I knew this season was coming.

I just didn’t realize it would arrive all at once.

Within the span of two weeks, our son got married and our baby girl left for her first year of college.

One minute, our house was full of wedding plans, boxes, packed suitcases, people coming and going, and all the ordinary chaos. The next, it was eerily quiet.

There’s hardly any laundry to do.

The stairs are void of backpacks and shoes.

No one is yelling from another room asking where something is. No one needs a ride. No one is rummaging through the kitchen late at night.

The country songs weren’t lying.

Don’t blink.

You’re gonna miss this

After spending years wishing everyone would put their stuff away, I now miss the stuff.

Most parents will tell you this season is bittersweet.

They’re right.

Either one of these moments would be a major life transition for a parent, especially for a mom. Watching your child get married and begin a family of their own. Dropping your youngest off at college and driving away without them.

But both, back-to-back?

It has been an emotional roller coaster.

And yes, I was prepared.

I knew the dates were coming.

The counseling appointments were strategically scheduled before and after.

Both of my kids are thriving. They’re happy. They’re stepping into lives we prayed they would someday have. I believe they are exactly where God has prepared them to be.

This is good.
Really good.

But none of that changes the fact that it has also been hard.

And I think sometimes we have a difficult time allowing those two things to coexist.

We Can Do Hard Things. But What If I Don’t Want To?

A friend of mine often reminds me, “We can do hard things.”

And she’s right.

We can.

But if I’m being completely transparent, sometimes I don’t want to do the hard thing.

I don’t want to grind.

I don’t want to persevere.

I don’t want to keep pushing through.

Sometimes I want the thing God is doing in my life to feel easy.

Clear.

Comfortable.

I want growth without stretching.
Change without loss.
New beginnings without endings.

But that isn’t usually how life works.

Some of the best things we experience require us to release something we loved.

A child grows up.
A relationship changes.
A season ends.
A door opens somewhere new, which means another one has to close.

There’s a story in 1 Samuel that has felt different to me lately.

Hannah desperately wanted a child. She prayed and wept and asked God for a son. And eventually, Samuel was born…the answer to years of longing.

Then Hannah had to release him.

She had promised Samuel to the Lord, so while he was still young, she brought him to the temple and entrusted him to Eli’s care.

The thing she had prayed for became something she eventually had to surrender.

I can’t imagine that moment was easy.

But difficult didn’t mean wrong.

Her grief didn’t mean God had stopped being faithful.

And her sadness didn’t erase the goodness of what God was doing.

Maybe that’s something I’m learning too.

Sometimes grief isn’t evidence that something is wrong.

Sometimes it’s evidence that something mattered.

Not Every Hard Thing Is Bad

A few days ago, another friend sent me a DM.

She said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about:
“Not every hard thing is bad.”

What makes those words even more significant is the person who sent them.

She’s a forty-year-old mom who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

And somehow, in the middle of her own uncertainty, she reminded me of something I desperately needed to hear.

Not every hard thing is bad.

Hard and bad are not synonyms.

Sometimes they overlap, of course. There are hard things that are devastating, unjust, painful, and deeply wrong. I don’t want to minimize those realities or slap a positive spin on suffering.

But sometimes something can be completely good…and still be incredibly hard.

My son getting married isn’t bad.
It’s beautiful.

Watching him love his wife, build a home, and begin this next chapter is something I have prayed for.

My daughter leaving for college isn’t bad.
It’s exciting.

She is growing, learning, becoming, discovering who she is outside the walls of our home.

This is what we raised them to do.
This is what we wanted.
This is what we prayed for.

And somehow, it still hurts.

Because letting go is hard.
Moving on is hard.
Watching a chapter close is hard.
Standing in the unfamiliar space between what was and whatever comes next is hard.

And maybe we don’t always need to talk ourselves out of that.

Maybe we don’t need to rush to gratitude so quickly that we bypass grief.

Maybe we don’t have to say, “But they’re happy!” every time our eyes fill with tears.

Both things can be true.

I am incredibly grateful.

And I miss them.

I am proud of the lives they are building.

And I miss the shoes on the stairs.

I love seeing them become independent.

And sometimes I would give anything to hear someone yell, “Mom!” from upstairs again.

Good doesn’t cancel grief…and grief doesn’t cancel good.

Maybe Hard Isn’t Always a Warning

I think we’ve sometimes learned to treat discomfort like a warning sign.

If something is hard, maybe we made the wrong choice.
If we’re sad, maybe something is wrong.
If we’re grieving, maybe we should go back.

But what if hard isn’t always telling us to stop?

What if sometimes hard simply means we are crossing a threshold?

We are releasing.
We are growing.
We are making room for something we can’t fully see yet.

There are seasons when faith looks brave and bold and confident.

And then there are seasons when faith looks a little more like reaching for the hem of Jesus’ robe and refusing to let go.

That’s where I am right now.

I don’t know exactly what comes next.

For over two decades, so much of my life has been shaped around being their mom: the schedules, the needs, the school calendars, the laundry, the constant movement of people through our home.

And suddenly there is space.

More space than I asked for.
More quiet than I’m accustomed to.
More unknown than I’m comfortable with.

I could fill it quickly.

I could distract myself from the ache.

I could rush to figure out what the next version of my life is supposed to look like.

But maybe I don’t have to know yet, which is also hard because I struggle with ambiguity.

Maybe my invitation right now is simply to stay close to Jesus in the transition.

To trust Him with the people I love.
To trust Him with the chapters that have ended.
And to trust Him with the blank pages that are unwritten.

Because while I don’t know what comes next, God does.

And the same God who was faithful in the noisy house is faithful in the quiet one.

The same God who carried me through the years of raising children will meet me in the years after they’ve gone.

The same God who was present in the beginning is already waiting in whatever comes next.

So yes.

This is hard.

Maybe it will be hard for a while.

But hard doesn’t mean bad.

Look Again

Sometimes we are so quick to escape uncomfortable emotions that we never stop to ask what they might be revealing. There are no perfect answers here, only an invitation to get curious about the hard places in your life and what Jesus might be asking you to notice there.

• Is there something in your life right now that is good and hard at the same time?

• Have you been interpreting discomfort, grief, or uncertainty as evidence that something is wrong when it may simply be part of transition?

• What might it look like to stop trying to figure out what comes next and simply stay close to Jesus in the space between what was and what will be?

Keep Reading

If you’re navigating change, letting go, or learning to trust God in a season you didn’t quite feel ready for, keep reading:

Change Is Hard but Necessary
A reflection on grief, growth, and trusting God through life’s unexpected transitions.

Extending Grace for Who You Were
Our hindsight should bring clarity, not condemnation.

Freedom to Love
What Olivia Dean’s concert reminded me about growing older, following Jesus, and loving our neighbor.

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

When you start looking at life, culture, faith and the church from a different perspective, one question rises pretty quickly:

Who should I believe?

I remember asking that question when I first began untangling my faith from some of the traditions, assumptions and interpretations I had inherited.

I was willing to “do the work.” I just had no idea where to turn.

There were so many opinions.

So many books.

So many podcasts.

So many pastors, theologians, authors, creators and commentators telling me what was true, what was biblical and what Christians were supposed to believe.

How was I supposed to know which voices were worth investing in and which ones were just more noise?

To be honest, it wasn’t easy.

I found myself overwhelmed and frustrated. And when I asked people for guidance, I was often met with some version of the same response:

It’s not my job to teach you.

But that was the thing.

I wasn’t asking anyone to teach me.

I wasn’t looking for someone to hand me a list of conclusions and tell me what to believe next. I just wanted a beacon. Something that could point me in a direction and say, Start here.

I never really found what I was looking for.

So eventually, I figured out how to navigate it myself.

And now that I have, I don’t believe in hoarding what I learned.

Because deconstruction can be tough, exhausting, and overwhelming all on its own.

So can discipleship.

Both [deconstruction & discipleship] require us to examine what we’ve been taught, ask difficult questions and decide which voices we’re going to allow to shape us. And when you’re standing in the middle of all of that, trying to separate truth from tradition, interpretation from Scripture and conviction from someone else’s very confident opinion, it can feel like turbulence.

If I can make that process a little easier for someone else, I want to.

Over time, I started using three questions to help me decide whether a voice was worth listening to.

Not whether I agreed with everything they said, because I wasn’t sure I believed narratives that contradicted my long-held beliefs.

I simple filtered them by whether they deserved my attention in the first place.

1. Does it align with Jesus?

This is always my first filter.

I don’t care how popular the speaker is, how many books they’ve sold, how large their church is, how many Bible verses they include in the caption or how confidently they say, “The Bible clearly says…”

If what they are teaching contradicts what Jesus said, did and commanded, I have a problem.

Because despite what people sometimes assume, deconstruction isn’t necessarily about leaving faith or rejecting Jesus.

For me (and many others), it’s the opposite.

Deconstruction is about trying to discover Jesus amid the wreckage humans have made by manipulating faith, misusing Scripture and confusing our traditions with God’s commands.

The more I questioned, the more important Jesus became, and the more I kept returning to the Gospels to see…

How did he treat people?

Who did he move toward?

Who did he challenge?

What did he say mattered most?

What did he tell his followers to do?

Jesus became the lens through which I began examining everything else.

That doesn’t mean every complicated theological question can be answered with “Well, Jesus was nice.” Jesus said hard things. He challenged people. He called people to repentance, obedience and costly discipleship.

But he also showed us what God is like.

So before I accept someone’s interpretation of Scripture or their opinion about culture, politics, the church or another human being, I ask: Does this sound like Jesus?

2. Are they telling me what Scripture says OR what they think Scripture means?

Those are not always the same thing.

One of the biggest shifts in my faith came when I learned to recognize the difference between Scripture and someone’s interpretation of Scripture.

We all interpret.

Pastors interpret. Theologians interpret. Authors interpret. Your favorite Christian creator interprets.

So do you.
So do I.

That doesn’t make interpretation bad. It simply means we should stop treating every interpretation as though God personally dictated it.

When someone quotes a verse, I’ve learned to ask what surrounds it.

Who was speaking?

Who were they speaking to?

What was happening historically and culturally?

Does the conclusion being drawn actually come from the passage?
Or did someone arrive with a conclusion and then find a verse that sounded good next to it?

That little pause has saved me from nodding along with a lot of very clickable Christian content.

Sometimes the verse is biblical, but our application isn’t.

3. What is this voice producing?

Jesus said we recognize a tree by its fruit.

I’ve started paying attention to the fruit of the voices I consume too.

Do they make me more curious or more certain that everyone outside my group is wrong?

Do they help me love people better? Or do they teach me to fear, mock or despise them?

Do they leave room for humility, questions and complexity? Can they admit when they don’t know something? Can they acknowledge another perspective without immediately treating it as dangerous?

And maybe most importantly: What is listening to them producing in me?

Because not every voice that keeps us engaged is helping us grow.

Some voices keep us angry.

Some keep us afraid.

Some make us feel superior.

Some give us an enemy to blame and then keep us coming back for another reason to be outraged.

That may be great for an algorithm.
I’m not convinced it’s great for a disciple.

The voices worth listening to don’t have to agree with me on everything. In fact, some of the people who have helped me grow the most have challenged what I believed.

But they consistently point me back toward truth, humility, wisdom and Jesus.

And I’ve discovered that is a pretty strong light in a very dark and dim world.

Look Again

Before you move on, think about the voices currently shaping your faith. Not just the ones you disagree with—the ones you instinctively trust, quote, share, or assume are right.

• Who do you trust most when it comes to faith and Scripture, and why?

• Is there a belief you’ve accepted as biblical just because someone you trusted told you it was?

• What is the content you consume producing in you? Is it making you more like Jesus? Or more angry, isolated, biased, or fearful?

Keep Reading

If this article sparked your interest, you may also enjoy these:

Discipled by the Algorithm
What gets lost when sermons become soundbites?

Snakes on a Plane
Jesus said to spread the Gospel. But did He mean like this?

Have We Turned Church into Target?
How convenience has quietly shaped the church, and how we can refocus on making disciples.

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

A couple of weeks ago, a sermon clip from Pastor Stephen Chandler showed up in my Threads feed.

He was talking about appearance and referenced a familiar verse:

“People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
—1 Samuel 16:7

But the application caught my attention.

The point seemed to be that while God may look at our hearts, people look at our outward appearance. So if we want to lead or influence people, we need to consider how we look.

Almost immediately, I had questions.

That isn’t what 1 Samuel 16 is teaching. And the examples he used carried another layer that couldn’t be ignored.

Here were some of the concerns I—and others in the comments—had.

1. The verse is taken out of context

In 1 Samuel 16, God sends Samuel to Jesse’s house to anoint Israel’s next king.

Samuel sees Jesse’s oldest son, Eliab, and immediately thinks, Surely this is the one.

He looks like a king.

