Maybe not a cup. Maybe a bookmark, a wall hanging, the back of a church bulletin, one of those little wooden signs from Hobby Lobby with the distressed white paint. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD. Nice font. Usually cursive. Sometimes there’s a sunrise behind it.

And that’s usually where it stops. What those plans actually are — to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future — that part’s on the back. If it made the cup at all.

I’ve got one, and I’m not throwing it out either, so relax.

But I’ve been sitting with that verse for a while now, and I finally did something I haven’t done in a long while. I read the entire passage…yep, went down a whole rabbit hole.

And listen, I was not prepared. Not at all.

Because Jeremiah 29:11 isn’t read as a whisper. It’s read as relief, as hope, as encouragement. It is a shout! But for the people in Babylon, it wasn’t a word somebody got at an altar on a Sunday morning. It was a line in the middle of a letter. An actual letter, with an address on it, mailed to people who had already lost everything. Not people who were about to go through something. People who were already gone. Already deported. Already sitting in a foreign country trying to figure out how to cook in somebody else’s kitchen.

That’s who got that verse first.

And the four verses sitting right above the one on your cup? Nobody’s putting those on a mug. I promise you that.

So, I want to walk through this with you, because I think the whole thing is much better than the small section we read. Harder in places. But better. And if you’re tired right now, not finished, just tired, I think you might need the paragraph more than you need the sentence.

Go ahead and grab your coffee first. This one is going to take a minute…or two.

So, here’s what was actually happening.

Around 597 BC, Babylon came to Jerusalem and took people. Not everybody, just the ones worth taking. The king. The officials. The craftsmen and the metalworkers. Anybody who could build, make, fix, or run something got loaded up and marched about nine hundred miles east. They took the people who kept things working.

Jerusalem was still standing when they left. That’s the part I keep coming back to. The city was still there. The temple was still there. So if you’re sitting in Babylon, it would be easy to tell yourself, We’re going back. Everything is still there. This won’t last forever.

And right in the middle of that hope, Jeremiah sends them a letter.

He’s not with them. He’s still in Jerusalem, and he writes it out and sends it east with a couple of men who were headed that way on official business. Which means somebody carried this thing for weeks. Somebody handed it over. Somebody read it out loud to a room full of people who had already lost their homes and were waiting to hear how long.

That’s the setting. Not a sanctuary. Not a mountaintop. A room full of tired people in a country they didn’t choose, listening to mail from home.

And what he tells them is not what they wanted to hear. And to be honest, before the letter even got there…there was already a word going around.

There was a prophet named Hananiah, and he had a message too. Two years he said. Within two years God would break Babylon’s yoke, bring back everything they’d taken, bring back the king, bring back the vessels from the temple, bring everybody home. In just two years.

And he said it in the house of the LORD. In church! In front of the priests. In front of everybody. He got up to that mic…and lied! PropheLIED, as they say.

Now, I want you to think about how good that had to sound. That is exactly the word you want to hear. That’s the one you actually went home and repeated to your family that night. Two years is survivable. We got this! Two years, you don’t unpack. Two years, you keep the good dishes in the box. Two years…you can do two years.

Jeremiah’s response is the part that gets me. He says amen. He actually says it. May the LORD do so, may He do exactly what you just said. Because Jeremiah didn’t want it to be seventy either. He was not standing there enjoying himself.

But then he tells the truth anyway. He tells Hananiah he’s made people trust a lie. And Hananiah — this is bold — walks over and takes the wooden yoke off Jeremiah’s neck and breaks it in front of everybody. Big moment. Everybody in that room went home encouraged.

He was dead within the year. Whelp, guess he’s not going back!

I’m not telling you that to be dramatic or funny. I’m telling you because I’ve had Hananiah seasons. I’ve had people speak over my life with real conviction and real warmth and it was a real lie. But I wanted it so bad I didn’t ask a single question, didn’t even check with God. Just went on my merry way, believing a lie.

