A lot of people have asked me where I started, when I decided I wanted to start reading the Bible everyday. Truth is… I didn’t have a plan. I was at a place in my life where I was tired of seeing Bible verses scroll past my fed on Instagram and not know where they came from and what their bigger story was. It was actually a verse in the book Thirty One Days of Prayer for the Dreamer and Doer by The Well Studio that lead me to my starting point.
Chapter 10 on identity. Ironic to me now that its subject is something I had been struggling with for so long and JUST NOW, as I’m crafting this post, did I realize this. Back then, work struggles paired with motherhood had me really questioning my purpose in life. I really felt like I was stuck and not successful. I asked myself, “Was I pushing a square peg through a round hole by keeping at the same thing I had been doing for the past 10 years? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to keep on the same path.” I couldn’t figure out what my purpose was (or the purpose of my business, or place in the market) or how to align my passion with my work. Heck, I was even unsure of what exactly it was I was passionate about. “How did I get here!!?!?” It was the ultimate identity crisis.
And so, as I flipped the pages of that chapter I came upon the verse Romans 8:38 “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.”
Did you hear that? “NEITHER OUR FEARS FOR TODAY OR WORRIES ABOUT TOMORROW CAN SEPARATE US FROM GOD’S LOVE.” But yet I DID feel so separated from God. Here was another verse that was powerful in theory, but I have no idea where its origin was, so it didn’t resonate completely with me. So I threw my hands up in a very “Jesus take the wheel” kind of way and decided I’m just going to do it. I’ve been saying it for a while, I wrote it down in my #powersheets, I’ve tried and failed several times, but this time I’m going to start reading the Bible and I’m going to start right here – in the book of Romans. Perhaps, if I spent more time with God, maybe I wouldn’t feel so distant and these worries would dissolve on their own.
And that’s exactly what happened. Certainly not overnight, but over the course of the last two years, my inner dialogue and outlook on life has been transformed because I have realized that I am not made to tackle the struggles of this world alone.
After reading Romans, I knew I needed to read for myself the history of Jesus’ life to dive deeper into my faith, so I chose the Gospel of Luke. Since then I’ve read Acts, I intermingle a Psalm on certain days and I’m currently re-reading Romans. My plan is to re-read one of the Gospels every year from Christmas time to Easter as I continue to study other books of the Bible.
And there you have it – my starting point story. What’s yours?
PS – I HIGHLY recommend reading this book. Thirty two women just like me actually wrote this book together. Reading their struggles and prayers on the subject of identity, comparison, faith, marriage, wellness, balance, etc made me realize I was not alone in my struggles. I re-read it constantly.
And if you missed the announcement, click here to read the story about how the Hope Planner came to be.
