Tag Archives: life

Oct 14 2026
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hunting for hope

This fall, I headed west to Montana to chase after a Merriam’s turkey. I’ve recently become obsessed with these wild birds after my cousin took me on my first turkey hunt this past spring. As soon as the season ended in Missouri, I started looking for a season and a state that would get me back in the woods the fastest. Enter: Montana.

Fall season. New subspecies. Cheap(ish) non-resident tag.

I had an afternoon, a full day, and a morning in the woods and – spoiler alert – I came up empty-handed. No white-tipped tail fan would be making its way back to Missouri with me.

However.

I got to experience so much that Montana has to offer: pronghorn antelope, mule deer, Merriam’s that were too far away to take a chance at, and even a porcupine!

This pronghorn fed 20 yards from me for about 45 minutes. It was magical.

I was in the wildlife the whole time, which was really, really cool. Especially because none of these animals show their face around my family farm in the Show Me State.

On the way out, some elk hunters that were camping near me told me if I had just gone a bit further south, I would have been THICK in the birds.

I’ll know better next time.

And here’s where hope comes in.

For next time.

On my full day of hunting, I walked out into the public ground and saw a flock of about 15 birds. The problem was that this flock was on private land. And moving your jolly little camouflaged self onto private land is a big no-no if you don’t have permission.

I tried to get in a different position.
I tried to call softly.
I tried to anticipate where the birds were headed.

And it just didn’t work out.

I sensed God say, “Hunting is a lot like hoping.”

A little bit about me: hope is hard for ya girl.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life wanting for things that I believe can be had, and not getting them. Anticipating that things will turn out for the best, and they don’t always.

Hope is hard for me. It’s exhausting.

And yet – hope is what keeps us alive.
Hope keeps us going.
Hope is the whole point.

But it’s probably the thing I struggle with the most.

And to top it all off, about a week prior to this trip, I had just had another “Well, this all went to crap, so why even try. Hoping only lets me down. I think I’ll pass on this whole hope thing from now on,” situation.

You know the one. It’s the one where you’ve put yourself out there for the 83,271st time and yet again you’ve been disappointed for one reason or another.
(I’m being a bit dramatic about the number, but you get it.)

And in steps God, in the middle of my newest declaration of “no thank you” to hope, with a, “Hunting is a lot like hoping.”

When you hunt, you go out each morning, each sit, anticipating that the trophy will walk by. When he doesn’t, you move to the next spot, walking slowly, attentively, expectantly.

Just a little while longer and he’ll be here.

And then the sun goes down.
The day ends.
The tag isn’t filled, and there’s a bit of disappointment.

But also, there’s always tomorrow.

The tag being left unfilled doesn’t keep you in the house or at camp tomorrow.

Sometimes you wake up even earlier to beat him to his spot.

Before I left for this trip, I had someone ask me what I wanted from it. What I expected this pilgrimage of sorts to offer me.

“Renewed hope and sustainable joy.”

I think I’ve gotten that. I think I have a new perspective on hope.

I have to hunt for it. I want to hunt for it.

Hope is the trophy.
Hope is the antidote.
Hope is the thing that gets us up just a little bit earlier tomorrow.

And joy? Joy comes when I’m hunting for hope, open for what’s to come, and God completely surprises me. Like a mature pronghorn antelope snorting at me from 20 yards away.

I wanted a turkey – a Merriam’s fan to hang on my wall.

But I think I got a lot more instead.

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Jan 01 2026
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it’s been a year…

Driving to my friend’s house last night for a NYE hangtime, I was listening to Emily Ann Roberts radio on Spotify when a song by Ashley Cooke came on:

“It’s been a year…

And I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t been a good one
It’s been a “did a lot more than I thought I could” one
It’s been 365 of record lows and record highs
Loving and losing, fun and confusing, praying and shifting gears
For the minutes you got, it’s probably a lot, more than you wanna hear
So all I’ll say is, it’s been a year…”

And boy oh boy did I feel that in the deeps of me.

For the last 12 years, on New Year’s Day, I’ve come to your internet screens with a prose of some sort — the start of a writing journey, a year in review recap, an introduction to my first book — and here I am again. It’s New Year’s Day 2026 and I’m sitting in my favorite coffee shop next to my favorite fire doing what I’ve done year after year, looking back and looking ahead.

And truly, the best way I can sum up 2025 is that it has been a year. It feels like it lasted 3 days and 30 years all in the same breath. I celebrated the release of my first book in January 2025. I got to do a signing in my hometown in February. I had my annual Galentine’s sleepover in March. In April I had the honor of speaking at a women’s retreat for a local church. May brought baseball with my favorite boys on elementary diamonds. In June I got to take a deep, deep breath and enter into a 40 day sabbatical where I retreated to the dessert, spent time in Missouri rivers, played with my niece and nephew, and was reminded by my Grandma not to get any more tattoos where people could see them.

July had the honor of welcoming me into my next year of life with a few of my favorite people, as well as welcoming be back to work refreshed and renewed in my belovedness with Jesus. In August my parents and I got to visit Colorado — a trip cut short by my Grandma entering the hospital back home in Missouri.

Side note: shoutout to my sister for the way she cared for Grandma in those couple of days it took us to get home. She’s an MVP.

September started with our matriarch slipping from our arms to Jesus. And the rest of the year has been what some would call a blur. It has been fast and slow all at the same time.

I got the tattoo Grandma told me not to get, and it features her handwriting reminding me to “be faithful.”

And when I really think back on 2025, all of the moments — the record lows and record highs — have all been held by that commission. Be faithful.

The faithfulness of God and His people is draped over all of 2025. From the tears of celebration to the sobs of heartache, faithfulness has been the theme.

When I think about my friends — faithful.
When I think about my family, and the way we showed up for my grandma and for each other over the last 5 months — faithful.
When I think about my grandma and the way she lived and died — faithful.
When I think about myself and the way I worked, played, prayed, confessed, lamented, rested, got curious, laughed, grieved — faithful.

2026 has some showing up to do. Mostly because 2025 ended in a haze. But what I know I can count on 2026 for is more faithfulness. More connection. Deeper roots that form delicious fruit and nourish the soul.

I can count on this because of the faithfulness that has carried me through thus far. Because God is who He says He is. The experience we have had together has proven to me that He is trustworthy. He will be what I need Him to be. He will remain, and He will give me grace to do the same.

So, 2025, “I ain’t sayin it ain’t been a good one, it’s been a ‘did a lot more than I thought I could’ one…365 of record lows and record highs…”

What a year it has been.

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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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