The comfortable word and the true word are not always the same word. Sometimes they are. Sometimes God’s answer is genuinely soon and genuinely easy and you get to go home. But when they’re not the same, most of us will pick the comfortable one every time and call it faith.

Two years was a kinder message. Seventy was the real one.

Seventy years.

That’s the number sitting four verses above the one on the cup. And I need you to do the math with me, because I did it and had to put my pen down for a second.

If you were forty when they marched you out of Jerusalem, you weren’t coming back. Seventy years was a whole lifetime then — Psalm 90 puts a full life at seventy, eighty if you were strong — so the people who first heard I know the plans I have for you mostly died in Babylon. When they finally laid the foundation of the second temple, Ezra says the old men who had seen the first one wept out loud. A few made it. They’d been children when they left.

The promise was real. The promise was kept. God did exactly what He said. It just wasn’t kept on their calendar.

And I don’t know how to soften that, so I’m not going to try. Some of what God promised you is going to come true after you’re gone. Somebody’s going to walk into that promise, and it’s going to have your name on the paperwork, but you won’t be in the room.

Here’s what keeps me from sitting in that for too long.

Because look at what He tells them to do inside the seventy. He doesn’t say hold your breath. He doesn’t say pray it down to twenty. He says build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat what grows. Marry, have children, let your children marry and have children. Multiply there, and do not decrease. Seek the peace of the city you didn’t choose, because in its peace you’ll have peace.

Build. Plant. Eat. Marry. In Babylon.

That’s not resignation. That’s the opposite. Resignation would be sitting on the boxes waiting for the two-year word to come true. What God asked them for was a life. An actual one, with a garden in it, in a place they never would have picked.

Some of those people planted trees they never ate from. And their grandchildren walked home.

I don’t have to explain that to some of you. We come from women who did exactly that. Who worked in houses they’d never own, in schools they’d never be allowed to teach in, in cities that had already made up their minds about them. Who paid into things they knew good and well they’d never collect on.

Nobody handed them a date either. And every one of them planted anyway.

Some of us are sitting here today with an education somebody prayed for before we existed. We’re the grandchildren. We walked home.

Somebody’s seventy years ended in me. And I don’t think I’ve ever properly said thank you for that.

Here’s why I’ve spent all this time in Babylon with you.

Because at eleven o’clock at night, tired and done feel exactly the same. I know they do. I’ve sat in that chair. And the woman who’s actually just tired will make the same decision as the woman who’s actually finished, and only one of them should be making it.

Tired wants rest and one smaller step. Done wants out.

And most of us, when we’re tired, don’t reach for rest. We reach for a decision. Quit the thing. End the thing. Sell the house, delete the account, cancel the plan, tell everybody it wasn’t working anyway. It feels like clarity. It’s usually just exhaustion wearing clarity’s clothes, and it will hand you a two-year timeline and call it a word from God.

Isaiah says something about this that I think we read too fast. He says even the young men get tired. Even the strong ones stumble and fall flat out. The people with the most in the tank are the ones hitting the floor. And the strength goes to the ones who waited on Him. Waiting isn’t the punishment in that verse. Waiting is where the wings come from.

And Paul, writing to people who were worn all the way down, says don’t get weary in doing good, because there’s a harvest in due season if you don’t faint.

Due season. Not next Tuesday. Not when you’re ready. Not on the two-year plan somebody prophesied over you in a room where everybody clapped.

But it comes.

So we’ve been reading verse 11 by itself all this time. But it doesn’t end there either. It keeps going.

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Then. Right after. Same breath.

And I sat there a while with that word then, because it changes what kind of sentence verse 11 is. We’ve been treating it like an announcement, something God says over your head while you stand there and receive it. But it’s the front half of an exchange. He says I know the plans, and then He says now come talk to me about it.

He didn’t hand them a date. He handed them a door.

That’s what I keep coming back to, because I have wanted a date so badly in my own life it’s almost funny. I have asked God for a timeline in more creative ways than I care to admit. And what He keeps offering me instead is Himself. Which, if I’m being honest, has sometimes felt like He was avoiding my question.

