I was the kid my parents would regularly remind to stand up straighter. Because I’d slouch. If that was you too, you know how you sometimes feel like you never outgrew the label of insecure adolescent.

Links mentioned:

1. The worship songs I love best.
2. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up here.
3. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

I’ll walk you through the key habits in my current morning routine, not to tell you what to include in yours, but to show you how to use a framework that can flex with the time you have available on any given day. Here’s what I’m believing for you: hunger to know God more fully and grace for what it looks like in your actual life.

Links mentioned:

1. Breath prayers to combat anxiety.
2. The worship songs I love best.
3. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up here.
4. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

Ever feel like you’re on the operating table? Like all your wound-tight knots and woundedness are under scrutiny?

That’s where I was just the other day—asking a brave question in my journal then heading outside to work through it with God while I walked.

When you find yourself turning well wishes for the weekend into “leave me alone,” assuming genuine questions indicate annoyance and obligation, and taking gentle correction as confirmation you can’t do anything right, you’ve got to get to the bottom of it.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up here.
2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

The very spots that deplete us of our rightness and self-sufficiency open us up to truth that frees and a God who redeems. The fractures sting, but they deflate pride, make more room for God inside. They help us get out of our own way so God can have His perfect way in us.

I’ve been one to pray it’s behind me soon. Figured out fast. Healed fully and speedily.

But that’s often not God’s way. He sees what’s beneath confident exteriors and denials of help. Knows where words have wedged then splintered. Where we’re rehashing the past or fearing the future.

Sometimes He lets us break so He can repair the breach, not in a quick-fix way but with patient, gentle care that heals through to the bone. He also nudges us toward each other as we mature in our faith.

Why? Because we seek reassurance that we’re not alone. We long to be held while we’re lending each other courage to try again, truth to combat false narratives we’ve adopted, and trust that God is more than able to make impossible things happen.

Here’s the thing: we get to prop up each other’s arms and encourage discouraged hearts and stand in solidarity. Our very presence becomes an anchor, tethering each other to hope that runs in abundance.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up here.
2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

Trees arch overhead, like God bending towards us. Distance thins and glory pools—and I am drenched.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up here.
2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

Let’s talk tips for adding positive voices to our list and giving more attention to the ones we already listed.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up here.
2. Joyce Meyers’ “Knowing Who I Am In Christ.”
3. Grab the Songs I Play on Repeat playlist from the resource library!
4. My favorites to follow on Instagram: Jennifer Dukes Lee, (in)courage, The Ruth Experience, Jill E. McCormick, Jennifer Sakata, Robyn Chapman, and Caesar Kalinowski.
5. Mary Demuth’s 90-day Bible reading challenge.
6. Try Dwell Differently: Overcome Negative Thinking with the Simple Practice of Memorizing God’s Truth
7. Book rec: She Believed HE Could, So She Did: Trading Culture’s Lies for Christ-Centered Empowerment.)
8. Guided journal rec: Stuff I’d Only Tell God.
9. Alli Holcomb’s All of My Days album.
10. Wrap Yourself In The Word exercise.
11. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

That’s what I envisioned for the rest of my life—overseas missions. I wanted to follow Mother Teresa’s footsteps to India.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up here.
2. For Enneagram insight into how you can lean into your strengths as a missional neighbor and best love your neighbors, grab my (free) Enneaneighboring lists—available both as phone wallpaper and printables.
3. Finally, take the 30-day missional living challenge as you read Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. It’s free on Kindle for a few days and you can get a sample week from my resource library anytime.
4. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

If you’re like me, you’d rather re-live the happy moment before the scar formed. The day at the waterpark with your 4-H club or the bike ride with your boyfriend or the ease of slicing vegetables with a Cutco knife. The untainted dream, memory, relationship. But what changed you is the pain. What changes all of us is the things that give God open access.

Links mentioned:

1. Neighboring Tip of the Week email series.

2. Stuff I'd Only Tell God by Jennifer Dukes Lee (aff link).

3. Relentless by Michelle Cushatt (aff link).

4. Find Your People by Jennie Allen (aff link).

5. Read the written version of this episode HERE.