Author: Aimee Albright

A Lesson From the Boba Lady

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Sometimes we say really stupid things.

The other day my husband said something that stopped me in my tracks and made me think, Did you really just say that to me? My husband loves boba drinks. There is a local vendor that he will buy from every chance he gets. We were at a local ice cream place and he noticed that they now serve boba drinks. Without missing a beat he said, “No, I can’t cheat on my boba lady.”

I just stood there. I didn’t say anything out loud, but in my head I was thinking, Did you really just say that to me? Had he not been unfaithful to our marriage covenant, I probably would have laughed. I know he wasn’t trying to hurt me. He wasn’t being malicious. He was making a joke about buying a drink from someone else. But still. You cheated on me and broke our marriage covenant, but you won’t cheat on your favorite boba vendor?

It only hurt a little. It wasn’t one of those things that sent me spiraling or caused some huge rupture between us. I didn’t even say anything to him about it. But the comment has kept coming back to me. And the more I have thought about it, the less I have thought about what he said and the more I have started thinking about the things I say.

How many times have I said something stupid without stopping to think about how it might sound to the person hearing it? How many times have I been trying to be funny or just having a normal conversation and said something that landed completely differently than I intended?

James 1:19 says, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” I have always thought about being slow to speak in the context of anger or conflict. Don’t react. Don’t say something in anger that I will regret later. Listen first. Calm down. Think before I respond. But maybe being slow to speak is bigger than that. Maybe it applies when I’m joking. Maybe it applies when I’m telling a story. Maybe it applies when I’m having a completely normal conversation and the words are just coming out of my mouth. Maybe being slow to speak means remembering that my words are going to land somewhere.

I’ve never considered myself funny. I’m definitely not the person in the room with the quick response that makes everyone laugh. Usually I think about what I could have said about twenty minutes later. My son, on the other hand, has always been quick like that. I remember one time he was putting on his coat and several screws somehow popped into the air and fell onto the floor. His immediate response was, “And for my next trick…” He didn’t get that from me!

I have never been quick with words like that. In fact, when someone says something confrontational to me, I usually don’t respond immediately either. I have always called it freezing. Something is said, and I just stand there. Then hours or sometimes even days later, after I have had time to process what was said and how I feel about it, I decide whether I want to say something or just let it go. I have always thought that was a negative thing about myself.

But now I’m wondering if I have been too quick to label all of it as freezing. I’m not saying freezing is a fruit of the Spirit. It isn’t. And I’m sure there are times when I really do freeze. But maybe there are also times when what I have called freezing is actually restraint. Maybe I don’t always need an immediate response. Maybe sometimes I am simply slow to speak.

Galatians 5:22–23 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit includes patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. The more I think about those words, the more I realize how much they should affect the way I speak. Patience doesn’t demand that I respond right now. Kindness considers how my words are going to affect the person hearing them. Gentleness changes how I say something, even when something does need to be said. Self-control reminds me that just because I can say something doesn’t mean I need to.

Proverbs 17:27 says, “The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint.” Maybe I have spent too much time wishing I could think faster instead of asking whether I actually need to.

There are definitely times when I need to speak. Being slow to speak doesn’t mean avoiding hard conversations or never addressing something that needs to be addressed. Sometimes after I have had time to process, I realize I do need to go back and say something. Other times, after a few hours or a few days, I realize it really doesn’t matter and I can let it go. Maybe wisdom is learning the difference.

And maybe part of becoming more rooted and anchored in Jesus is learning to recognize what He is doing in me, even in the parts of myself I have always considered weaknesses. I am learning more about who He is, but I am also learning more about who I am as I follow Him. Sometimes those lessons come through Bible study or prayer. Sometimes they come through really painful things.

And apparently sometimes they come from standing in an ice cream shop listening to my husband talk about not cheating on his boba lady. God can use some pretty ordinary things to get my attention.

This time, He reminded me to be slow to speak. And maybe to give myself a little more grace when I am.

–Aimee
August 17, 2026

Faithfulness Isn’t Always Feeling Better

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Sometimes faithfulness looks like hurting and choosing not to make the hurt worse.

Yesterday sucked. There really isn’t a better way to say it. It was one of those days that took me right back to what life used to feel like before recovery started. The selfishness, the harshness, the excuses. Some of those old behaviors showed up again, and I hate how quickly they can bring back old pain. I think that’s one of the hardest parts of healing from betrayal. Something can happen today, but the pain isn’t only about today. It reminds me of all the other times, all the other hurt, all the years when this was normal and I didn’t understand why things felt the way they did. I hate that after everything we have been through and all the work that has been done, we can have a day that feels so much like the old days.