It’s not. It’s just the harder gift.

Because a date would let you check out until it got here. Seventy years with a date on it is just a very long waiting room, and you’d sit in it. But seek me with all your heart is something to do this afternoon. In Babylon. In the middle of the paperwork. Before anything has changed and while it still looks exactly like it looked yesterday.

Look at what actually made it into the letter, and look at what didn’t. Build a house. Plant a garden. Pray for the city. Call on me. Seek me. Not one of those requires the situation to change first. Every single one of them is available to a tired woman on a Tuesday.

Which means the waiting was never supposed to be empty. That’s the part the mug can’t hold.

I don’t need the whole seventy years explained to me.

I would like it. Let’s be clear. If God offered me a printed schedule right now with dates and confirmations and a little map, I would take it, laminate it, and probably build a whole personality around it.

But that’s not what I got. What I got is a promise with no date and a God who says come find me while you wait. And a garden. Apparently, there’s always a garden.

So, if you’re tired tonight — tired, not done — I want to say the thing I’ve had to say to myself. You are not behind. You are not being punished. The plans are not canceled just because nobody has given you a date. And the hope and the future in that verse are still yours even if the shape of them ends up different than what you were picturing, or later than you wanted, or handed to somebody who comes after you.

Plant something anyway.

Not because you’re guaranteed to eat from it. Because that’s what people do who believe God is telling the truth.

Lipgloss on. Coffee in hand.

— Kelly Janine

Sometimes, the desire to be chosen means living a life built around people-pleasing. Never saying no. Constantly looking for approval and reassurance that we are doing enough, giving enough, or being enough.

It can mean never fully receiving praise because, even when someone tells us we did well, there is still a voice inside saying we could have done better. We keep reaching for the next compliment, the next affirmation, the next person to validate us, because none of it seems to last.

And eventually, the desire to be chosen by other people can leave us deeply dissatisfied with ourselves.

We become so focused on being acceptable, useful, impressive, or easy to love that we stop asking whether the life we are living is one we actually want.

Perhaps healing begins when we realize that being chosen is beautiful—but it should not require us to abandon ourselves in the process. It should not require we forget our worth as human beings. Nor accept toxic relationships, just to be “loved”.

You deserve better. You deserve to be truly chosen.

If it had been me telling the story, I would’ve had a disclaimer ready.

“That is if this happens and that works out…”

“If it’s God’s will...”

“God willing and the creek don’t rise.”

I still don’t know what in the world that means, but somewhere along the line it became part of my vocabulary. And honestly, those phrases aren’t bad. I believe every one of them. The problem is, sometimes I hide behind them. Sometimes they become less about trusting God and more about protecting myself in case things don’t work out.

It’s funny how we do that.

Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped EXPECTING good things and started managing our expectations instead. They teach us that in real estate all the time: "Manage your client's expectations." Fair enough...that's probably smart when you're negotiating a contract. I'm just not convinced we should be negotiating with our own dreams the same way.

But I know how I got here. It was subtle and intentional. I didn't wake up one day and decide to lower my expectations. Life just taught me how. One disappointment at a time, I got a little more careful, a little more cautious, and a little less willing to believe something really good was around the corner.

Life has a way of teaching you to brace yourself. A prayer doesn’t get answered the way you hoped. A relationship ends. A business idea doesn’t take off. Somebody disappoints you. You pick yourself up, keep moving, and before you know it, you’ve quietly changed the way you think about tomorrow.

Instead of simply being excited, we start managing our expectations. “We’ll see.” We’ll see if it works. We’ll see if they call. We’ll see if it lasts. We don’t even realize we’re doing it anymore.

I caught myself doing it this week, and I actually cringed. I could hear myself talking my way out of something that hadn't even happened yet.

I’m planning a move to Panama, and before I can even enjoy the thought of it, my brain starts asking questions. What about healthcare? What if Kingsley hates it? What if I don’t like it? What if I miss home? What if...what if...what if?