God corrects Samuel:

“Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at.”
—1 Samuel 16:7

Then comes the familiar line:

“People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

The point isn’t that people judge appearances, so we should accommodate their judgments. Samuel was doing exactly that—and God corrected him.

People evaluate what they can see. God sees deeper.

Using this passage to support adjusting ourselves because people judge appearances reverses its emphasis.

God wasn’t telling Samuel, People care about appearances, so make sure you look the part.

He was correcting Samuel for assuming the person who looked the part must be the right person.

2. He perpetuates negative stereotypes

The examples bothered me too.

Durags. Bonnets. Certain hairstyles. Certain clothes.

Those examples carry cultural assumptions.

When markers associated with Black culture become shorthand for people may not take you seriously, we have to ask whether we’re teaching wisdom or reinforcing stereotypes.

One commenter pointed out that the same logic could easily be applied to Chandler himself. His hairstyle could cause someone in another cultural environment to make assumptions about him.

Should he change it so those people will listen?

What about natural hair? Braids? Locs? An accent? Tattoos? A woman preaching?

At what point does “consider how people perceive you” become conform to whatever makes other people comfortable?

And whose version of “professional,” “respectable” or “appropriate” gets to set the standard?

Another commenter asked an even better question:

Are we more concerned with looking like Christians or living like Christ?

Scripture talks about outward evidence of inward transformation, but that evidence looks like fruit. (Galatians 5:22–23) Jesus said people would recognize His disciples by their love. (John 13:35)

Our lives should reflect what God is doing within us.

But that is very different from assuming Christian influence requires a particular aesthetic.

Jesus repeatedly chose people society overlooked: the Samaritan woman, lepers, tax collectors, women others condemned, fishermen.

Which makes me ask my favorite question:

But what did Jesus do?

Did Jesus teach people to become more socially acceptable so they could influence others?

Or did He challenge the assumptions people used to decide who was worthy of being heard?

I had serious concerns about the clip.

And then I realized something.

I had only watched a clip.

3. The clip can be problematic and incomplete

Both things can be true.

I can believe the Scripture was applied poorly, question the stereotypes in the examples and still acknowledge that I hadn’t heard the entire sermon.

Maybe Chandler offered more nuance elsewhere.

Maybe the full sermon would make my concerns worse.

I didn’t know.

And suddenly the question became bigger than one preacher:

How much can we responsibly conclude from a fragment of a full message?

Because this is increasingly how we encounter Christian teaching.

Sermons become clips. Books become quote cards. Bible studies become reels, TikToks and Threads posts.

Our theology can begin to take shape through fragments.

That matters because social media isn’t designed for nuance. It’s designed to keep us watching.

Outrage travels. Shock travels. Conflict travels.

A pastor carefully explaining the historical context of a passage probably won’t spread as quickly as one sentence that makes thousands of people say:

WAIT. WHAT?

Sometimes those clips expose genuinely harmful teaching, and they should be examined.

Teachers carry enormous responsibility for how they handle Scripture. James warns that teachers will be judged more strictly (James 3:1), and Paul tells Timothy to become someone “who correctly handles the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

Those who teach Scripture have a responsibility to represent it faithfully. So do those who package and share that teaching online.

But those of us consuming it have a responsibility too.

Because Christian clickbait can misrepresent a sermon just as easily as a sermon can misrepresent Scripture.

4. Sermon clips aren’t discipleship

Thirty seconds can start deiscipleship.

It can’t replace it.

I create short-form Christian content too.

I don’t think sermon clips, reels or Threads posts are inherently bad.

They can introduce an idea, challenge an assumption or send us back to Scripture.

Sometimes thirty seconds makes someone want to learn more. But that should be the beginning.

Acts gives us a model for what comes next.

When Paul and Silas taught in Berea, the people eagerly received their message—but then they “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11)

They listened.

Then they checked.

They were receptive and discerning.

Maybe that’s the posture we need in an era of thirty-second theology.

When a clip makes us angry, inspired or certain someone is wrong, maybe our first question shouldn’t be:

Do I agree with this?

Maybe it should be:

What am I missing?

What does the passage actually say?

What context surrounds the clip?

Does the application align with the larger witness of Scripture?

And am I trying to understand—or simply confirming what I already believe?

Because we can all do this.

We give context generously to teachers we love:

You need to hear the whole sermon.

Then share fifteen seconds from someone we distrust as proof that they’re dangerous.

That isn’t discernment.

That’s confirmation bias with a Bible verse attached.

Paul warned the church about remaining spiritually immature, “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching.” (Ephesians 4:14)

That verse sounds different when theology flies across our feeds at algorithmic speed.

Another pastor. Another controversy. Another interpretation. Another confident opinion.

The algorithm can introduce us to ideas. It cannot do the work of discipleship for us.

Paul tells the Thessalonians:

“Test everything; hold fast what is good.”
(1 Thessalonians 5:21)

Everything.

The teacher you disagree with. The teacher you love. The clip that makes you furious. And the one that confirms everything you already believe.

I still think the Stephen Chandler clip deserves critique. Hearing the entire sermon may not erase my concerns about how the Scripture was used or the stereotypes the examples reinforced.

But the longer I sat with it, the more I realized discernment asks something harder of me than simply reacting correctly.

It asks me to keep looking.

To return to Scripture.

To seek fuller context.

To test what I’m hearing.

And to be willing to discover that I was right…or that I missed something.

Don’t confuse exposure with formation.

Don’t confuse a clip with a conclusion.

Let the clip make you curious. Let it send you back to the sermon, back to Scripture, back into community and, ultimately, back to Jesus.

Because discipleship was never meant to happen at scroll speed.

Look Again

Before moving on, take a minute to notice how you’re being formed by the Christian content you consume. There aren’t perfect answers here—just an invitation to become more curious about what you hear, share, and allow to shape you.

1. Where do I tend to form conclusions too quickly—from a clip, quote, headline, or comment—without seeking fuller context?

2. Whose teaching am I most likely to accept without question, and whose am I most likely to dismiss without listening carefully?

3. What would it look like for me to practice deeper discipleship this week by returning to Scripture, asking better questions, and resisting the urge to let the algorithm do my thinking for me?

Keep Reading:

If this article sparked your interest, you may also enjoy these:

Have We Made the Church into Target?
How convenience has quietly shaped the church, and how we can refocus on making disciples.

Snakes on a Plane
Jesus said to spread the Gospel. But did He mean like this?

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

Do you ever look back at a former version of yourself with judgment? Wishing you knew then what you know now?

I do.

Sometimes I look back at earlier versions of myself and wonder why she didn’t know better.

Why didn’t I build my career sooner, during the years I was home raising my kids?

Why didn’t I recognize certain red flags when they first appeared?

Why did it take me so long to learn how to love who I was instead of spending years trying to hide, shrink, or become someone easier to accept?

It’s easy to sit in the life I have now, with the wisdom I have now, and judge the woman I used to be by today’s knowledge.

She should have known.

She should have seen it.

She should have made different choices.

Maybe you’ve done this too.

Maybe you’ve looked back at a relationship and wondered how you missed what now seems obvious. Maybe you regret staying too long in a job, church, friendship, or situation that wasn’t good for you.

Maybe you wish you had spoken up sooner. Left sooner. Loved yourself sooner.

Hindsight has a way of making the past look much clearer than it actually was when we were living it.

There’s a reason people say we get older and wiser. Wisdom comes through time and experience. Understanding grows as we live, learn, fail, heal, and begin to recognize things we couldn’t see before.

And yet, we sometimes hold our younger selves accountable for wisdom we hadn’t gained yet.

We expect ourselves to recognize patterns we hadn’t learned to identify, establish boundaries no one had taught us to set, and make decisions using information we didn’t have.

That isn’t wisdom.

That’s hindsight becoming condemnation.

But I’m noticing that God looks at our past very differently than we do.

The Peter we remember

When we think of Peter, some might remember the confident version—the disciple who preached at Pentecost and became a leader in the early church.

But Peter wasn’t always that Peter.

He was impulsive. He misunderstood Jesus. He spoke when he should have listened and made promises he couldn’t keep.

And on the night Jesus was arrested, Peter did exactly what he insisted he would never do: he denied knowing Jesus three times.

Knowing everything that came afterward, it would be easy to wonder how Peter could fail so badly. He had walked with Jesus, witnessed miracles, and heard His teaching firsthand.

But after the resurrection, Jesus didn’t meet Peter with a list of everything he should have known.

He met him on a beach…with breakfast…and conversation.

Three times Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?”

And three times Peter responded that he did.

It’s such a beautiful image of Jesus’ grace and forgiveness.

Grace doesn’t require us to pretend our past decisions were good. It simply allows us to acknowledge that the person making those decisions was still becoming, still learning, still growing.

Still figuring out what faithfulness, courage, wisdom, healing, or love looked like.

Peter didn’t remain the man standing in a courtyard saying, “I don’t know Him.”

And you are not frozen as the person you were in your hardest season either.

Grace changes the way we look back

Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

I’ve often read that verse as reassurance about how God sees me today.

But I’m starting to wonder if it should also change the way I see yesterday.

If God isn’t condemning me, why am I so committed to condemning earlier versions of myself?

That doesn’t mean ignoring harm, pretending mistakes didn’t have consequences, or avoiding responsibility.

But responsibility and condemnation are not the same thing.

I can say, I wish I had handled that differently, without deciding, I was terrible.

I can grieve choices I made while acknowledging that I was making them with the understanding, maturity, and experience I had at the time.

There are things I know now because I lived through things I didn’t know then.

That’s how wisdom works.

Maybe the better question isn’t always, Why didn’t I know better?

Maybe sometimes it’s:

What did I learn?

What do I see now that I couldn’t see then?

How is God using even that part of my story to shape the person I’m becoming?

Those questions don’t erase the past.

They redeem the way we carry it.

And what about others?

This kind of grace becomes even harder when we turn our attention outward.

Because we don’t only judge our former selves with hindsight. We do it to other people, generations, circumstances, systems, and cultures.

We look backward with everything we know today and wonder how people couldn’t see what now seems obvious.

How did they believe that?

Why didn’t they recognize what was happening?

Why didn’t they speak up?

Those are important questions. Looking honestly at the past helps us recognize harm and choose a different way forward.

But there is a difference between learning from the past and standing over it in judgment.

Author and poet Maya Angelou famously said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

I love that because it points us forward.

When we learn something new, we become responsible for what we do with what we now know.

We do better from here.

But knowing better today doesn’t mean we get to pretend we knew better yesterday.

And perhaps the same grace should shape the way we see other people.

Someone else may not be where I am in the journey. They may not have had the conversations or experiences that helped me see differently.

Their process may look different from mine.

That doesn’t mean harmful ideas or actions should go unchallenged. Grace is not the absence of truth or accountability.

But it does mean I should be careful about expecting someone else to arrive at the same understanding, in the same way, on the same timeline I did.

Especially when I didn’t arrive here overnight either.

Jesus met people where they were. He told the truth, invited change, and challenged what was harmful.

But He also led with grace.

If that is how Jesus meets us, perhaps it should shape the way we meet one another too.

We can tell the truth about what was wrong, learn from what happened, and do better now that we know better.

And we can still leave room for grace…for who we were, for who others were, and for the people we are all still becoming.

Who you were brought you here

And maybe the best place to practice that kind of grace is with the person whose journey we know most intimately: our own.

Sometimes I wish I could go back and tell younger me everything I know now.

I’d tell her not to be so afraid. That she didn’t need to hide. That belonging wouldn’t come from becoming whatever everyone else needed her to be.

I’d tell her some opportunities weren’t actually opportunities. Some endings weren’t failures. Some closed doors were mercy.

But I can’t give her what she hadn’t learned yet.

I can only decide how I will speak about her now.

And maybe she deserves more grace than I’ve given her.

She kept going. She learned. She changed. She survived things she didn’t yet have language for and grew wiser through things she might have chosen differently if she had known then what she knows now.

The person I am today exists, in part, because of what she lived through.

Maybe yours does too.

We don’t have to celebrate every decision we’ve made or call every chapter good. But perhaps we can stop standing over our younger selves asking why they weren’t already the people it took years for them to become.

God doesn’t ask us to travel backward and fix yesterday. He invites us to walk faithfully with Him today.

And when we look behind us, maybe we can learn to see what He sees:

A person He loved then.
A person He was forming then.
A person He never stopped extending grace to.

Maybe it’s time we extended some too.

Look Again

Growth often gives us clarity we didn’t have while we were living through a particular season. There are no perfect answers here—only an invitation to become curious about the way you’re carrying your past and what Jesus might be inviting you to see differently.

1. Where are you judging a past version of yourself by something you only understand now?

2. What might change if you looked at that version of yourself with grace instead of condemnation?

3. Where might hindsight be shaping the way you judge another person, generation, or circumstance—and what would it look like to hold both truth and grace together?

Keep Reading:

If this article sparked your interest, you may also enjoy these:

Walls Feel Safe…but Walls Lie

Who Are You Without Labels?

