Get Ready With God

Ep. 235: The Pressure to Be Hopeless

A woman at church yesterday put words to something I've been feeling but couldn't quite name: the pressure to be negative. Not just cultural pressure to be negative, but the sense that despair and outrage have become the moral high ground. That if you're a good person paying attention, you're angry and hopeless and posting about it. I share a personal story about a time I got called out for not posting about an immigration situation while I was quietly helping families in my own neighborhood, and I make the case for a different way to fight. Hope is not naivety. Positivity is not opting out. And I think normalizing both of those things right now is actually the harder, more important work.

Ep. 234: Performative Christianity

I've been noticing the same theme showing up everywhere in my life lately, so I'm putting it on record. I believe God is inviting us to graduate from black and white, checklist-style living into something harder and better: holding complexity, living in the gray, and letting that be the standard. I get a little niche with my Mormon faith to make the point, but it applies everywhere. When we stop box-checking, performative action loses its power, judgment gets harder to justify, and we finally get free enough from ourselves to actually love other people well.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ep. 233: God Isn't Insecure and This Song Really is About Us.

I share a newly articulated belief that's reshaping how I follow God: everything He asks of me is for my own good. Not because He needs something from me, but because He doesn't need anything at all. I unpack my past season of atheism, what I used to get wrong about jealousy and commandments, and why choosing this as a baseline assumption makes trust a whole lot easier.

Ep. 232: I Did Everything Right and It Got Worse

I used to believe that following God meant things would eventually go the way I wanted. Then the worst years of my life happened while I was trying the hardest. This is what I learned about prayer, entitlement, and what it actually means to trust God when He does not give you the miracle you asked for.

Ep. 231: The Complacency That Feels Like Conviction

I have seen this pattern wreck people in their careers. I have seen it wreck people in their faith. And I have done both. This episode is about the moment you stop demanding that God, or your religion, or your marriage, or your motherhood owe you something and start realizing the power you actually have to choose your own way.

Ep. 229: The Hard Truth That Saved Me

This episode might not be for you. If you're already self-sacrificing to the point of destruction, skip this one. But I have to be honest about what has actually saved me, because I can't tell you anything different. Every time I've hit a breaking point and prayed to be rescued, the answer has been more. More service, more sacrifice. And it has worked every single time.

Ep. 228: The Quiet Cost

I spoke on unchangeable worth at a conference while privately struggling to feel my own. Then flew across the country to speak on grief with strangers and felt more at home than I did in my own city. It was a good reminder. The path God actually calls us to walk is not always the one people approve of. That's not evidence it's wrong. But there is a cost. And the only way through it is going back to the source.

Ep. 227: You Can't Opt Out

There was a time when dissonance felt like a reason to opt out. I did it with faith for years. But we're past that. Dissonance is in every relationship, every job, every person. You can't opt out of everything. So we might as well learn to hold it, because when we do, things get deeper, not harder. That's been true in my faith, my marriage, and honestly, my feelings about AI.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ep. 226: Decision Paralysis

I spent months waiting for God to tell me what to quit. Nothing came. So I just started quitting things, one by one, and the guidance showed up in the action. Not before it. Waiting on God can quietly become non-action, and black and white thinking about right and wrong can paralyze us completely. God trusts you. The question is whether you trust yourself.

Ep. 225: You Don't Have to Solve It

Noah Kahn can articulate something without knowing how to fix it. So can I. Being able to name a feeling is not the same as having the answer, and I think we've been wrong about what counts as valuable. God rarely hands me a solution. He hands me creativity, relationships, experiences. We're not only here to solve for x. We're here to build the equation.