A Mama’s Word

04/11/2026

I met the void once. We didn’t get along.

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I think life is like walking a tightrope and salvation rests in your recognition that you’ll never be able to make it across without falling.

04/08/2026

I started something.
It’s called A Mama’s Word and it’s not here to teach anybody anything. It’s just me — a wife, a mom, myself — writing about the life I’m living and the woman I’m still becoming.
The first post is up. It’s called A Good Day and it’s exactly that.
Come read it if it sounds like something you need. 🤍

My hope is simple: that something here reminds you of the version of yourself you imagined when you were a little girl. Before the world got to you and told you that you had to be anything else. Click to read A Mama’s Word on Substack. Launched 26 minutes ago.

04/08/2026

https://open.substack.com/pub/amamasword

My hope is simple: that something here reminds you of the version of yourself you imagined when you were a little girl. Before the world got to you and told you that you had to be anything else. Click to read A Mama’s Word on Substack. Launched 26 minutes ago.

01/08/2026

Modernity breeds madness.
Go outside.
Breathe.
Remember you will die.
Starve the outrage.
This is the revolution.

12/22/2025

🩷

12/19/2025

I exist in a perpetual state of preparing for the next need, so I didn’t notice the quiet at first. I stood at the counter longer than necessary, not because I was tired, but because nothing was being asked of me.

It was strange how quickly my mind went somewhere else once it had room. I didn’t roam too far, but just far enough to hold a thought that didn’t belong to the moment.

An open door doesn’t mean much without walls. Protection is a vocation. Everything I love lives here.

I wasn’t thinking about anything current, but about how everything I own that matters fits inside these rooms. How freedom, if it means anything at all, has to be shaped. A free-for-all isn’t freedom. It’s exposure. Chaos dressed up as generosity.

The clock read later than I thought and I needed to get lunch ready. I reached for the bread and placed it on a novelty plate we had gotten from the Rainforest Cafe. I spread the peanut butter, jelly dripped from the knife. Real freedom has edges. It’s held. It’s chosen.

Liberation isn’t escape. It’s the decision to stop looking for one.

“Lunch time?” I heard a small voice ask from the entrance of the kitchen.

I wiped my hands on a towel, cut the sandwich the way she likes, and put the plate on her little table. The thought didn’t finish. It didn’t need to. Everything I love was already sitting right in front of me.

11/30/2025

Most of us grew up hearing that Cain’s offering just wasn’t good enough. That’s the version that makes God sound picky, like He prefers shepherds to gardeners.

But lately as I’m learning how to raise a child in the faith while also wrestling out my own salvation, I’m seeing the story differently.

It’s not about vegetables versus livestock or God liking one brother more than the other. It’s not even about quality. It’s about work versus sacrifice.

Cain gave his best work, while Abel gave his greatest surrender. Cain brings God an offering of the ground, the fruit of his sweat, his toil, and his effort. It’s not that his work was bad. Cain wasn’t slacking. He wasn’t disrespectful. He offered what he produced.

Abel, on the other hand, offered blood, life itself, something he couldn’t manufacture or control. Abel didn’t present his effort. He presented what God entrusted to him.

One brother said:
“Here’s what I made.”

The other said:
“Here’s what You gave and I return it.”

Genesis tells very literally, “Cursed is the ground because of you.” (Gen. 3:17)

Cain is offering something that grew from cursed soil. The offering is a symbol of the human attempt to climb out of the fall by effort, sweat, and self reliance.

Abel is offering something untouched by human invention. He’s giving a life God created, a symbol of surrender.

Once I saw the difference between work and sacrifice, I started recognizing it everywhere in scripture. The Bible states that “Obedience is better than sacrifice” and speaks on “a broken and contrite heart…” We see sacrifice at The Temple, the Levitical priesthood, Passover, Abraham on the mountain, the prophets rebuking empty rituals, Christ on the Cross. Every single one of these moments is God repeating Himself, “I don’t want what you can build. I want what you can surrender.”

Cain embodies the Spirit of Religion and Abel the Spirit of Worship.

Cain brings a gift that says:
“Look what I accomplished.”

Abel brings a gift that says:
“Look what You gave.”

Cain is the first legalist.
Abel is the first worshiper.

One trusts in effort.
The other trusts in God.

It is so easy to slip into Cain’s mindset even when we think we’re serving God. Especially when we are trying to be the perfect wife, the perfect mom, the perfect Christian.