Lord, my brain can ruin a perfectly good idea in about 2.2 seconds!

Now, don’t get me wrong. Planning is smart. I’m going to ask every question I can think of before I move to another country. That’s just common sense. But there’s a difference between planning for the future and talking yourself out of it before you even get there.

I think I’ve been doing the second one.

The funny thing is, if one of my friends came to me with a dream, I’d probably encourage them. I’d tell them to go for it, pray about it, make a plan, and trust God.

Then I’d go home and tell myself all the reasons my own dream probably wouldn’t work.

How crazy is that?

Maybe that’s what I’ve been learning lately. Faith isn’t just believing God can do something; it’s believing He just might do something for you. Not because you’ve earned it or because you’ve finally figured everything out, but simply because He’s still God.

I don’t know what the next year is going to look like. I hope Panama is everything I’m hoping for. I hope the books I’m writing find the people they’re meant to find. I hope this little community we’re building keeps growing. Those are the things I’m praying for these days.

Will everything happen exactly the way I’ve planned? Probably not. Then again, has anything in my life ever happened exactly the way I planned? Also no. But I’ve decided I’m done assuming disappointment before I’ve even given joy a chance.

I'd rather EXPECT good things. Not because I'm naïve, overly optimistic, or unrealistic, but because I'm hopeful. I think there's a difference.

Maybe it’s time we all started EXPECTING good things again. ❤️

When I heard about Nolan Wells — an 18-year-old Black young man who went away with friends and never came home — I felt something I think a lot of Black people felt. Unease. Not because I know what happened to him. Because I know what has happened to enough of us before him.

We know our history. We’ve heard the stories our grandparents told, the warnings our parents gave us, and we’ve watched some of those same stories play out again in our own lifetime. We know the first explanation isn’t always the whole explanation. We know that when Black families ask hard questions, urgency doesn’t always follow. And we know what it feels like to be told not to make something “about race” before anybody’s even asked why race crossed our minds in the first place.

So when something doesn’t sit right, a lot of us have learned not to talk ourselves out of that feeling. That doesn’t mean throwing around accusations with no evidence behind them. It means asking questions. Paying attention. Refusing to let the desire to seem reasonable talk us out of looking closer.

Maybe that’s the first thing Nolan’s death should remind us of: trust the unease enough to ask the question. Not because every uneasy feeling means something sinister happened — most of the time it doesn’t. But because sometimes the question asked early enough is the one that matters most.

And Black mothers know something about asking questions.

Where are you going? Who are you going with? Who’s driving? Who else will be there? What time are you coming home? Send me the address. Call me when you get there. Text me the second you leave.

And the one every child on earth hates: who are their parents?

A Black mother’s kids roll their eyes at her. “Momma, you’re doing too much.” Maybe she is. But sometimes doing too much is exactly what this job requires.

There’s a particular kind of fear that comes with loving a Black child in this country. These mothers want their children to actually live — not just survive. They want them to travel, fall in love, build friendships with people from every background there is. They want them walking into rooms they themselves were once shut out of. They want them to move through the world without dragging fear into every new room they enter.

They do not want to raise children who are afraid of everybody who doesn’t look like them. But they can’t afford to raise children who are unaware, either. Those two things are not the same, and it’s worth sitting with that difference for a second.

Which brings me to the part of this that gets uncomfortable.

Some Black children have mostly white friends. Some have only white friends. And before anyone twists that sentence into something it isn’t — this is not an argument against interracial friendship. It is not a claim that white friends can’t genuinely love a Black child. They can. Plenty do.

But love doesn’t automatically come with awareness built in. And friendship doesn’t erase the fact that two people can be standing in the exact same spot, doing the exact same thing, and still not be carrying the exact same risk.

A white friend can walk into a situation and never once think about race. A Black child may not have that luxury. That friend’s parents might hear “we’re going out of town for the weekend” and just say, “have fun.” A Black momma is going to need names, numbers, addresses, license plates, and somebody’s momma’s maiden name if she can get it.