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

The passengers on Alaska Airlines Flight 708 were already frustrated.

Their flight from Orlando to San Diego had been delayed when evangelist Whitney Lynn stood in the aisle and began preaching. She told the stranded passengers that God’s timing was perfect, perhaps the delay was protecting them, and Jesus wanted them to place their faith in Him.

A short time later, an airline employee said the crew no longer felt safe with her onboard and asked her to leave.

“I didn’t know the message of Jesus Christ was unsafe,” she proclaimed while continuing to film.

When I first watched the video, I felt a familiar tension.

Jesus calls us to share the gospel.

And sometimes that means speaking when staying silent would be easier.

But as I watched Lynn’s approach and her response after being removed, it was not what she preached that struck me. It was how she preached it.

I kept wondering:

Jesus told us to spread the gospel, but did He tell us to do it like this?

Or can the Good News become distorted by the way we choose to deliver it?

A captive audience

Lynn’s decision to preach on the plane was neither spontaneous nor isolated.

She has said that she preaches on most flights she takes and films those messages for social media. In one earlier video, she preached while passengers waited to leave the plane and captioned it, “I just love a captive audience.” She has even taken her message into women’s restrooms, recording and later posting the encounters.

She later told The Washington Post, “They have no choice but to hear the truth.”

That sentence stayed with me.

Because people on an airplane truly have no choice.

They cannot leave the room.

They cannot move several rows away.

They cannot politely excuse themselves from the conversation.

They are buckled into their seats while someone delivers a religious message they did not request.

Perhaps that feels like an ideal evangelistic opportunity. Everyone is gathered, and the speaker is guaranteed an audience.

But is a captive audience the same as a receptive one?

And is getting the gospel into someone’s ears the same as helping them encounter Jesus?

Sincerely wanting people to be saved does not automatically make every method biblical.

The message matters.

So does the method.

Lynn was not removed simply for saying the name of Jesus. She was removed after creating an environment the crew believed had become unsafe. On a delayed plane, a stranger loudly addressing everyone while disregarding the crew’s direction would make many passengers uneasy, regardless of the message.

When we proclaim a gospel of love while disregarding the dignity, boundaries, or agency of the people hearing it, they may hear our words about Jesus while experiencing something entirely different.

The question is not only whether Jesus was proclaimed.

It is whether the way He was proclaimed looked anything like Him.

When the witness becomes content

There is another part of this story we cannot ignore.

Lynn documented the sermon, her removal, her exchanges with airline employees and security, and what happened afterward. One video received millions of views within a day. Her website intentionally connects evangelism with social media and highlights the reach of her viral preaching.

There is nothing inherently wrong with sharing ministry online.

I do it daily.

Many of us use social media to reach people we may never meet.

But the camera changes the dynamic.

The passengers are no longer only an audience for the gospel. They become background characters in content created for a much larger audience. Their discomfort becomes part of the story, their objection becomes conflict, and the consequences become another opportunity to demonstrate boldness, persecution, or spiritual victory.

After Lynn was removed, she described the incident as spiritual warfare and said demons do not like the name of Jesus. She kept filming, confronted the employee who removed her, recorded security, and announced the incident to people waiting at the gate.

The pattern creates a closed loop:

Preach to an audience that cannot leave.

Film their reaction.

Interpret resistance as spiritual warfare.

Present the consequences as persecution.

The creator becomes both the bold hero and the persecuted victim. A positive response proves God is moving; a negative one proves the enemy is attacking.

But where does that leave room for self-examination?

Not every negative response to Christian behavior is persecution.

Sometimes people reject the gospel.

Sometimes they reject our methods.

And sometimes we experience consequences because we disregarded rules, boundaries, or the well-being of the people around us.

Peter warned Christians that there is no honor in suffering because of our own wrongdoing. Suffering while following Jesus is not the same as suffering after behaving unwisely and attaching Jesus’ name to the consequences (1 Peter 2:20; 4:15–16).

Calling every correction spiritual warfare can keep us from asking whether the Spirit may be inviting us to examine ourselves.

What about John the Baptist?

Some may compare Lynn’s approach to John the Baptist.

John was certainly bold. He preached repentance, warned of judgment, and confronted Herod despite the personal cost.

But John preached in the wilderness, where people chose to go hear him. He did not create a captive audience.

His message also called people toward tangible change—generosity, honesty, justice, and care for their neighbors (Luke 3:7–14). And while his ministry drew attention, John continually redirected that attention toward Jesus:

“He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30).

Biblical boldness is not simply speaking loudly in an uncomfortable place. It tells the truth, embodies that truth, confronts power, and points beyond the messenger to Jesus.

But what did Jesus do?

In every conversation we have here, I want to bring it back to Jesus and ask:

But what did Jesus do?

Jesus preached publicly too. He taught in synagogues, on hillsides, beside the sea, inside homes, and in the temple courts. He called people to repent and said difficult things that caused some to walk away.

But when Jesus looked at the crowds, He did not see a captive audience.
He saw people.

Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds, “he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

So He taught them.

He healed them.

He fed them.

He noticed those others overlooked.

Jesus did not simply speak at people. He engaged with them.

When He met a Samaritan woman at a well, He began by asking her for a drink. He crossed cultural, religious, and gender boundaries, listened to her questions, and allowed the encounter to unfold.

Jesus eventually revealed the truth about her life, but He did not begin by publicly announcing her sin.

He began with a conversation (John 4).

When a wealthy young man asked how to inherit eternal life, Jesus gave him a difficult answer. But Mark first tells us:

“Jesus looked at him and loved him” (Mark 10:21).

The man walked away.

And Jesus let him.

Jesus told him the truth without chasing, shaming, or forcing him to respond.

He gave His disciples similar instructions when He sent them into surrounding communities.

If a home or town would not welcome or listen to them, they were supposed to leave (Mark 6:11).

He did not instruct them to become louder or create a captive audience.

They were to proclaim the message faithfully while recognizing that the people hearing it still had a choice.

The gospel was offered.
It was not forced.

Didn’t Jesus rebuke people too?

Jesus was not afraid to confront people. He corrected His disciples, called crowds to repentance, and pronounced judgment over cities.

But He did not lead every encounter with correction.

His strongest and most sustained public rebukes were generally directed toward religious leaders.

They claimed to represent God while placing heavy burdens on others. They sought attention and positions of honor. They appeared righteous while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness. They used religious authority in ways that made it harder for people to experience God (Matthew 23).

Meanwhile, tax collectors, Samaritans, women with complicated histories, and people considered religious outsiders repeatedly found themselves invited into conversations, meals, healing, forgiveness, and transformation.

Jesus never pretended sin did not matter.

But He did not confuse humiliating sinners with loving them.

Christians often defend harshness as “tough love.”

And love may tell difficult truths.

But biblical correction is relational, humble, and aimed at restoration. When Jesus encountered ordinary people, especially those already burdened, excluded, or dismissed, He consistently led with compassion.

Love does not delight in having a forced audience.

Proclaiming or Performing

This leads me to another question.

In a social media world where pastors, preachers, influencers, and content creators can appear almost synonymous, how do we know whether someone is proclaiming Jesus or performing faith?

Going viral can look like fruit.

Confidence can look like spiritual authority.

Controversy can look like courage.

Opposition can be labeled persecution.

A large platform can easily be mistaken for anointing.

But none of those things, on their own, tell us whether someone is aligned with Jesus.

Numbers may tell us that something captured people’s attention. They do not necessarily tell us that it reflected the character of Christ.

Scripture warns us that not everyone who speaks in the name of Jesus represents Him faithfully. Jesus told His followers to pay attention to the fruit a person’s life and ministry produce (Matthew 7:15–20).

Do their words and methods resemble Jesus?

Do they point people toward Him, or continually place themselves at the center of the story?

Are they forming disciples or manufacturing moments?

Do they welcome accountability, or interpret every challenge as an attack?

Does their ministry produce love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?

Or does it consistently produce fear, spectacle, outrage, division, and attention for the person holding the microphone?

These questions matter.

Not because we are responsible for determining every person’s hidden motives. Only God fully knows the heart.

But we are responsible for practicing discernment.

That is why learning to read Scripture for ourselves matters.

Not random verses detached from context.

Not only the passages quoted in a sermon, caption, or viral video.

We need to understand the larger story, study how Jesus actually lived, and learn to weigh both a person’s message and methods against Scripture.

We need prayer.

We need spiritual maturity.

We need the humility to admit that boldness is not always faithfulness, popularity is not always fruit, and persecution is not the only explanation for opposition.

Jesus said His sheep know the Shepherd’s voice (John 10:4, 27).

But recognizing a voice requires familiarity.

In a world filled with sermons, sound bites, clips, platforms, personalities, and people claiming to speak for God, we cannot depend on someone else to recognize His voice for us.

You want to know the Shepherd’s voice amid all the noise?

You have to spend time with the Shepherd.

Self Reflection:

When I listen to a pastor, preacher, or Christian influencer, what helps me determine whether their message and methods reflect Jesus?

Am I spiritually mature enough to weigh what I hear against Scripture in its full context or am I relying on someone else to interpret it for me?

What practices would help me become more familiar with the Shepherd’s voice amid all the noise?

Keep Reading:

If this article sparked your interest, you may also enjoy these:

Have We Turned the Church into Target?

Is My Allegiance Divided?

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

Have you ever been hurt or afraid, so you built a wall around yourself?

Maybe it was around your heart, hoping to keep it from being broken again.

Maybe it was around your ideas because they had been misunderstood or dismissed.

Maybe you built a wall around your image, carefully controlling what others could see so no one would discover the “real” you.

We build walls because we believe they will protect us.

And for a while, they might.

They give us distance from whatever hurt us. They separate what feels familiar from what feels threatening. They offer a sense of security when everything around us feels uncertain.

But sometimes the walls we build for protection slowly become prisons.

My husband and I recently went to see Hadestown at the movies. We love musicals, and since I missed the live production when it came through our city, I was excited to see the proshot version. Bringing Broadway to people who may never be able to experience live theater feels long overdue…but I digress.

I knew the musical was based on the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, so naturally, I expected to leave thinking about the love story.

But that’s not what stayed with me.

I left thinking about a wall.
And I continued thinking about it for the next several days.

Why Do We Build the Wall?

In the first act, the workers of Hadestown sing about why they build the wall.

“The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free.”

The wall promises protection and security. The workers believe their labor is preserving their freedom.

But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the wall isn’t creating freedom.

It is keeping them trapped.

They work endlessly to build the very thing that imprisons them, convinced their safety depends on making it stronger.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how easily we can do the same thing.

Our walls may not be made of stone, but we build them around what we believe. Around our understanding of truth. Around the ideas we are willing to consider and the voices we are willing to hear.

Then we begin building them around people.

We decide who deserves grace, whose pain should move us, and who is safe enough to love. On one side are the people we understand, trust, and agree with. On the other are the people we have labeled dangerous, misguided, sinful, or simply too different.

We tell ourselves the wall is protecting something important.

But what if it is trapping us?

What if the wall around our truth keeps us from recognizing something we may have misunderstood? What if the wall around our convictions keeps us from listening? What if the wall around our faith keeps us from offering the same grace, empathy, compassion, and love Jesus consistently offered others?

Somewhere along the way, many Christians began treating faith as something that needed to be protected.

Protected from questions.
Protected from unfamiliar cultures.
Protected from different interpretations.

Protected from people whose lives or experiences might challenge what we have always believed.

Maybe that is part of why Jesus so often found Himself in conflict with the Pharisees.

They weren’t trying to abandon God. They believed the boundaries they defended protected faithfulness and holiness. They had clear understandings of who was clean and unclean, who belonged and who did not, and which lines faithful people should never cross.

But Jesus kept crossing them.

In Matthew 15, a Canaanite woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter. Culture, ethnicity, and religious history place her firmly on the outside. Even the disciples want Jesus to send her away.

But the woman continues reaching across the wall. Jesus recognizes her great faith and heals her daughter. The person the disciples wanted dismissed becomes an example of faith.

The early Church continued learning to live beyond the walls Jesus dismantled.
Paul later wrote:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
—Galatians 3:28

The walls around culture, religious belonging, social status, and gender were coming down.

Jesus did not build walls around the Kingdom. He tore down the walls that kept people from seeing how far God’s grace could reach.

So why are we so quick to rebuild them?

Maybe we are afraid listening means agreeing. That curiosity means compromise. That crossing a bridge betrays the people who have worked hard to maintain and stand guard at the wall.

Maybe we believe God needs us to defend Him.

But God does not need our protection.

When the Wall Starts to Come Down

Following Jesus may require us to question some of the walls we once believed were protecting our faith.

Recognizing that a wall has become a prison is one thing.
Finding the courage to leave it is another.

That is where the second act of Hadestown stayed with me.