Cain is the part of us that wants to earn it.
Abel is the part of us that wants to surrender.

If Abel shows us the first acceptable offering, Jesus is the last and perfect one.

Not the sweat of man, not the works of the cursed ground, not human striving or performance, but God offering God.

God is not asking for our performance. He’s not asking for our curated perfection, our spotless home, our spiritual competency, or our mother of the year credentials.

He’s asking for surrender in the quiet things, to we pray even though we’re tired, repent even when we’re embarrassed, obey even when we don’t fully understand, and to trust Him with our children because we finally accept they belong to Him before they belong to us.

If we can understand the difference between Cain’s offering and Abel’s,
you can understand the entire Bible.

From Genesis to Revelation, God is telling the same story:

“I don’t need your work.
I want your heart.”

Maybe the hardest part about growing into mature faith is realizing that the thing God wants most from us is the one thing we can’t produce, our very lives themselves.

11/04/2025

Sometimes I sit with myself and ask, What is life?
It’s a heavy question. Heavier than I often understand.

In this life, I am given a choice to be separated from God or to draw near to Him. I know what separation feels like. I’ve chosen it before, even if unconsciously. The quiet drifting away confusing freedom for distance, but now I choose closeness.

Life doesn’t make much sense outside of communion. Without it, everything feels like random moments strung together. Beautiful, maybe, but hollow. You can spend your whole life trying to find meaning in those fragments and still end up staring into the dark.

When in communion, those same moments change. They still come and go, fragile and unpredictable, but they begin to hum with purpose. They lead somewhere. They lead Home.

I used to dance in darkness, drinking in the absurdism of it all and finding excitement in the chaos, beauty in the not knowing.

Now, I bask in the Light. Still surrounded by mystery, but it no longer taunts me. It holds me.
The same mystery that once felt like madness now feels like mercy.

Maybe life isn’t meant to be solved.
Maybe it’s meant to be shared with the One who created it, sustains it, and calls us back into His presence again and again.

“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
— John 1:4–5

11/04/2025

I used to believe in revolution… or maybe I just believed in the thrill of it, the idea that everything broken could be set right if people simply rose up and disrupted the system. The dramatic overthrow. The cleansing fire.

But I’ve grown since then. Maturing, having a family, and especially becoming a mother has revealed something deeper: most “revolutions” don’t heal, they just invert power and call it justice.

Revolt is often just as cruel as the system it claims to oppose.

It centers around vengeance and calls itself virtue. It’s fueled by rage and fed by ego. The modern “revolutionary” will call for violence with the same mouth they use to call for peace in other nations. They don’t care about the collateral, only the symbolism of destruction.

Real change doesn’t come in one explosive moment. It unfolds in a series of small, intentional, almost invisible acts of love, discipline, and unwavering commitment.

Life is cyclic. Even the best systems eventually fail and become the very parasite they swore to destroy. Empires fall. Movements become machines. Ideals become idols.

But if we do our part, prayerfully, we will always have centered and grounded people who bring us back to something that looks just. Something that echoes Eden, without pretending we can build Heaven on earth by force.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
— Romans 12:21

10/31/2025

I love Halloween. Some people can’t get into it, and that’s fine. For me, it’s a reminder that we will all die and death is beautiful because through it, we meet God. When I look at this season through the lens of faith, I see a moment to remember that even death must bow to God.

I saw someone comment once about how the store Spirit Halloween is filled with witches and demons, blood and gore. That is true. Fear and wickedness are definitely part of what’s celebrated in modern culture, but honestly, that’s not unique to Halloween. The world celebrates darkness every day and on Halloween, it just takes off the mask.

The same truth runs through every holy day we celebrate.

Christmas can be a day of consumerism and excess, or it can be the day we remember that God humbled Himself to become flesh for our salvation.
Easter can be about fertility, bunnies and baskets, or it can be the day we proclaim the resurrection.

As mothers, as families, we get to decide what these days mean within our homes.
We can let the world define them for us, or we can reclaim them as holy pauses in the year to draw our hearts back to God.

Halloween reminds me to teach my child that fear doesn’t get to win because Jesus already has. Life and death both belong to the same Author, and that when you walk with Him, even the night glows with His light.

“Even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You.”
— Psalm 139:12

Happy Halloween everyone! 👻🎃