That’s not because she’s crazy.

Well — she might be a little crazy.

But that’s not why she’s asking. It’s because she understands something her child may not have learned yet: everybody you have fun with is not automatically somebody you should trust with your safety. Those are two completely different qualifications for friendship, and we owe it to our kids to teach them the difference before they find it out the hard way.

Maybe we need to teach children to choose friends differently. Not out of fear — out of care.

Because a real friend is more than somebody who invites you along. A real friend notices when you go quiet. Notices when you’re missing. Doesn’t shrug and assume you’re “probably fine.” A real friend knows enough about you to know when something’s out of character, knows enough about your family to know who to call, and understands that if y’all arrived together, there’s some responsibility for whether everybody leaves together too. A real friend doesn’t have to share your skin color to understand that your skin color might change how the world responds to you in a given room. And maybe most important of all — a real friend believes you the moment you say, “something doesn’t feel right here.”

That matters more than almost anything else on this list.

Because it’s worth wondering how much time we’ve spent teaching our children how to be a good friend, and how little time we’ve spent teaching them how to choose one.

We tell them: be kind. Share. Don’t judge people. Include everybody. Treat people equally. All good lessons, every one of them. But have we also taught them to pay attention to character? Who protects you when you’re vulnerable, and who disappears the moment it might cost them something? Who speaks up for you when you’re not in the room, and who lets the comment slide because it’s easier? Who notices you’re uncomfortable, and who pressures you to just get over it? Who makes jokes at your expense and calls it love, and who would never dream of it? Who expects you to shrink a little in order to belong, and who never once asked you to? Who would actually come looking for you if you went quiet? Who would think to call your mother?

Baby, do they know they have to bring you home?

Not literally, every single time — every mother knows her child is going to grow up and build a life she can’t hover over forever. “Bring you home” means something bigger than a car ride. It means: do the people you call friends understand that your life is precious? Do they treat your safety like it’s worth something? If something goes wrong, will they be the ones to sound the alarm — or the ones who assume somebody else already did? If you’re the only Black person in the room, will they notice the thing you need them to notice? If somebody says something ugly, will they go quiet and let it pass, or will they stand next to you? If you get uncomfortable, will they actually listen — or decide you’re overreacting because it doesn’t feel like a big deal to them?

And Black children — especially the ones whose closest circle doesn’t include many people who look like them — need to hear this part too: you don’t have to distrust your white friends. But you do need to know them. Really know them. Know what they believe when nobody Black is in the room. Know how their families talk about people who look like you when the door is closed. Know whether they get defensive the second race comes up, or whether they lean in and actually listen. Know if you can say “this feels different for me because I’m Black” without being laughed at, brushed off, or accused of making everything about race.

And please hear this part clearly: a person can be nice to you and still not understand you. A person can genuinely enjoy your company and still not know how to protect you. A person can call you their best friend and still be completely unequipped to recognize a danger you were taught to spot before you could read. None of that makes them evil. It just means you need discernment — real discernment, not suspicion dressed up as caution.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about what happened to Nolan Wells. We should resist the temptation to fill in those blanks with whatever story fits best with what we already believed going in. His family deserves the truth. Nolan deserves the truth. And truth requires evidence, not speculation wearing truth’s clothes.

But while investigators do their work, the rest of us don’t have to wait for the conversation that needs to happen with our own children. Especially our Black children.

Ask the questions. Even when they roll their eyes. Even when they swear everybody is fine. Even when a mother doesn’t want to be that mother.

Who are you going with? Where are you going? Who knows you’re there? Do you have a way home that doesn’t depend on anybody else’s plans? Is your phone charged? Can I track you? Do you even know exactly where you are right now?

And one more, maybe the most important one: if something feels wrong, will you leave?

Not after you’ve proven it. Not after everybody else agrees with you. Not after you’ve worried about hurting somebody’s feelings for saying it out loud.