Orpheus is given the opportunity to lead Eurydice out of Hadestown. He must walk ahead of her and trust that she is following, even though he cannot see her. He knows the instructions. He wants to believe the promise. He begins walking toward freedom.

Then doubt sets in.

Hermes warns:

“The dog you really got to dread
Is the one that howls inside your head.”

That voice grows louder with every step.

What if Eurydice isn’t behind him?

What if he has been deceived?

What if he keeps walking and discovers he was wrong?

Orpheus wants to do the right thing, but doubt becomes louder than the confirmation from Eurydice’s that she’s right there.

Hermes later sings:

“I’ll tell you where the real road lies
Between your ears, behind your eyes
That is the path to Paradise
Likewise, the road to ruin.”

The wall may be physical in Hadestown, but the final barrier Orpheus faces is the walls within his own mind.

I wonder if the same thing happens when we begin dismantling our walls.

We recognize that an assumption may have been wrong. We begin listening to people we once dismissed. We sense Jesus inviting us across a cultural, religious, or social divide.

Then the howling begins.

What if you’re wrong?

What if this is compromise?

What will people think?

What might you lose if you keep walking?

Sometimes the wall is no longer standing in front of us. It is living between our ears and behind our eyes.

And when doubt becomes louder than truth, we turn around.

Show the Way the World Can Be

But Hadestown also offers another possibility.

“Show the way so we can see.
Show the way the world can be.
If he can do it so can she.
If she can do it so can we.”

The builders of the wall begin believing change is possible, and maybe there really is a way toward freedom.

One person’s courage can help another person imagine a different way.

One person crosses a divide, and someone watching realizes the distance may not be impossible after all.

One person questions an inherited assumption, listens with humility, or chooses compassion over suspicion and creates space for someone else to do the same.

That is the power of community.

When doubt begins howling, we need people beside us who can remind us why we started walking. People who can remind us what is true when fear tempts us to return to the familiar prison behind us.

Maybe even comparing Greek mythology and the Bible is a small example of tearing down a wall.

Hadestown is not Scripture, but its story can still help us notice something about ourselves. It can ask questions that send us back to the Gospels with new eyes.

We build walls because we’re afraid.

We keep building because the walls make us feel protected.

Then, even when we begin tearing them down, doubt tries to convince us to turn back.

But Jesus continues showing us another way—a way beyond the walls we have built around truth, faith, culture, gender, grace, and love.

Perhaps the question is not only whether we are willing to tear down our walls.

It’s whether we will trust Jesus enough to keep walking when the doubt inside our heads tells us to turn around.

And whether we will walk together, showing one another the way the world can be.

Reflection Questions

1. What wall have you built for protection that may now be limiting what you are willing to hear, consider, or love?

2. When you imagine dismantling that wall, what doubt or fear begins “howling” inside your head?

3. Who helps you keep walking toward the freedom, grace, and unity Jesus modeled?

   ---

Keep Reading

If this essay stirred something in you, these continue to conversation.

Is My Allegiance Divided?
Who Are You Without Labels?

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

Birthdays have never really been my thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I know they’re special. I’m grateful for another year, another trip around the sun, another reminder of God’s faithfulness.

But while some people celebrate all month long, I’ve always been the opposite.

I’ve always appreciated affirmation.
Attention? Not so much.

Maybe that’s why birthdays tend to make me less celebratory and more reflective. They invite me to look back before I look ahead.

This year, that reflection started a few days early.

Last Saturday, my daughter invited me to go with her and a few friends to see Olivia Dean in concert.

If your kids are older, you know that once they reach a certain age, they don’t have to invite you into their world anymore. So when they do, it’s an automatic yes.

The fact that it was Olivia Dean made it even sweeter.

She’s one of our favorite artists.
Her songs have carried, inspired, and comforted both of us.

Yes, I love her music.
But even more than that, I love the person she seems to be.

There’s a joy about her that’s hard to describe. An authenticity that doesn’t feel manufactured. A freedom that’s both confident and gentle. And at only 27, she carries herself like someone who has learned to love herself without needing to prove herself.

As I watched her perform, I found myself thinking less about the music and more about my younger self.

I wasn’t like that at her age.
I was shy.
Insecure.
Constantly wondering what other people thought of me.

So much of my energy was spent trying to fit in, avoid criticism, and make sure I wasn’t “too much” or “not enough.”

Looking back now, I wonder what life might have been like if I’d known then what I know now.

I wonder what it would have been like to experience freedom in that season of my life.

Freer to be who God created me to be instead of who I thought everyone else wanted me to become.

Freer to embrace the warmth of the sun on my skin without being afraid of how dark I would get.

Freer to feel the wind thru my curls without trying to tame them.

Freer to allow myself the joy of being light, fun and playful.

The older I get, the more I’m convinced that freedom changes the way we love people.

When we’re consumed with protecting ourselves, proving ourselves, or performing for others, there’s very little room left to truly see the people around us.

But when we begin to understand our identity in Christ...

When we stop carrying the weight of everyone else’s expectations...

When we no longer need validation to tell us who we are...
Something shifts.

We become freer to love.

Let Alone the One You Love

One song from the concert has stayed with me all week: Let Alone the One You Love.

It’s one of my favorites.

The title always gets me.
But it’s the second verse and chorus that simultaneously wrecks and inspires me.

V2
And any choice you had worth making
I'd push you to take it
No questions asked, no doubt in mind
But when they're mine, yeah
You react like I'm crossing a line
I'm too much to handle and just dial it back a bit
Well, well, I'm not having it,

Chorus:
It's too much to mend
You're the hug that had to end
Though I've tried to hold on
And if you knew me at all
You wouldn't try to keep me small,
Who would do that to a friend
Let alone the one you love?

Right before she performed the song on Saturday, Olivia shared her thoughts on what it means to love. I didn’t get a chance to record her, so I was grateful to find this video on TikTok!

Whew!
Those words take me back to a time when I believed I had to play safe, stay in my lane, and keep myself small.

And it took me a long time to see that isn’t love.
That’s not how you love yourself and it’s not how you should love others.

It took me even longer to be courageous enough to say, “I’m not having it!”

That journey taught me that: Love doesn’t ask people to become smaller.

It doesn’t demand that they hide the parts of themselves that make us uncomfortable.

Real love creates space for people to become who God created them to be.

And that’s beautiful when we’re the ones receiving it.
It’s much harder when we’re the ones being asked to give it.

Because if we’re honest, loving people is hard.

Sometimes the hardest person to love is ourselves.
Sometimes it’s the family member whose opinions make every holiday feel exhausting…
The coworker who tests our patience.
The immigrant whose story we assume but don’t know.
The stranger we pass every morning without a second thought.
The person whose politics, beliefs, or life experiences couldn’t be more different from our own.

It’s easy to talk about loving our neighbors when “neighbor” is just an idea.
It’s much harder when love asks something of us.

Because loving our neighbor isn’t just about being kind when our paths happen to cross.

It’s choosing to genuinely want what’s best for someone else.

To hope they flourish.
To celebrate their successes, even when we gain nothing in return.
To pray for their good, whether we know their name or not.
To believe they, too, are image bearers worthy of dignity, compassion, and love.

When Jesus was asked, "Who is my neighbor?" He answered with the story of the Good Samaritan, a reminder that our neighbor isn't defined by proximity, nationality, politics, or shared beliefs. Our neighbor is simply the person God places before us.

Jesus never said our neighbors had to earn our love.
He simply told us to love them.

Not because it would always come naturally.
Not because everyone would be easy to love.

But because every time we choose love over fear, generosity over self-interest, and compassion over contempt, we become a little more like Jesus.

Reflections & Look Ahead

As another birthday comes and goes, I don’t find myself wishing I were younger.
And I don’t find myself discouraged or full of regret.

I find myself grateful.

Grateful that Jesus is still freeing me from the fear of what others think.

Grateful that He’s teaching me not just how to love myself as someone created in His image, but how to genuinely want that same freedom for others.

Maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts of growing older.

Not that we’ve figured life out.

But that, year by year, if we’re paying more attention, and we’re becoming a little more like Jesus.

Reflection

• What fears or expectations have kept you from becoming who God created you to be?

• Who is one person—whether you know them well or not—that Jesus may be inviting you to love by genuinely wanting what’s best for them this week?

  ---

Keep Reading:

Who Are You Without a Label?
I Had A Change of Heart
Is My Allegiance Divided?

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling, or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

I live in Las Vegas.
The entertainment capital of the world.

There is always somewhere to go, something to see, or an event to attend.

After living here for years, I’ve noticed something about the way we approach almost every place we go.

We want it to be convenient.
We know where we’re parking.
We know where we’re sitting.
We grab a drink on the way in.
And if traffic starts backing up near the end, we might slip out a few minutes early to beat everyone else out.

None of that surprises me.
That’s how we attend events.

What has surprised me is how often I see those same patterns on Sunday mornings. And how easily I find myself drifting that direction too.

Not because church has become more entertaining (although maybe it has, but that’s another essay).

It’s because somewhere along the way, church became something we consume.

As a kid, church felt different.

There was a reverence to gathering together.
You dressed up because you were going to God’s house.
You quietly slipped into the back if you arrived late.
You didn’t interrupt the service to grab another coffee.
You only left early if there was an emergency.

I’m not longing for “the good old days.”
There were plenty of things that needed to change.

But I do wonder if we’ve unintentionally traded reverence for convenience.

Have We Made Church Our Spiritual Target?

For many of us, church has subconsciously started to feel a little like Target.

We choose the location that’s most convenient.
We stop in when it fits our schedule.
Some weeks we go in person.
Other weeks we order online.
We grab what we came for and head home.
No assumption that anyone will notice if we’re missing.

No real expectation that we’ll know the people around us. Be honest—some of us don’t even want to make eye contact. We’d prefer the self-checkout lane, please!

And if a new church opens with a better experience...
Well, we’ll probably go there instead.

The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became.

Because Jesus never described His Church that way.

Before ascending to heaven, He gathered His followers and gave them one final assignment:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations...teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” — Matthew 28:19–20

Notice what He didn’t say.

He didn’t tell them to build bigger gatherings.
He didn’t tell them to create better experiences.
He didn’t tell them to attract larger crowds.

He told them to make disciples.
I think that’s an important distinction.

Because the Great Commission isn’t just the Church’s mission.

It’s the lens through which we should evaluate everything the Church does and who the Church (you and me) is becoming.

Discipleship isn’t measured by attendance.
It’s measured by transformation

How Did We Get Here?

Every church is making disciples.
The real question is: What are we discipling people toward?

Before we blame church attenders, those of us who’ve helped lead the church over the last twenty years need to acknowledge something.

People don’t simply become consumers.
Consumers are formed.

For years we’ve worked hard to remove barriers.

We’ve asked how to make church more welcoming, more engaging, and more accessible.

Those are good things.
I’m grateful for them.
I’ve helped shape some of them.

But somewhere along the way, in our attempt to make church more accessible, many of us also unintentionally taught people that church exists primarily to meet their needs.

And whenever that’s the expectation, disappointment isn’t far behind.

Church leaders get frustrated.
Long-time members get frustrated.
New people get frustrated.

Because consumers are always looking for the next thing that better meets their expectations.

Disciples are looking to become more like Jesus.

Those are two very different goals.

Jesus didn’t call us to simply consume scripture, knowledge, and experiences.
He called us to become people whose lives are continually being shaped into His likeness.

That kind of discipleship is so much bigger than attending a weekly service.

It’s learning why Scripture matters—not just what it says.
It’s developing rhythms of prayer that shape our dependence on God.
It’s serving because we love people, not because a ministry needs another volunteer.
It’s practicing generosity without asking, “What’s in this for me?”
It’s investing in people because relationships matter as much as the sermon.

When we gather, we aren’t simply attending church.
We’re forming the Church, because the church isn’t just a place we go.
The Church is who you and I are becoming. We are the Church.

Hope Remains

But hang in there with me, because all isn’t lost.
The hopeful news is this:

Drift isn’t destiny.

Church culture can change because people can change.

We can realign ourselves with the mission Jesus gave His followers from the very beginning: To make disciples.

People who know not only what Jesus taught, but who are learning to obey and trust Him.

People whose lives increasingly reflect His humility, generosity, compassion, service, and love.

Because discipleship has never been about transferring information.
It’s about transformation.

That future won’t be built convenience and programming.

It will be built by ordinary people choosing, week after week, to move from consuming church to participating in it.

It’s learning why Scripture matters—not just knowing what it says.
It’s developing rhythms of prayer that shape our dependence on God.
It’s serving because we love people, not because a ministry needs another volunteer. It’s practicing generosity without asking, “What’s in this for me?”
It’s noticing the lonely person before we notice our favorite seat.
It’s lingering after the service because relationships matter as much as the sermon. It’s recognizing that when we gather, we aren’t simply attending church.

It’s shifting from asking, “What can this church do for me?” to asking, “How can God use me to help someone else become more like Jesus?”

