Irregardless…

Over time the blog and my writing morphed. There was a shift where I wanted to talk about more than singleness. I wanted to talk about life as a follower of Jesus. I was – and still am – single*, but I came to a point where I realized I had more to offer than just my take on a relationship status. I’m not “just” the single girl – I’m Kayla. And so I started to write as Kayla. Not single Kayla.

Yet here we are, nearly 10 years later, and I’m back to a blog post about singleness.

In other news – I like TikTok. I know I probably shouldn’t watch it, but we don’t like to should all over ourselves. LET ME LIVE MY LIFE.

Early today I came across a stitch (iykyk) responding to remarks that a very famous pastor made about women being “perpetually lied to” about the “inconvenience of a husband and children.” He (if you really want to know which man said this, you can figure it out on your own. I’m not typing his name here) talks about young women being so pumped about their lives and the freedom they have now. He goes on to say, “if they do a follow up at 50 they’re not going to be happy…they’re going to be lonely…have a couple of STDs.” He postulates that the true key to happiness is a husband and children.

A. Pastor.
A pastor who is supposed to be telling people about the good news of Jesus Christ – that we are so loved by God that He was unwilling to see us without hope and sent His Son Jesus to redeem us back in to right relationship with Him.
A pastor who is supposed to be reminding his church – and the world since he puts his words all over Al Gore’s internet – that abundant life comes through Christ and nothing else.

Instead, this pastor is reminding women that they will live a miserable life and die a miserable death unless they get married.

I wonder if he realized that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ Himself, was a single man? That MANY mothers of the faith were/are single women? And, shockingly, lived/are living full, vibrant, lovely lives for the sake of the Kingdom of God?

10 years.
For 10 years I’ve been waiting for the narrative to change.

So tonight, it’s back to my roots.
My single roots.

One of the things that fires me up about these words is that it lumps in singleness with loneliness and marriage with fulfillment. I am single and I have a thriving community of friends that help keep me from debilitating loneliness. I also know married people that are not thriving with their spouse and face greater loneliness that I’d like to imagine.

The assumption that singleness = a life of loneliness is such a freakin narrow approach to life. It totally goes against the full life of a follower of Jesus. A life that is designed to rely on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and His church. It also takes so much pressure off of married people, relieving them of the opportunity to fold single people in to their lives.

“You’re lonely? Oh, well just get married.” – this is such a terrible cop out.

Not to mention, it leaves a lot of women at risk.

There have been 2 times in my life I was convinced I would get married. One of those times I was with an abusive addict and only through friendship was I able to get out of that relationship and not end up “unlonely” to a man that put me through hell. My follow up at 50 would actually have been that I was unhappy.

And that’s just one relationship. I can’t begin to describe the audacity of men on dating apps – Christian dating apps – that make me want to just move into my friend’s basement and live out my days as mom’s weird friend that just showed up one day and won’t go away. Nothing makes me want to be single as much as dating does.

My loneliness doesn’t push me toward marriage.
It pushes me toward Jesus.
It pushes me toward community.
It pushes me toward my friend and her son showing up to my apartment with flowers because I’ve had a terrible month.
It pushes me toward snuggling with my friends daughter before putting her down for a nap as we say our I love you’s and I remind her that she’s a queen.
It pushes me toward a 40 minute FaceTime with my nephew while I make and eat breakfast and he talks to me about his guitar and wanting to learn how to play Jon Pardi songs.

It pushes me away from despair.
It pushes me away from desperation.
It pushes me away from the lie that a husband and children are an inconvenience, but are rather a good gift to be cherished and celebrated, but not envied or idolized.
It pushes me away from the lie that Christ is inadequate.

What if we started treating people as people – married, single, parents, non-parents, etc. etc.
What if we started believing that Christ in me is the hope of glory – not any other identity or label I place behind my name.

What if Jesus is actually enough?

And that’s really it, right? That’s where this all started. A conversation around the question, “What if Jesus is actually enough?”

But the question today hits me differently. Instead of a question out of despair – a clinging the possibility that He could be – it’s a question of hope, of opportunity. What if Jesus is enough!? What can He and I accomplish today, together, if I really believe this!?

Check back in with me when I’m 50 and I might have an answer.

* I resisted the urge to write “single as a Pringle” because there is no such thing as single as a Pringle. Have you ever had JUST ONE frickin Pringle?! No. No you haven’t.

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Jun 29 2023
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new wine/old skins

There’s this interesting parable in the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke where Jesus talks about wine. 

"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. No, they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved." - Matthew 9:17 (CSB)
"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins." - Mark 2:22 (NLT)
"And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one, after drinking old wine wants new; for he says, 'The old is fine.'" - Luke 5:37-39 (NASB2020)

I can’t think of a time when I’ve heard a sermon preached on this random section of Jesus’ teaching that 3 of the 4 Gospel writers deemed significant enough to include. I’m sure I’ve heard one, I just can’t remember it at the moment.

There’s also a chance I haven’t heard one. Because let’s be honest, it’s a weird parable. And I grew up in a church that didn’t talk about wine, sssoooo

But.

What I do remember, vividly, is a conversation I had with my Spiritual Director a couple of months ago.