Leave. Call home. It shouldn’t matter what time it is, how far away you are, or whether you were supposed to be there in the first place. It shouldn’t matter if you lied about where you were going. All of that can get sorted out later, in the daylight, together.

Come home.

Maybe that’s what Nolan Wells’ death means before we even know exactly what happened to him. It means asking more questions and no longer apologizing for the ones that make other people squirm. It means teaching our children that diversity in friendship is beautiful — and discernment in friendship is necessary, and one doesn’t cancel out the other. It means reminding them that belonging should never cost them their instincts, and that they never have to stay somewhere just to prove they weren’t scared.

And it means teaching them to choose people who understand something simple: if I call you my friend, your life matters to me. If something’s wrong, I notice. If you tell me you’re uncomfortable, I listen. If you go missing, I look for you. And if we leave together, I care whether we both make it home.

I pray the Wells family gets every answer they’re owed. I pray speculation gives way to truth, and that whatever that truth turns out to be, it isn’t hidden, softened, rushed, or ignored.

But tonight, I’m also praying that somewhere a Black mother asks one more question. That somewhere a Black child looks at their circle just a little differently. Not with suspicion.

With discernment.

Because none of us can protect a child from every person, every place, or every possibility this world throws at them. But we can teach them that choosing who gets close is one of the most important choices they’ll ever make.

And baby — please choose people who know they have to bring you home.

_{Editor’s Note: This piece reflects information publicly available as of July 22, 2026. The investigation into Nolan Wells’ death remains ongoing, and this article will not speculate beyond the facts currently known.}

Not because I suddenly have all the answers. I don’t. Not because I’ve become fearless. I definitely haven’t. And certainly not because every detail of my future has magically fallen into place.

Quite the opposite, actually.

There are days when the future excites me, and there are days when it scares me. I’m seriously considering moving to Panama. Starting over in another country. Learning a new way of life. Navigating a new language, new systems, new people and an entirely new normal.

At fifty-nine.

Even writing that feels a little crazy. Some days I’m looking at houses in Panama thinking, Oh, I could absolutely live there.

I can see it. The slower pace. Warm weather. New scenery. New experiences. Sitting somewhere beautiful with my coffee, writing, creating and discovering who I am in a place where nobody has already decided who I’m supposed to be.

And then there are other days when I look at everything involved and think, Girl, have you lost your whole entire mind????

Because starting over sounds romantic until you actually start making the list. Figure out residency. Figure out healthcare. Figure out what to do with my house. Figure out money. Figure out Spanish. And somehow figure out how to get Kingsley, my seventy-pound shadow who follows me from room to room, to another country without traumatizing either one of us.

Suddenly, “starting over in Panama” sounds a lot less like a beautiful Pinterest board and a lot more like paperwork.

And questions. So. Many. Questions.

What if I don’t like it? What if I miss home? What if I don’t make enough money? What if Kingsley doesn’t adjust? What if the language barrier is harder than I expect? What if I leave everything familiar and realize I made a mistake?

Fear always has questions. And to be fair, some of them are legitimate.

Planning matters. Preparation matters. Wisdom matters. I am not suggesting we close our eyes, make major life decisions and call it faith. I should research Panama. I should understand what this move would actually require.

But I also know myself.

There is a point where research stops being preparation and becomes me looking for one more reason to be afraid. And I have to recognize when I’ve crossed that line. Because sometimes we spend so much time asking what could go wrong that we never leave any room for what could go right.

So I started asking different questions.

What if I move and love it? What if I’m more adaptable than I think? What if I build a beautiful life? What if I meet people who become family? What if having more room to breathe gives me more room to create?

What if my income grows because I finally have the space to focus on the things I’ve been called to build? What if Kingsley finds himself a sunny spot somewhere, stretches his big ol’ body across it and adjusts faster than I do? What if I learn more Spanish than I think I can?

What if I’m not running away from my life? What if I’m walking toward it?

Faith isn’t believing nothing can go wrong. Faith is believing God is already present wherever I’m going.