Because the Church was never meant to be another stop on our calendar.
It was always meant to be a people becoming more like Jesus—together.

Reflection Questions

• In what ways have you found yourself approaching church more like a consumer than a participant?

• Jesus commissioned His followers to “make disciples.” Who has helped shape your faith, and who might God be inviting you to invest in?

• What’s one intentional step you could take this week to contribute to the spiritual formation of your church—not because it’s expected of you, but because it’s part of becoming more like Jesus?

Keep Reading:

What The Church Can Learn From Off Campus
The Other 51 Weeks
I Had A Change of Heart

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

This week, we sent our daughter off to church camp for the last time.

She started going after third grade.
Now she’s a high school graduate, heading to college in the fall.

For nine years, she’s packed a suitcase, her Bible and a backpack full of snacks, boarded a bus and headed off for a week of fun.

As I watched her leave, I realized something.
Church camp has become a family tradition.

Her older brother went every summer.
My husband and I both attended camp as teenagers.
Even Grandma has camp stories from decades ago.

And before camp, there was Vacation Bible School.

Every generation in our family has been shaped by adults who believed the next generation was worth investing in.

I’m grateful for that.
I really am.

Because church camp is about more than fun.
It’s about refocusing, reconnecting, and recentering our relationship with Jesus.

Adults have retreats.
Teens have camp.

And camp matters.

It’s where lifelong friendships begin.
Where students finally ask the questions they’ve been carrying.
Where worship feels personal instead of performative.
Where a teenager hears, some for the first time, that God knows them, loves them, and has a purpose for their life.

Every summer we celebrate stories like these.
Thousands attending camp.
Hundreds baptized.
Students saying yes to Jesus.

And we should celebrate.
Every. Single. One.

But as I watched the buses pull away this week, one question kept lingering in my mind: What happens after?

After the emotional week.
After the late-night conversations.
After the campfire commitments.
After the trust has been built and the walls lowered.
After students experience what authentic Christian community can feel like.

Because church camp can ignite faith.
The other fifty-one weeks determine whether that flame keeps burning.

Too often, students come home to a very different environment.

• Phones that never stop buzzing.

• Schools where following Jesus can feel lonely.

• Anxiety, comparison, temptation, and the constant pressure to fit in.

We’re all being discipled by something.
And for our teens, the world is more than willing to shape their identity and define their worth.

One week of church camp can’t compete with fifty-one weeks of formation happening everywhere else.

And it was never supposed to.

As I continued to ponder, I began to question if churches are investing in the next generation as much as they proclaim they are?

Celebrating camp highlights and what God did is important.
We should celebrate.
But a few words of encouragement from the stage on a Sunday isn’t enough.

Practically, how are we investing in the spiritual lives of not only these teens, but the future church?

Because if you ask any children’s or student ministry leader, they will tell you about some of their challenges:

• Leaders trying to shepherd too many kids with too few spiritually mature adults.

• Planning evangelism events on a pizza and water budget.

• Unclear stance and/or unsupported by leadership on controversial topics facing teens.

We say we believe the next generation is the future of the church.
And we do believe it.
BUT…
Our budgets don’t always tell the same story.
Our staffing doesn’t always tell the same story.
Our priorities don’t always tell the same story.

If the production budget is double the next generation budget, what message are we unintentionally communicating?

Don’t get me wrong.
Every ministry matters, including production.

But if we truly believe today’s children and teenagers are not just the future church, but part of the church right now, then our investment should reflect that conviction.

Not just during one exciting week in the summer.
All year long.

But it’s not the church’s sole responsibility to disciple our kids
Discipleship has never been something we’re called to outsource.
It something that starts with us as parents.

God told His people:

Long before there were youth pastors, student ministries, and church camps, God entrusted parents with the privilege and responsibility of discipling their children.

Not by having all the answers.
But by faithfully pointing them to Him in the ordinary moments of everyday life.

At the dinner table.
On the drive to school.
Before bedtime.
During difficult conversations.
When life is joyful.
And when life falls apart.

But here’s the challenge: We can’t lead our children somewhere we’re unwilling to go ourselves.

• If we want our kids to know God’s Word, we have to spend time in it ourselves.

• If we want them to have an authentic prayer life, they need to see us pray.

• If we want them to value Christian community, they need to watch us pursue it.

• If we want them to keep growing spiritually after camp, we have to keep growing spiritually after Sunday.

Discipleship isn’t something we outsource to a pastor, a small group leader, or a week at camp. It’s something we model everyday through personal Bible reading, prayer, honest conversations, Christian community, and a willingness to keep learning ourselves.

After all, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)

When parents, churches, small group leaders, volunteers, and mentors all commit to that kind of lifelong discipleship, something beautiful happens.

The sparks that ignite at VBS and camp don’t have to fizzle out when summer ends.

Together, we can continue tending the fire.

Because the goal was never one unforgettable week.

The goal has always been a lifetime of following Jesus.

Questions to Consider

• If a student watched my faith for one ordinary week, what would they learn about following Jesus?

• Are we investing more energy into creating memorable moments or cultivating lifelong disciples?

• What is one practical way I can help keep the fire burning in the life of a child or teenager after camp ends?

Keep Reading:

What the Church Can Learn from Off Campus
Who Are You Without Labels?
Is My Allegiance Divided?

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

Growing up, the Fourth of July was my favorite holiday.

The whole family gathered at my aunt’s house. While the burgers and hotdogs cooked on the grill, Aunt Barb would put the finishing touches on her famous potato salad and my cousins and I would run and play outside.

Then, as the sun began to set, we’d pile into the car and head to the county fairgrounds to watch the fireworks light up the night sky.

To this day, those memories make me smile.

As a kid, I didn’t think much about patriotism.

I grew up learning to love Jesus and my country.

The two never felt separate.

Honestly, I don’t remember anyone ever standing behind a pulpit and saying, “To be a good Christian, you have to be a good American.”

I don’t think anyone had to teach me that patriotism was part of following Jesus.
I simply absorbed it.

Every morning at school, we stood and pledged allegiance to the flag, declaring we were “one nation under God.”

Our money reminded us, “In God We Trust.”

Every July, we celebrated the blessings of living in America.

Then on Sunday, there were two flags on the platform: the Christian flag and the American flag.

As a teenager, I remember Christian songs like America Again and The Flag by Carman, and Ray Boltz’s I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb. Their popular albums became part of the soundtrack of my faith.

None of those things felt strange.
None of them felt political.

I never stopped to ask where one ended...and the other began.
Until I started reading the Gospels differently.

I wasn’t looking for evidence to support a side. I just started paying more attention to to Jesus—what He said, how He responded, who He cared for, and what He asked of His followers.

And I noticed something that surprised me.
Jesus talked constantly about the Kingdom of God.
He called people to deny themselves.
To love their enemies.
To forgive seventy times seven.
To bless those who persecuted them.
To take up their cross.
To seek first the Kingdom of God.

He talked often about allegiance.
But He never called His followers to patriotism.

Not once.

That doesn’t mean He was anti-government.
Or that loving your country is wrong.
Scripture tells us to pray for those in authority and to seek the good of the places where we live.
Gratitude for our country is a good thing.
But gratitude and allegiance are not the same thing.

And looking back, I don’t think that idea came from one sermon...or one song...or one flag on a church stage.
It came from years of being formed by both church and culture at the same time.

Neither was trying to replace Jesus, but together, they shaped an assumption I never thought to question: That loving Jesus and loving America we’re synonymous.
But over time, it became harder and harder to identify where one ended and the other began.

And I hadn’t even realized that at some point, my love of America had begun to supersede my love for Jesus. Oh, I wouldn’t have been able to see or admit it then. But as I kept reading the words in red, I’ve found myself wrestling.

Not with whether I should love my country.
I do. And my heart often breaks for her.

The question was whether my love for my country has ever competed with my love for Christ.

And suddenly, I realized it had.

Patriotism became my litmus test for biblical alignment, not the Bible…and not Jesus.

The first commandment says, “You must not have any other god but Me.” (Exodus 20:3, NLT)

I’ve always imagined other gods as physical idols like statues carved from wood or stone.
Something obvious.
Something ancient.
Something pagan.
But idols have always been about more than statues.

An idol is anything that quietly asks for the loyalty, identity, or devotion that belongs to God alone.

And that’s what started to challenged me.

I don’t think most Christians intentionally idolize their country.
I certainly didn’t.
I loved Jesus.
I loved America.

I simply assumed those loves would always point in the same direction.
But then I noticed something in the life of Jesus.

Again and again, He chose a path that looked radical to the people around Him, especially the religious leaders.

He loved His enemies.
He refused to seize political power.
He welcomed outsiders.
He crossed cultural boundaries.
He challenged religious nationalism.

When people expected Him to establish an earthly kingdom, He kept pointing them to a heavenly one.

And I couldn’t help but ask myself:
What if following Jesus makes me appear unpatriotic?
What if the two were never meant to be as aligned as we’ve made them?

Not because I love my country less.
But because my allegiance belongs somewhere else first.

I wonder if that’s why some of Jesus’ teachings feel so radical today.
Perhaps it’s because we’ve spent our lives being discipled by two kingdoms at once.

One has taught us how to be Americans.
The other teaches us how to be citizens of the Kingdom of God.

Sometimes, those values overlap.
But sometimes they don’t.
And when they collide...which kingdom wins?

This Fourth of July, I’ll celebrate.
I’ll enjoy the food.
The family.
The fireworks.
I’ll thank God for the freedoms I’ve been given.
And I’ll continue to advocate for loving ALL of our neighbors like Jesus.

But I also remember that one day every earthly kingdom will fade.
Every flag will be folded.
Every nation will pass away.

Only one Kingdom is eternal.
Only one King gave His life for me.
And only One is worthy of my undivided allegiance.

Reflection

As you celebrate this Independence Day, spend a few moments asking the Lord to search your heart.

• Is there anything competing with Jesus for my deepest allegiance?

• Have I ever confused cultural discipleship with biblical discipleship?

• If following Jesus ever put me at odds with my culture, my politics, or even my country...would I still follow Him?

Because the greatest threat to our discipleship isn’t always rejecting Jesus.
Sometimes it’s quietly placing something beside Him, that over time, replaces Him.

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

Recently, I was taking a shower when something caught my attention.

Next to the body wash, sat a bottle of baby oil, its labels rolled up next to it.

Over time, the oil had dripped onto the outside of the bottle, causing the labels to peel free.

What struck me wasn’t the missing labels.

It was how clean the bottle had become.

Without the labels covering it, I could clearly see what was inside.

And because I do some of my best thinking in the shower and my brain rarely takes a time out, I immediately began reflecting on how much of life is spent trying to understand who we are through the labels we wear.

Labels that cover up what’s really inside.

Almost from birth, labels begin to stick to us.

Some are given by family.
Some by friends.
Some by teachers, churches, social media, culture, or our own experiences.

Labels like:
Successful.
Failure.
Smart.
Difficult.
Too loud.
Too quiet.

As we age, some of those labels start to really stick, their gummy adhesive almost impossible to remove. And then, we pick up additional ones along the way.

Divorced.
Addict.
Popular.
Outcast.
Black.
White.
Conservative.
Progressive.
Leader.
Follower.

Some labels are positive.
Others leave wounds.

But eventually, something strange happens.

We stop seeing them as labels and start seeing them as who we are: our identity.
They become how we define ourselves, our limitations, and our potential; and they become the litmus test of how we allow others to see us.

Over time, our labels pile up, making it more and more difficult to see what’s inside.

But Psalm 23 says, “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

Throughout Scripture, oil is often associated with God’s presence, blessing, protection, and healing.

As I looked at that baby oil bottle with its labels curled around it, I recognized that’s what God wants to do for us. He wants His truth of who we are in Him to drip over us, peeling away every lie, every, false narrative, and every label until all that’s left is clean and pure.

Throughout my own healing journey, I’ve identified several labels I’d used to define myself: perfectionist, mixed, opinionated, no fun, responsible, leader.

Some are true.
Others are not.
But none of them were ever meant to become my identity.

And neither are yours.

But let’s be honest, it’s a lot easier to identify and name our labels than it is to start peeling them off. That becomes sticky.

But I’ve learned that while we can’t avoid the mess, we can invite God into the process.

Spending time with Him slowly loosens our labels (if we let Him.)
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
But little by little, they start losing their grip.

The label that says your past is your identity.
The label that says you’ll never be enough.
The label that says your worth is tied to your performance.
The label that says you’re defined by what happened to you.
The label that says you’ll always be who you’ve always been.

And as those labels begin to peel away, something beautiful happens.
We can finally see ourselves more clearly.

Not through the lens of our wounds.
Not through the opinions of others.
Not through our successes or failures.

But through the eyes of the One who created us.
Because when the labels fell off that bottle, the contents didn’t change.

The oil was still there.
It was just hidden by its labels.

The same is true for many of us.