For those of you unfamiliar with spiritual direction – like I was just a few years ago – in an article in Christianity Today, Richard Foster defines it as, “an interpersonal relationship in which we learn how to grow, live, and love in the spiritual life. Spiritual direction involves a process through which one person helps another person understand what God is doing and saying.”

Basically, I sit with my Spiritual Director (SD from here on out) and talk about what God might be up to in my life.

So, back to a couple of months ago.

I was sitting with my SD in the cozy space she has for us to meet, talking about the recent movement of Holy Spirit and how He was really catching me off guard. I was experiencing relationships in new, fresh, safe ways and I didn’t know what to do with it.

“Sounds like new wine,” she so rudely quipped.

“Hmmm,” I so wisely murmured.

“You might need some new wineskins.”

“That feels really costly.”

And that conversation has been ringing loudly in my ears since May 15th.

Because new wineskins are costly. Literally, you have to go out and buy them. You can’t just walk into the cellar and pull out the old wineskins you’ve had for years and years. Because, as aforementioned by our Gospel writers, new wine will cause the old wineskins to burst.

But the old wineskins…man…they’re comfortable. They’re familiar. They’re accessible. They’re available.

They don’t cost anything.

I don’t have to spend emotion, money, time, energy, etc. on the old wineskins.

But if I put new wine into them, I lose the wine AND the wineskins.

New wineskins are costly.

They require work.
Time.
Energy.
Risk.
Vulnerability.
Stepping out of my comfort zone to go and get them.

But if I put the new wine from the new harvest into the new wineskins, everything gets preserved.

It’s so attractive to just walk into the cellar and grab the old wineskins. There’s less risk and less effort involved.

But the old wineskins just don’t work anymore.

All of the new that I have tried to force into the old patterns (aka: wineskins) can’t be held. It all falls apart. And I would argue it all falls apart for the better.

Because the Lord is offering new wine AND new wineskins.

He’s not giving me fresh wine without also providing the proper container.

He’s inviting me to receive both gifts – the wine and the skins – open handedly and without fear that, even though the new wineskins are costly, He is helping me figure out how to cover the tab.

Don’t get it twisted – this isn’t about my salvation and paying for my own redemption.

This is about God offering me fresh abundance and me wanting to stuff it into old patterns of living that have not served me well. The old is comfortable, like the quilt my Great Aunt Vi made. And it serves its purpose. It did the best it could for me with what it had.

But I have something new now.

And while the new might be costly, it will be worth it.
It will be worth it to see the craftsmanship the Creator comes up with to hold this new wine.

I can’t wait to see what’s to be stored.

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Sep 10 2022
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Friendship

a great cloud of withness

Did you have a basement as a kid? If so, are the we same type of weird where (if the light switch was at the bottom of the stairs) as soon as your turned the lights off you broke the land speed record getting to the top so you could stay away from all the monsters that crept out when the lights were off? There are even times now, as a grown woman, that I have to force myself to slow down and walk gingerly up the steps of my parents house, reminding myself that the monsters in the basement aren’t interested in me and will leave me alone.

My miniBFF recently asked me to come to the basement with him because he needed to grab a couple things for nap time. On the way down he mentioned that he was scared of going to the basement by himself. After a, “No problem, I’ll go with you!” he asked, “Are you scared of anything?”

“I’m scared of a lot of things bud.”
“Like what?”
“Sometimes I’m scared of the dark, basements by myself, and being up really high. There are alot of things that scare me.”
“How do you not be scared?”
“Well, I ask Jesus to help me be brave, and my friends help me remember that I can be brave because they are there to help me too! When I’m scared, I just ask for someone to come with me, and then we can both be brave together!”
“Like we’re doing right now!”

Exactly.

(side note: it’s always the kids. pay attention to them. the kingdom belongs to these.)

I haven’t been able to let this interaction go. It holds the truest thing about my story over the last couple of years. It speaks to the great cloud of withness about me.

Withness is a term I swiped from Ann Voskamp. I don’t fully know the context she uses it in because I just get it from her Instagram stories, but ultimately she speaks to the witness and withness of Christ and His people.

We bear witness to the Gospel as we bear with one another.

As I embark on new adventures or travel back into wounded spaces, I can do so with great bravery because I know that I have the withness of those that love me in the journey. I bring those with me that remind me of who I am, and who Christ is, in the midst of the hard, beautiful, scary, dark, exciting, unknown places.

Sometimes that looks like a first date.
Sometimes that looks like a hard conversation with a friend.
Sometimes that looks like a celebration of a loved one for a thing that I’m longing for.
And sometimes, that looks like walking down the steps into a basement with a little one that just needs me to be with him to help him be brave.

I can be brave with and for him because someone has been brave with and for me.

So many of us are unwilling to go with someone because of what it might cost us. It could cost us time, energy, or even money. It could cost us vulnerability and having to actually be known by someone – risking both rejection and love. But if there’s one thing I know in the depth of my bones, it’s that the reward of going with has always (and I do mean always) outweighed the risk.

If you’re scared, bring people along.
Ask them to be with you.
Be with those that ask.

Getting through this life, IMHO, will be abundantly rich if we take with us a great cloud of withness.

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