Because here’s the thing about fear: it presents its predictions as facts. It tells us we’re too old. Too late. Not ready. Not prepared enough. Not financially secure enough. Not whatever-enough.

And fear doesn’t even need proof. It just needs possibility.

If something could go wrong, fear will sit there and convince you that it probably will. But I’ve had to remind myself of something: possibility works both ways.

Yes, I could move and hate it. I could also love it.

I could get lonely. I could also meet people I can’t imagine my life without.

Something could go completely wrong. Something could also go so unexpectedly right that six months later I wonder why I was ever this scared in the first place.

Fear doesn’t get to claim every “what if.”

What if it all works out?

And I don’t mean perfectly. That’s important.

Because when we say, “It’ll all work out,” sometimes it sounds like we’re promising ourselves some fairy-tale ending where everything happens exactly the way we planned, right on schedule, with no disappointment, inconvenience or ugly crying along the way.

That’s not what I mean.

Working out doesn’t always mean getting exactly what you asked for. Sometimes you discover that what you wanted was too small. Or you change your mind halfway there and realize changing your mind isn’t failure.

Maybe you come home with more wisdom than you had when you left. Maybe the closed door turns out to have protected you. Maybe Plan B becomes so good you stop calling it Plan B. And maybe you simply discover that you can survive an imperfect decision.

I think that last one matters, especially for those of us who overthink.

We act as though one wrong decision has the power to destroy our entire lives. We want guarantees. Maps. Signs. Preferably flashing ones.

And some of us will keep throwing out the same fleece, asking God the same question twelve different ways, hoping that eventually He’ll give us a different answer.

Okay, God, I know what You said...but if this is REALLY You, then show me one more sign.

Then He does.

And we’re like, Okay. But just one more.

At some point, we have to admit we’re not always asking for confirmation.

Sometimes we’re stalling.

We want God to show us the entire staircase, the floor plan, the inspection report and the appraisal before we lift one foot. I mean...is that really too much to ask?

Apparently, yes.

Because most of life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you only get enough light for the next step. Not the whole journey. Sometimes the provision shows up after you start moving. Sometimes confidence comes after the decision, not before it.

Sometimes you have to do it afraid.

And that makes me think about Peter. We all know the story. Jesus is walking on the water. Peter asks Jesus to tell him to come, and Jesus says, “Come.”

So, Peter gets out of the boat. Then he notices the wind. He gets scared. He starts sinking.

And somehow, that became the part we talk about most.

Peter took his eyes off Jesus. True.

But I think we’ve spent so much time talking about where Peter went wrong that we’ve almost skipped over something pretty incredible about what he did right.

Peter. GOT.OUT.OF.THE.BOAT.

Eleven other people stayed put. But Peter got out.

What if Peter never got out of the boat? Seriously. What if he had looked at that water and thought, ABSOLUTELY NOT! What if he let the possibility of sinking keep him from ever discovering the possibility of walking?

Yes, Peter started to sink. He got scared. He needed Jesus to reach for him.

But for a moment, that man WALKED ON WATER because he was brave enough to step where nobody else was willing to step.

I don’t think we give him enough credit for that.

We focus so much on the fact that he sank that sometimes we miss the miracle of the step. Maybe bravery doesn’t mean you never get scared. Maybe you can be brave and scared at the exact same time.

Maybe you can step out boldly and still have a moment when you think, Oh Lord, what have I done?

And maybe needing Jesus to catch you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have stepped out in the first place.

Sometimes the greatest failure isn’t sinking. Sometimes it’s never getting out of the boat at all.

I’ve lived long enough to know that worrying doesn’t protect me. It has never made disappointment hurt less. It has never prevented loss. It has never created provision.

All worrying has ever done is make me experience pain before anything has even happened. And half the time, the thing I was worried about never happened anyway.

When I look back over my life, there were so many times I didn’t know how things were going to come together. Seasons I thought might break me. Times I had to rebuild. Plans that changed without asking my permission. Moments when I questioned myself, my future and, if I’m being truthful, what in the world God was doing.