God wants to peel every label away to reveal who you were before…

Before the shame.
Before the rejection.
Before the expectations.
Before the fear.
Before the lies.

He wants to remind you that you were never the labels placed on you.
Your identity has always ever been in Whose you are: His child.

Yes, we know that’s where our identity should be rooted.
But everything changes when we courageously let God start peeling.

For the first time, we can see ourselves the way God always has.

Fully known.
Fully loved.
Fully His.

And when that happens, everything else becomes much more clear.

Reflection Question

What label have you carried for so long that you’ve mistaken it for your identity?

What would change if you began seeing yourself through God’s eyes instead?

What’s one brave step you can take today to let God start loosening the corner of your label?

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

Every year, Father’s Day and Juneteenth arrive within days of each other.

At first glance, they feel like entirely unrelated holidays.

One celebrates fathers.
The other commemorates freedom.

Yet the more I’ve reflected on it, the more I realized that they share something important in common: Hope.

Not a naive hope that ignores reality.
Not a hope that pretends every wound has healed or every problem has been solved.
But the kind of hope that believes tomorrow can be different than today.

Juneteenth commemorates the day enslaved Black Americans in Galveston, Texas finally learned they were free. I’ve written more extensively about the history and significance of Juneteenth before, so I won’t revisit all of that here.

This year, I found myself thinking about the hope that accompanies freedom.
The hope that yesterday’s chains don’t have to define tomorrow’s possibilities.
The hope that future generations might experience more opportunities and less barriers.
The hope that freedom will truly extend “with liberty and justice for all.”
The hope that things can change.

But hope isn’t simple.
It requires unexplainable patience, indescribable peace, and unrelenting tenacity.
Because the truth is that freedom doesn’t erase injustice, eliminate every obstacle, or instantly create equality or opportunity for all.

What began as a celebration of declared freedom has become a generational journey toward an ever-moving target.

Yet hope remains.
The hope that the future could be better than the past.

And for some of us, Father’s Day carries a similar tension.

While some celebrate with a day filled with gratitude and celebration., others are reminded of loss, absence, disappointment, or pain.

As someone who grew up without my father, I understand that tension. Father’s Day was like a cultural slap every year—a reminder of everything I longed for but didn’t have.

Yet even within that tension, there is hope.
Hope that broken relationships can be restored.
Hope that generational cycles can be broken.
Hope that our children can inherit something healthier than what we received.
Hope that healing is possible.
Hope that families can look different tomorrow than they do today.

That’s why I think both holidays being near the same weekend is not a tension to be managed, but an opportunity to embrace.

Both remind us that our past does not have to dictate our future.
Both invite us to imagine something better.
Both point toward restoration.

As followers of Jesus, this kind of hope is at the center of our faith.

The Gospel is the story of God stepping into brokenness and declaring that it does not get the final word.

It is the story of chains being broken.
Of captives being set free.
Of relationships being restored.
Of old things becoming new.

It’s the belief that what is can be transformed into what should be.

This weekend, many of us will celebrate fathers.
Many of us will reflect on freedom.
Some of us will carry joy.
Others will carry grief.
And most of us will carry a little of both.

But regardless of where we find ourselves, perhaps these two observances invite us to hold onto the same truth: The chains of yesterday do not have to be the chains of tomorrow.

Because of the people who came before us.
Because of the choices we make today.
And ultimately, because of the hope we have in Jesus.
Hope that healing is possible.
Hope that freedom matters.
Hope that restoration can happen.
Hope that tomorrow can be different than today.

And that’s worth celebrating!

Continue Reading:

If you’re unfamiliar with Juneteenth or would like to better understand its significance, check out Juneteenth in the Church: A Faith-Based Perspective.

While this article focused on hope, that piece explores the history, context, and why this holiday matters to the Church today.

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

I didn’t expect Off Campus to make me think about the church.

Like many people, I started watching because everyone seemed to be talking about it. I expected the typical college drama filled with jealousy, betrayal, and people bringing out the worst in one another.

Instead, I was surprised.

At every turn, when I expected pettiness, I found kindness.
When I expected sabotage, I found support.
When I expected shallow relationships, I found vulnerability.

As I watched, I found myself rooting for almost everyone. (Okay, maybe not Sean.)

And it made me wonder: Why is Off Campus connecting so deeply with people?

The answer, I think, has less to do with romance and more to do with what people are longing for.

They’re longing for genuine friendship.
For emotional safety.
For healing.
For places where they can be fully known without fear of rejection.

And when something in culture connects deeply with people, the church should pay attention.
Not because culture has all the answers.
But because it often reveals what people are longing for.

And if we’re serious about loving and serving people well, understanding those longings matters.

*Minor spoilers ahead.

Vulnerability & Emotional Safety

One of the things Off Campus gets right is creating spaces where people can stop performing.

Throughout the series, we watch characters build trust in their relationships. As trust builds, they slowly lower their defenses, not because someone forces them to be vulnerable, but because they’ve experienced enough safety to be honest.

Spoiler: One of the clearest examples comes after Thanksgiving when Garrett opens up in the car. We see someone wrestling with disappointment, expectations, and emotions he doesn’t quite know what to do with. Hannah doesn’t rush to fix him. She simply makes room for him to share, and cry, and feel.

We see it again when Garrett hands Hannah the unopened can and quietly reminds her, “I got you,'“ and then holds the can while she sings karaoke, keeping his promise to keep her safe.

It’s a simple moment, but it communicates something many people desperately need to hear: You’re safe with me and You don’t have to carry this alone.

Perhaps that’s why scenes like these resonate.

People are longing for emotional safety.
For relationships where they can be honest.
For spaces where they don’t have to pretend everything is fine.

The church should pay attention to that…the church should be that.

Genuine Friendship

Another reason the show connects so deeply is its portrayal of friendship.

Not perfect friendship.
Real friendship.
The kind that shows up.
The kind that stays.
The kind that walks with people through heartbreak, mistakes, family struggles, and uncertainty.

The kind between Logan and Garrett.

Spoiler: When Garrett begins pulling away, Logan notices. He confronts him, speaks honestly about the distance between them, and refuses to pretend everything is fine. But Garrett isn’t ready to talk, so Logan gives him space. And when Garrett is finally ready to open up about what’s really going on with his dad, Logan doesn’t make it about himself.

He doesn’t get defensive.
He doesn’t stay angry.

He realizes Garrett’s struggle was never personal and gives his friend the space to be honest.

That’s what healthy friendship looks like.
Not avoiding difficult conversations. Not pretending problems don’t exist. But creating personal connections where vulnerability, truth, and grace can coexist.

People are longing for friendships like that.

For all our conversations within the church about community, the truth is many people still feel profoundly alone. They attend church regularly but struggle to find relationships where they are truly known.

Yet the early church was built on exactly that kind of connection. People shared meals, carried burdens, and lived life together (maybe not in a dorm or frat house, but you get the point. LOL).

Perhaps the popularity of Off Campus is revealing that people aren’t simply looking for a place to attend.

They’re looking for a place to belong.

The church should pay attention to that…the church should be that.

Healing & Breaking Generational Cycles

A recurring theme throughout Off Campus is the courage to confront the things that shaped us.

We see it in Hannah’s journey. Rather than pretending her past doesn’t affect her, she’s forced to acknowledge the ways it continues to influence her relationships, fears, and sense of safety. Her story isn’t about instantly overcoming trauma. It’s about learning to trust again.

We see it in Garrett’s story too.

Spoiler: Beneath his confidence is a young man determined not to become his father, while fearing that’s his destiny. He doesn’t want to repeat the patterns he’s inherited. He wants something different.

And isn’t that true for so many of us?

Many people walk into church carrying wounds they didn’t create.

Shame.
Fear.
Abandonment.
Messages about their worth they’ve believed for years.

Yet churches sometimes focus so heavily on behavior that we overlook the pain beneath it.

We want people to change.
God wants people to heal.

Jesus didn’t simply address behavior. He addressed hearts, identity, and the deeper wounds driving what people could see on the surface.

Perhaps that’s one reason Off Campus resonates so deeply.

People aren’t just longing to become better.
They’re longing to heal.

The church should pay attention to that…the church should be that.

Healthy Masculinity

One of the most refreshing parts of Off Campus is its portrayal of masculinity.

When most shows feature a group of college-aged men, we expect immaturity, arrogance, emotional avoidance, and endless competition.

Instead, we get something surprisingly different.

The men in Off Campus are competitive, confident, and protective, but they’re also emotionally available. They express affection for one another. They talk through conflict. They support their friends during difficult seasons. They aren’t afraid to admit when they’re struggling.

Perhaps most importantly, they don’t seem threatened by strong women.

Garrett doesn’t try to control Hannah.
He encourages her.
Supports her.
Believes in her.

The same pattern shows up throughout the friend group. The men aren’t diminished by the strength of the women around them. They’re better because of it.

That’s a refreshing picture in a culture often swinging between two unhealthy extremes: toxic masculinity on one side and confusion about masculinity on the other.

Biblical masculinity was never about domination.

It was never about control.
It was never about having the loudest voice in the room.

Jesus—the ultimate example of manhood—used His strength to serve, protect, elevate, and sacrifice for others.

Perhaps that’s why so many people connect with the male characters in Off Campus.

They’re showing a version of masculinity that is both strong and emotionally healthy.

The church should pay attention to that…the church should be that.

What If Our First Response Was Curiosity?

When something in culture connects deeply with people, perhaps our first response shouldn’t be dismissal.

Perhaps it should be curiosity.

Why is this connecting?
What is this revealing?
What are people longing for?

Because people are longing for vulnerability.
For friendship.
For healing.
For examples of healthy masculinity.

The church should pay attention to that.
More than that, the church should be that.

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

What kind of fruit is your theology producing?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately…whether my convictions are producing a heart reflective of Jesus. Or is my heart so intertwined with my convictions that it’s grown hard and cold toward people.

Recently, I shared a post about loving our neighbors in the Pride community. The responses were swift and harsh…and heartbreaking. Judgment, shame, and intense cruelty, wrapped up in Scripture and weaponized by fellow Christians so committed to truth that they’d lost all sense of love.

As I reflected on those interactions, I found myself realizing something: there was a time I never would have written that post because my convictions wouldn’t have allowed me to lead with compassion.

I grew up in a conservative Christian environment where lines were clear between right and wrong, truth and compromise, biblical and worldly. There was little room for gray. If you weren’t for us, you were against us.

Part of that framework included a strong belief in traditional marriage and biblical sexuality. But somewhere along the way, I began to believe that embracing biblical truth meant rejecting anything…and anyone that appeared to contradict it.

Today, I love listening to someone share their story and learning from their life experience. But back then I wasn’t interested in understanding differing perspectives, hearing about unfamiliar life circumstances, or learning from others. And while I wasn’t as outspoken back then, I held this belief tightly.

Looking back, I realize my convictions weren’t the problem. My heart was.

The Holy Spirit eventually began exposing something in me that I couldn't see on my own. The beliefs and ideologies I’d trusted to be based on Scripture were actually rooted in a fear of curiosity, empathy, and compassion. Rather than digging into the Bible myself, I’d trusted the leadership and direction of pastors and church leaders to decide that preserving Truth was greater than loving people.

I had become more concerned with being right than becoming like Jesus, and I didn’t know how to fix it or where to start. So I prayed…

“Lord, help me see people the way You see them, and help me love them like you do.”

I wasn’t asking Him to change my convictions.
I was asking Him to change my heart.

One of the ways He answered that prayer came through an unexpected friendship.

Years ago, I became friends with another parent at my children’s school. We connected through our kids and worked together as PTO moms. Eventually, their family moved across the country, but we stayed connected through social media.

Over time, her posts revealed that she was an atheist and that she and her teens were navigating conversations around gender identity, sexuality, trauma, and belonging. Their experiences were so different from my own that I often found it difficult to relate and (full transparency) the topics made me uncomfortable to read.

There were moments when I considered unfollowing her.
I wondered if by simply following her account, I was somehow affirming things that went against my personal convictions.

But I stayed.
I read.
I learned.

Reading her posts forced me to confront perspectives I had spent most of my life avoiding.
• I paid attention to the stories she shared about pain, rejection, bigotry, and judgement.
• I listen to the harsh reality of how Christians had wounded her and her family.
• I fought the urge to respond or defend a perspective.

What surprised me most was that listening didn’t weaken my convictions.
It strengthened my compassion.

For the first time, I wasn’t looking at an issue.
I was seeing at a person.

A person created in the image of God.
A person carrying deep wounds.
A person trying their best as they struggle through life.
A person with a story.
A person Jesus loves.

Over time, something changed in me.
Kinda like the Grinch, I noticed my heart starting to grow.
The more I listened, the softer and warmer it became.
Suddenly being right wasn’t as important as being like Jesus, not just with her, but with people in general.

Years later, she posted a comment that I’ve never forgotten.

