Nothing left but pieces of you — and why that might be exactly where God wants you

There is a particular kind of grief that has no funeral. No one brings you flowers when the life you built quietly stops working. No one checks in when you are the one who has to grieve the version of yourself you thought you would always be.

This is what happened to me. Not in one dramatic moment, but slowly — the way a tide goes out. My career felt like it was slipping. My sense of who I was as a journalist, as a woman, as a person who had something meaningful to say, started to feel uncertain in a way it never had before.

And God, being who He is, used every bit of it.

I have spent years building something. A voice. A platform. A brand, if we are being honest about the language of this industry. I believed, for a long time, that those things were the point. That if I was working, if I was growing, if people were listening — I was okay. That my okayness was tied to my output.

But then the output slowed. And I had to sit with what was left.

What I found surprised me. Not immediately — at first I found panic, and fear, and a particular brand of shame that belongs only to women who have publicly committed to being strong. But underneath all of that, I found something I had not expected to find: myself. Quieter than I remembered. Less certain. But still there.

And in that quietness, God showed up in ways He could not have when I was too busy performing my faith to actually practice it.

I am writing this for the woman who is currently in the falling-apart season. The one who does not know how to explain to her family why she is not okay. The one who is scared that stripped down she will not be enough.

You will be enough. You already are. The pieces are not the problem — they are the beginning of something more honest than what you had before.