Yet somehow...I’m still here. Not untouched. Definitely not unchanged. But here.

I’ve survived every version of my life I once thought I wouldn’t survive. I’ve learned things I never planned to learn. I’ve built things I once had absolutely no idea how to build.

I’ve started businesses, written books, created platforms, walked into rooms that once intimidated me and started over more than once.

And apparently, I’m still not finished.

I am still becoming.

So maybe I owe the future a little more trust.

Maybe you do too.

Your “Panama” may not be another country. Maybe it’s leaving a relationship you’ve outgrown. Starting the business. Changing careers. Selling the house. Going back to school. Publishing the book. Dating again. Opening your heart after you swore you never would. Choosing yourself after spending decades helping everybody else build their lives.

Maybe you’re standing at the edge of something right now thinking, what if I do this and it doesn’t work?

I can’t promise you that it will. I can’t promise every plan will unfold beautifully. I can’t promise there won’t be hard days, and I certainly can’t promise you’ll never have a moment when you wonder whether you made the right decision.

But I can remind you of something you may have forgotten.

You are not the same person you were the last time life surprised you. You know more now. You’ve lived more now. You’ve survived some things. You’ve learned how to adjust and how to rebuild.

You’ve learned that sometimes you can cry on Tuesday and still handle your business on Wednesday.

You have evidence that you can begin again.

And if you are a woman of faith, you have something even greater than a guaranteed outcome. You have a God who does not require you to know the entire route before He agrees to travel with you.

So maybe I’m asking the wrong questions.

Instead of What if I make the wrong move? maybe I should ask, Do I trust God to guide me if the path changes?

Instead of What if everything falls apart? maybe I should ask, Haven’t I already proven that I know how to rebuild?

Instead of What if I fail? maybe the better question is, What could I learn that I will never learn by staying comfortable?

And this one...this one gets me.

Instead of asking, What if I leave and regret it?

Maybe I also need to ask:

What if I stay because I’m afraid...and regret that more?

Whew.

I am learning to stop treating fear like prophecy. Fear can speak. I’m not pretending it isn’t there. It just doesn’t get to be the only voice in the room.

Wisdom gets a voice. Experience gets a voice. Hope gets a voice. Faith definitely gets a voice.

And the woman I am still becoming? She gets a voice too.

So yes, I’m still preparing. I’m still researching. I’m still making lists. Probably way too many lists.

I’m still asking questions and figuring out what it would actually take to build a life in another country. But I’m also doing something I haven’t always allowed myself to do.

I’m imagining that it could be beautiful.

I’m making room for the possibility that this next chapter will not ruin me. It may reveal me.

And what if there’s something on the other side of all this fear?

On the other side of the doubt. The overthinking. The worrying. The endless questions.

What if there’s a life God has been trying to lead me toward, but I’ve been standing at the edge of it asking for one more sign?

What if some of the things I’ve been praying for are on the other side of a step I’ve been afraid to take? I don’t know.

But I think I’m finally willing to find out.

What if it all works out? What if it all works out?

What if the money comes together? What if the right doors open? What if I find my people? What if I surprise myself?

What if the life waiting for me isn’t perfect? What if it’s peaceful?

What if one day I look back and realize the thing I was terrified to begin became one of the best decisions I ever made?

What if God has already placed grace in places my feet haven’t reached yet?

What if the future isn’t waiting to punish me? What if it’s waiting to meet me?

I don’t know exactly what happens next. And for someone who likes to know things in advance, that is deeply, I mean DEEPLY, inconvenient.

But for the first time in a long time, I’m trying not to let that frighten me.

Maybe I don’t need the whole map. Maybe I just need enough courage for the next step.

Maybe I need to stop staring at the water long enough to get out of the boat.

Because fear doesn’t get to claim every “what if” in my life.

And instead of always asking myself what could go wrong, maybe it’s time I made a little more room for another possibility.

What if it all works out?