Those words still sit heavily with me. At a time when I was reexamining what I had been taught, testing long-held beliefs against Scripture, and learning to separate human ideology from the heart of Jesus, she’d seen Jesus in me.

Learning to listen had changed me. Empathy had begun to open the door for me to consider someone else’s experience. So when we eventually began to dialogue, I wasn't defending a position. I was responding from my heart.

Throughout that season, I spent a lot of time studying the life of Jesus—how He lived, how He welcomed, how He responded, how He listened, how He spoke, how He saw people, and how He loved them. It’s a discipleship study rhythm I continue to practice still. And I decided that if I was going to see and love like Jesus, I had to follow His lead with ALL people, not just the ones that made me comfortable.

That friendship taught me that conviction and compassion can coexist.

I was afraid extending compassion would cost me my convictions.
The truth is, it’s drawing me closer to the heart of Jesus.

Growing up, I had absorbed the idea that extending compassion meant compromising truth. But Jesus was never concerned that compassion would dilute conviction.
He embodied both.

And so should I.

I’ve heard it said that intent doesn’t diminish impact.
And for a long time, I believed defending Truth was more important than considering the impact of my words and actions. But, if our commitment to Truth comes at the expense of someone understanding that Jesus loves them, died for them, and wants a relationship with them, then we’ve missed the point completely.

Compassion doesn’t require us to compromise personal convictions.
Kindness doesn’t demand agreement.
Empathy doesn’t require endorsement.

So I’ll leave you with the same questions I’ve been asking myself:

• What kind of fruit is your theology producing?

• Has it made you more compassionate?

• More curious?

• More willing to listen?

• More like Jesus?

• Or has it made you colder, harder, and more convinced of your own righteousness?

Following Jesus has never required us to abandon conviction.
But it does require us to surrender our contempt.

And perhaps that’s where a change of heart begins.

Hi! I’m Torrie. Thanks for stopping by.

If this article encouraged you, provided language for what you’re feeling,
or challenged you, I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

Some things don’t stop fitting all at once. They slowly start to feel tighter.

Less comfortable.
Harder to breathe in.

Like your favorite pair of jeans you used to reach for without thinking. They used to fit perfectly. So comfortable that you never had to wonder how’d they feel. Worn long enough that they molded to you. They moved with you. They belonged to you. They felt like home.

But then, slowly, something shifts.

At first it’s subtle. Almost unnoticeable.

The job you once loved starts to feel a little tighter. Not unbearable, just different. You still show up, still do the work, still tell yourself it’s fine. You can make this work.

So you start adjusting, adding little strategies to force yourself to fit. Wearing emotional “spankx” to quietly hold everything in place. But every day, the fit gets tighter and you find yourself longing to be anywhere other than in the space that is suffocating you.

What used to feel effortless now requires an abundance of effort and focus.

And because leaving feels too big and too uncertain, you stay.

Then you try something new.

A different role. A different title. A different “style” of what life could look like.

It feels like shopping for a new pair of jeans in a completely different decade of fashion.

You try on what’s trending, what other people swear by, what looks good on someone else’s life, what you’ve pinned on Pinterest.

But nothing fits right.

One is too tight in places you didn’t expect. Another feels too loose, like you’re swimming in it. You stand in dressing room lighting wondering why nothing feels like you anymore.

So you leave empty-handed, defeated, frustrated, and exhausted.

And you do what you have to do to keep forcing yourself to fit in a space you know you’ve outgrown because if you’re honest, the alternative is just too overwhelming.

Then it happens. The moment you can’t avoid.
The seam gives out.

You didn’t notice it at first because you were focused on making it work. But while holding your breath and forcing the zipper closed, the fabric had already been fraying.

And suddenly, it splits.

Not gently. Not metaphorically.

It just gives out.
You give out.
You reach your limit and either burn out, blow up, or melt down.

There’s no more adjusting. No more managing. No more holding it together.
You have to let go.

Moving on is no longer an option. It’s the only option.

And I get it because I’ve been here.

I’ve lived in that tension and discomfort. The anxiety of not knowing what comes next. The frustration of trying to force something to work that clearly doesn’t anymore. The grief of realizing something you once loved (and probably still do or you wouldn’t be trying so hard to save it) has run its course.

And when you’re at the height of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion, you’re reminded, “but wait…There’s more!” With bloodshot eyes and a weary spirit you, rally to face the part you were avoiding all this time: The In-Between.

The searching. The uncertainty. The fear that maybe nothing else will fit again.

You try to make sense of it all, but you’re exhausted and honestly, you’re tempted to give up and just live in sweats forever—literally and emotionally.

But after enough wandering, something happens.

You find it.

Not loud. Not trendy. Not complicated.

Just right.

It that fits like it was made for you. You don’t have to force it or convince yourself. It just works.

And for the first time in a long time, you exhale.

I can say this now that I found my “new pair of jeans.” And it’s amazing! There’s peace in it. Ease in it. A sense of alignment I didn’t realize I had been missing while I was busy trying to hold everything together in something that no longer fit.

That’s what aligned beginnings feel like; they don’t just look different, they feel like relief. But we have to be willing to let go of the old, so God can give us what He has next for us.

Isaiah 43:19 says:

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”

As we grow in Him, God grows us. He grows our gifts, our capacity, our influence…not for ourselves, but to grow His kingdom. So it’s natural that we would outgrow old spaces, relationships, mindsets, ect. A child doesn’t wear the same size clothes as an adult. Yet, we want to rely on our comfort to let us stay in spaces that we know no longer fit.

Because letting go is hard.

We tend to interpret endings as rejection when sometimes they are redirection.

And the In-Between—the confusion, the searching, the uncertainty—that space is not wasted. It’s formation. It’s where we learn to stop clinging to what used to fit and start trusting God for what will.

So if you’re in that space right now, tired of forcing old things to work and unsure what comes next, you are not stuck. You are in transition.

And God isn’t absent in the wrestling and waiting. He’s preparing something even better for you.

Hi! I’m Torrie, and I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for reading this article.

If it encouraged you, met you in a season you didn’t have language for,
or helped you name something you’ve been feeling
I’d love to hear your story in a comment below.

I don’t like change.

Let me clarify—I don’t mind a little refresh here and there. A new coffee shop? Absolutely. New city for vacation? Sounds like a fun adventure. In fact, I recently freshened up our home decor. Out with the farmhouse. In with “cozy boho.”

But major life change? The kind that uproots everything familiar and asks you to trust God in the middle of uncertainty?

Yeah…that’s a little harder for me.

I’ve never been the “jump first and figure out how to fly on the way down” kind of girl. My natural bend has always leaned toward stability. Predictability feels safe. Familiar rhythms feel comforting. I like knowing what’s next, what’s expected, and where my feet are landing.

The next couple of months are the picture of predictability…unless you count:

• my daughter graduating high school,

• my son getting married,

• both of my kids moving out over the next couple of months,

• resigning from a job I’ve had for almost a decade,

• and launching an entirely new business.

Other than that? Things are super calm.

(Don’t worry. I already have my counseling appointments scheduled for the next several months.)

But underneath the humor—and honestly, underneath a blend of excitement, joy, and sadness—I’ve been realizing something important:

Change may be uncomfortable, but it’s often where God does His deepest work.

We love the idea of God being steady, faithful, and unchanging. And He is. Hebrews 13:8 reminds us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

But while God Himself does not change, He absolutely invites us to.

Scripture is full of people who encountered God and then had to leave something familiar behind.

Abraham left home without knowing where he was going.
Moses went from shepherd to leader.
Esther went from orphaned girl to queen and protector of her people.
The disciples left their nets and families.
Peter left the boat.
Paul lost the life he thought he wanted in order to discover the one God had for him.

And if I’m honest, I think part of what makes change so difficult is that it exposes how much I want control. Maybe you do too. We want guarantees. We want clarity before obedience. We want five-year plans with highlighted timelines and backup options.

But faith rarely works that way.

So often, God asks us to trust Him before we feel ready.
Throughout Scripture, He says “Go” long before He reveals the full plan. Not because He enjoys watching us squirm—but because growth rarely happens when everything stays comfortable.

Seeds have to break open before they grow.
Muscles stretch before they strengthen.
Even caterpillars dissolve completely before becoming something new.

And maybe that’s the invitation hidden inside seasons of change:
Not just to survive transition…
but to become someone new within it.

Lately, I’ve been grieving and celebrating at the same time. I’m excited and anxious. Proud and emotional. Hopeful and unsure—sometimes all at the same time.

But I’m learning that maturity in faith doesn’t mean we stop feeling the weight of change.

It means we learn to trust that God is still present inside it.

Maybe you’re in a season like that too.

Maybe things feel uncertain.
Maybe something is ending.
Maybe God is asking you to loosen your grip on what’s familiar.
Maybe your next season feels exciting and heartbreaking all at once.

If so, you’re not failing because change feels hard.

You’re human.

And maybe the question isn’t:
“How do I avoid change?”

Maybe the better question is:
“What might God be trying to grow in me through it?”

Because sometimes the very thing we’re resisting is the place where God is preparing us for what’s next.

Even when it’s uncomfortable.
Even when it’s unfamiliar.
Even when we’d really prefer a detailed itinerary first.

As I grow closer to Jesus, I’m discovering that while change is still uncomfortable and at times scary, it’s also exciting. It’s an opportunity to reflect on God’s promises, remember how He’s shown up before, and stay expectant for what He’s doing next.

If you’re navigating faith, belonging, growth, or the tension of becoming,
you’re welcome here.

As Christians, many of us have been taught to lean into the “positive” emotions—joy, gratitude, peace—and to avoid the “negative” ones like anger, grief, or discomfort.

But what if the real divide isn’t between positive and negative?
What if it’s between comfortable and uncomfortable?

That shift matters. Especially when it comes to how we show up in conversations about social and cultural issues.

The Discomfort We Don’t Know What to Do With

We’re quick to celebrate unity.
We love the language of love.
But when racism, injustice, gender dynamics, classism, or inequity surface, many of us freeze. Get quiet. Change the subject.

Not necessarily out of malice—but out of discomfort.

We’ve been discipled into emotional avoidance:

• Sad? Quote a Bible verse.

• Angry? “Just pray about it.”

• Uncertain? “God’s in control.”

• Uncomfortable? “Let’s just focus on the Gospel.”

None of those responses are inherently wrong—but they can become spiritual bypasses when we use them to avoid tension instead of engaging it.

Jesus Didn’t Bypass Discomfort

Jesus didn’t avoid messy conversations or hard truths.

He sat with the woman at the well, knowing the cultural and social discomfort it would cause.
He touched the skin of a leper.
He defended the woman caught in adultery.
He flipped tables in the temple—not out of rage, but righteous grief.
He wept.
He listened.
He called things what they were.

Jesus leaned into discomfort for the sake of love, justice, and healing.

What If the Holy Spirit Is Using Discomfort to Grow Us?

When a conversation around race, privilege, poverty, or gender makes us uneasy…
When a story challenges what we’ve always assumed to be true…
When a lived experience doesn’t match our theology…

That doesn’t mean we’re being led astray.

It might mean we’re being invited deeper.

Into empathy.
Into understanding.
Into a Gospel that isn’t just true—but transforming.

Discomfort Isn’t Dangerous—Avoidance Might Be

Spiritual maturity isn’t measured by how quickly we return to comfort.
It’s shown in how faithfully we stay present in discomfort long enough to let God move through it.

Next time you feel that inner resistance, instead of running from it, ask:

“Holy Spirit, what are you trying to show me here?”

Because sometimes the most sacred work starts in the most uncomfortable places.

And Jesus meets us there.

If this stirred something in you…
You’re not alone. These conversations aren’t easy—but they matter deeply.

Sit with it. Pray through it. And maybe… start the conversation.

You can forward this post to a friend, bring it to your small group, or reach out to me directly—I’d love to hear what resonated or what you’re wrestling with.
You don’t have to walk alone.

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Hi! I’m Torrie
If you’re new here, WELCOME! I’m so glad you stopped by. You can learn more about me (Torrie), the heart behind Mixed.oloy, and the services I provide on my website. Let’s connect! I’d love to meet you and hear your story!

Meet Torrie

I didn’t grow up learning about or celebrating Juneteenth. When it came to the national forefront a few years ago, I started to learn. I listened to stories, followed social media feeds, and watched documentaries to understand its significance.

If I’m honest, a lot of what I learned made me uncomfortable—but I sat in the discomfort, determined to gain understanding for a history and experience apart from my own.

That discomfort, learning, and understanding grew into empathy and compassion. Now, I guide church teams to explore how Jesus modeled a life that blends discipleship and diversity—with Juneteenth being one of many meaningful entry points.

Why?

Because we are called to serve.
We’re called to make disciples.
We’re called to love.

But how can we do that if we don’t have empathy and compassion for the pain someone is carrying?
How do we serve if we aren’t willing to listen to their true need?
How do we listen if we’re always quick to give advice or move past the hard stuff?

Some might argue that conversations around Juneteenth—or topics tied to cultural tension, historical wounds, or social complexity—don’t belong in church.

But if we are to model our lives after Jesus, we can’t shy away from the uncomfortable.
Throughout the Gospels, we find Jesus stepping directly into the tensions of His time:

• He engaged the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), breaking racial, religious, and gender norms to offer dignity and truth.

• He called out injustice in the temple (Matthew 21:12–13), confronting systems that oppressed the poor and exploited the vulnerable.

• He healed a Roman centurion’s servant (Luke 7:1–10), showing compassion even to those who represented an occupying and unjust regime.

Jesus didn’t avoid the cultural, social, or political barriers of His day. He stepped through them with truth, compassion, and empathy.

Juneteenth gives us that same opportunity.

It’s not just a historical date—it’s a window into the lived pain, resilience, and faith of generations. For the Church, understanding Juneteenth isn’t about politics. It’s about people. It’s about discipleship. And it’s about love.

If you’re a church leader who wants to lead with humility and compassion but isn’t sure where to start, I’d love to help. I offer staff trainings, small group facilitation, and consulting that create safe, grace-filled spaces for these hard and holy conversations.

You don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to be willing to get proximate.
Juneteenth invites us to listen, learn, and love more like Jesus.
If your church is ready to lean in—with grace and courage—I’d be honored to walk alongside you.
Let’s start the conversation.

Curiosity is an opportunity to grow.
If this helped you see Juneteenth in a new light, consider sharing it with someone walking the same road.

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As I stood in our kitchen waiting for my second cup of liquid energy to finish brewing, I glanced outside. It’s a beautiful, mild morning in Las Vegas. The kind that invites you to take in the peace, solitude, and 80º temperatures on the back patio before the triple digits return. Our backyard, like most in the city, is surrounded by an 8-foot-high cinderblock wall, which we have hidden with equally tall flowering oliander hedges and rose bushes, not because they’re my favorite plants, but because I don’t have a green thumb and these seem to be the only two things I can keep alive in my yard.

Living in the desert but being from the Midwest, my husband and I need to incorporate as much “green” into the shades of brown surrounding us (hence the number of shrubs). And I like a splash of color to brighten things up, so the green has to include some flowers. I can always count on my favorite rose bush to be the star of the backyard. At its seasonal peak, the sheer weight of the full blooms often causes the plant to bow and bend. And the aroma! I’m not a fan of rose-scented items like lotions or candles, but the intoxicating sweetness from this one plant permeates our backyard!

Earlier in the week, I noticed several baby buds sprouting around the plant. But as I waited in my kitchen, I noticed a deep red color emanating from their tight-green cocoons.

I smiled as I sipped my coffee. I love it when my backyard is in full bloom! I made my way outside to take a closer look, and that’s when it struck me—we are just like these blooms. While we all have the opportunity to blossom, some of us (like these flowers) may not experience the fullness of the beauty God has created in us.

What???
Let me explain.

Maybe you’re familiar with the parable Jesus told about the farmer who scattered his seeds, some landing on rocky soil, some on hard soil, the wind blew some away, and some fell on healthy soil and took root (Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:11-20, Luke 8:4-15). While I stared at these rose buds, I had another thought: just because a plant takes root doesn’t mean it reaches its full potential. Looking at the variety of blooms on the bush, I recognized three possible outcomes for these new flowers on the cusp of blooming:

1. Burnt by the Sun

It’s not uncommon for flowers to become victims of the harsh desert heat. Exposure to direct sunlight during a Vegas summer with consecutive days topping out at over 100ºF has a damaging impact. While the color remains, the bud never reaches maturity. It remains stuck. And although the plant is still healthy and green, that particular flower’s petals become singed and burnt.

Maybe you feel the same. You’ve been burned by life and experiences. You’re tired of showing up, exhausted from trying, burned out from obligations and responsibility. You’re fragile…brittle…and ready to break.

2. Consumed by Bugs

If heat is one of my roses' biggest enemies, then aphids are the other. Ugh!! These tiny bugs are such a nuisance. Their green color allows them to camouflage into the plant, making them hard to spot but no less destructive. They attach themselves to the stem and premature buds, sucking their sap and preventing them from blooming.

Maybe you can identify. You have people around you who appear to be on your side but are silently draining you. They’re sucking your joy, your creativity, and your ability to dream, leaving you feeling too small and insignificant to be used by God.

3. Robbed of Water

If heat and bugs are the biggest enemies of my roses, then water (and shade) are their greatest need. It’s not a secret that plants need water to grow. However, in the desert, water is a precious commodity. While rare and valuable, it’s essential. Without it, the bloom will wither, and eventually, the plant will die.

Maybe you feel the same way. Dry. Thirsty. You’ve been trying to grow, trying to bloom, trying to do all the things, but you can’t remember the last time you paused for a drink. Jesus said HE is the Living Water, apart from which we can do nothing. But, if we’re honest, that's exactly how we try to accomplish the mission He’s given us…on our own, apart from Him. No rest. No sabbath. No water.

Looking at each of the blooms on the edge of so much beauty, I felt a twinge of sadness. I wondered, “How many of us are also on the cusp of blooming where we’re planted, but we’re allowing the heat from life, the negative voice around us, or the lack of Water to rob us of experiencing the fullness God has for us AND the world from the beauty that will come of it?”

Then He reminded me of one more possible outcome…FULL BLOOM!

In John 15:1-5, Jesus calls Himself the Vine. And when we stay connected to Him, He will allow us to bloom fully in His perfect timing. He will shelter us from the heat. He will protect our thoughts and emotions from negativity and distraction. He will refresh and restore our thirsty souls. When we stay connected to Jesus, we will experience His fullness, becoming a sweet fragrance and radiating beauty that draws others to Him.

So often, we settle for survival when Jesus invites us to flourish. But full bloom isn’t about striving—it’s about staying rooted in Him, trusting His timing, and receiving what only He can provide.

Reflection
Where in your life might you be on the edge of blooming—but feel held back by burnout, negativity, or spiritual dryness? If you feel comfortable sharing, I’d love to chat with you. You can drop a comment or email me at torriesorge@gmail.com.

Leave a comment

Invitation
If this resonated with you, take a moment to pause with Jesus today.
And if you want more encouragement around diversity and discipleship, I’d love to invite you to subscribe to Mixed.ology.

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If you’re new here, WELCOME! I’m so glad you stopped by. You can learn more about me (Torrie), the heart behind Mixed.oloy, and the services I provide on my website. Let’s connect! I’d love to meet you and hear your story!

Meet Torrie

Mamie Tape Takes A Stand is the true story of Mamie Tape, a Chinese-American girl who fought for the right to an equal education. While many of us are familiar with the landmark case, Brown vs. the Board of Education and the story of Ruby Bridges, few know the story and cases that preceded it. Mamie Tape is one such case.

I asked Maire to share her heart and purpose behind writing Mamie’s story. I pray her words both enlighten and challenge you. Enjoy!

Interwoven Histories Inspire Mamie Takes a Stand

At the start of COVID in 2020, I read Separate is Never Equal, by Duncan Tonatiuh, aloud to my six-year-old daughter, who had chosen it from her school’s online library. “Interesting choice,” I thought to myself. The familiar phrase reminded me of the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, but the focus of this picture book biography was a Latina girl named Sylvia Mendez, not Linda Brown. I mistakenly assumed this story would be set in the deep South–wasn’t that where most of the segregated schools were located during this time period? 

As I kept reading, more cities were listed that had segregated schools: El Modena, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Westminster; cities not far from the neighborhood where I grew up in Orange County, California. As a child, my family often drove to Little Saigon in Westminster to enjoy a delicious Chinese meal. I reflected on all the countless times we went to dine on dim sum, yet I never knew this Chinese restaurant was a mile away from where the Mendez case had taken place in 1947. 

For many years, I taught second and third grade just north of OC (Orange County) in Los Angeles, where the majority of my students came from families whose parents had immigrated from Mexico. Even the focus of my master’s project had been on multicultural children’s literature, and I had intentionally selected picture books for my class where the cultural heritage of my students would be represented. How had I never learned this history of separate Mexican schools in California?

I flipped to the back of Separate is Never Equal. I wanted to learn as much as I could about the case of Mendez et al v. Westminster et al. I looked up references in the bibliography. I was curious about this important piece of history that hit so close to home. One rabbit trail led to another, and suddenly, this case became even more personal. In my research of school segregation cases, I discovered that an eight-year-old Chinese American girl, Mamie Tape, was denied entrance into her local public school in San Francisco in 1884. What?! The Chinese weren’t allowed to go to public schools in California too? How did I not know about separate Chinese schools? Immediately, I saw myself reflected in the pages of history.

I passionately searched for anything I could find about the Tape v. Hurley case. I dug through online archives, articles, documentaries, and photographs; read books about Asian American history; and interviewed historians, professors, Chinese elders, and the Tape family descendants. While I was researching the Tape v. Hurley case, which happened during the time of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, many Chinese Americans were experiencing anti-Asian hate during the height of the COVID pandemic. My heart mourned for the harm and violence done toward the elderly in my Chinese community as they were simply walking down the street to shop for groceries, meet a friend, take the bus, or exercise. The rhetoric of blaming and scapegoating the Chinese for this new disease seemed so similar to the articles I had been researching from the late 1800s. How could I raise awareness and help prevent history from repeating itself? 

I remembered how I had learned about Sylvia Mendez through reading a children’s book. Busy parents would take 20 minutes to read a bedtime story to their child, just like I did when I read Separate is Never Equal to my daughter. When I began my research in 2020, there hadn’t been any picture book biography written about Mamie Tape yet. That’s when I knew I had to write this story.

One significant primary source that struck a chord in my heart was a letter that Mamie Tape’s mother had written to the school board that was published in a California newspaper. Mrs. Mary Tape boldly spoke up against the racial discrimination Mamie and her family had experienced: “Is it a disgrace to be Born a Chinese? Didn’t God make us all!!! What right! have you to bar my children out of the school because she is a Chinese Decend?” Mrs. Tape wasn’t afraid to speak up against injustice and how segregation was incongruent with the board members’ outward piety: “I suppose, you all goes to churches on Sundays! Do you call that a Christian act to compell my little children to go so far to a school that is made in purpose for them.” 

 I knew I wanted to quote Mrs. Tape’s letter in my book, Mamie Takes a Stand, but I struggled with whether or not to correct Mrs. Tape’s non-standard English. I decided to quote Mrs. Tape’s words precisely how she wrote them in 1885. I wanted to emphasize that even if you’re an immigrant and don’t write with impeccable English grammar or spelling, you can still stand up when you see or experience injustice. Your voice matters; you have inherent worth and value because you have been made in the image of God.

In a well-known letter, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote on April 16, 1963 (exactly 78 years after Mrs. Mary Tape’s letter was published on April 16, 1885) from a Birmingham jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

Interestingly, the Mendez et al case occurred because the Mendez family was leasing and caring for the Munemitsu farm, which belonged to a Japanese American family that had been unjustly forced to move to an incarceration camp during World War II.  The Mendez case surprisingly had an Asian American connection. Our lives and histories are more interwoven than we think. We need to stand together in solidarity.

Mamie Tape’s case began 70 years before Brown v. Board of Education.

Mendez et al v Westminster et al was decided 7 years before Brown v. Board of Education.

This year, 2024, marks the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. 

Each case built on another. 

I hope my book, Mamie Takes a Stand: The True Story of Mamie Tape, a Chinese American Girl’s Fight for School Rights, will help readers grow in empathy and respect for others and see how our histories are interconnected. When we see each person as having inherent worth and created in the image of God, it will bring us closer to creating a more just and compassionate world. 

Wrap up

If you’re like me, you find yourself like Marie asking, “How did I not know? Why wasn’t this part of our history lessons?” While it’s true, that we don’t know what we don’t know, it’s also true that the answers are there if we choose to look. And our histories are more connected than we might assume.

Like Mamie, Marie faced obstacles, roadblocks, setbacks, and disappointments as she struggled to give a voice to this important story and piece of history. And like Mamie, Marie preserved. She didn’t give up. As a result, we have the opportunity to learn about Mamie Tape’s impact!

I strongly believe that children’s books are a great way to learn no matter our age. My personal library is a collection of both children's and adult books because both have value. So please don’t allow the fact that this is a children’s book to give it (or any children’s book) less credibility. These narratives have a way of explaining and connecting with us even as adults in a beautiful way.

Marie also includes an added bonus at the end of the book that you won’t want to miss. Since I love spoilers, I really want to share it, but I won’t. (Ahhh! It’s so cool. I really want to tell you!)

Mamie Tape Takes a Stand is a must-have for your home and school library! Click below to order your copy today! Actually, grab one for you and one for a friend, school, or local library.

Buy Mamie Tape Takes A Stand

Follow Marie on Instagram, Facebook or her website.

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