We had strong thunderstorms yesterday, so I couldn’t spend time outside like I wanted to. Normally I can go out to the flower field and find something that needs done. I can pull weeds, cut flowers, plant something, move something. There is always something to do out there. But yesterday I couldn’t do that, so I ended up driving an hour one way to an Amish store alone and then sitting inside watching TV. At one point he came in and asked me what was wrong and if something had happened. I was pretty mad about that. How could he not know what was wrong? He said he knew about us, but he thought maybe something else had happened. No. Nothing else happened. This was enough.

I was sad. I was angry. And I wanted the pain to stop. I thought about drinking. I’ve used alcohol before to numb what I didn’t want to feel, and for a little while it works. But the problem is still there when the alcohol wears off, and usually I’ve just added something else to feel bad about. So yesterday I didn’t drink. I prayed. A lot. Eventually I went to bed pretty early. I didn’t sleep very well. I kept waking up throughout the night, and this morning I don’t feel rested. I’m still sad. The problem isn’t fixed. The pain didn’t disappear because I prayed instead of drinking.

But maybe that’s the point I’m beginning to understand. Faithfulness doesn’t always make me feel better immediately. Sometimes faithfulness is being hurt and choosing not to make the hurt worse. Psalm 62:8 says, “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” Yesterday I had a choice about where I was going to pour out everything I was feeling. I could try to numb it, or I could take it to God. So I took it to God. Not nicely. Not with some perfectly worded prayer. I was hurt. I was angry. I was disappointed. And I told Him.

I couldn’t control the choices my husband was making. I couldn’t control whether he slipped back into old behaviors. But I could choose whether I went back to mine. His sliding backward does not mean I have to slide backward with him. I think that is something I really need to remember.

I don’t know what happens from here. I don’t know if yesterday was one really bad day or if there is something more that needs to be dealt with. That isn’t mine to figure out this morning. This morning I am tired. I’m still sad. I’m still hurt. But I didn’t make the hurt worse.

Maybe faithfulness today simply means I take this pain back to God again. Maybe it means I tell Him, “This still hurts. I still hate this. I don’t want to be here again. Help me trust You with today.”

Because sometimes choosing God doesn’t immediately change how I feel. Sometimes faithfulness is waking up the next morning still hurting and choosing Him again.

-Aimee
August 12, 2026

I Stopped Searching for the Exit

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I’ve been working through chapter 3 of Women of the Word, and one sentence really stuck with me. Jen Wilkin describes several ways we commonly approach the Bible, and as I read through them, I realized I had spent years asking the wrong question.

Almost every time I opened my Bible or Bible App, I was asking, “How can this help me?”

To be fair, there are seasons when that is exactly where I am. When life is falling apart, I do need God’s comfort. David, Elijah and even Jesus all sought comfort from God. Jesus said his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Then Jesus prayed and asked God to take “this cup” from him and then followed with “not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:38-39).

There is nothing wrong with bringing our pain to God. But somewhere along the way, I began to realize that Scripture wasn’t inviting me to make myself (or anyone else) the center of every verse. It was inviting me to know the One who is at the center of every verse.

All I used to want was for God to calm the storm. I wanted answers. I wanted healing. I wanted certainty about the future of my marriage. But in the middle of all of those wants, something started to change. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but I stopped searching for the exit. I started looking for God. Instead of asking, “God, how do I escape this?” I started asking, “God, who are You in the middle of this?”

The best thing is that the more I’m getting to know God, the less desperate I am becoming for escape. I’m not consumed with asking Him why anymore. I’m no longer consumed with escaping the pain. I’m not sitting and sulking in my pain. I have shifted my focus from me to God. When I read Paul’s letters now, I notice something I used to miss. Some of the most joy-filled words in Scripture were written from a prison cell. His circumstances didn’t determine his peace because his peace wasn’t rooted in his circumstances. It was rooted in Christ.

I’m still learning. There are still times when I open my Bible looking for answers about me. But more and more, I’m learning to ask “Who is God?”

Along this road I have discovered something I didn’t expect. The more I get to know God, the more everything else begins to make sense.

Not because I have all the answers, but because I am really getting to know the One who does.

-Aimee

Choosing Light … Again

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There are some entries that are easy to write because I can clearly see what God has been teaching me. Then there are entries like this one. The ones where I almost don’t want to write because I wish the story had gone differently.

This weekend I hit a breaking point. Not the kind where everything falls apart all at once. It was quieter than that. It was disappointment on top of disappointment until I didn’t want to carry it anymore. One of the deepest lies God has been exposing in my heart over the last several months is the lie that I’m not enough. Not enough to be chosen. Not enough to be pursued. Not enough to stop having to prove my worth. This weekend I realized another lie had been quietly growing right beside it: I’m optional.

I don’t want to be someone’s option. I want to be someone’s choice. I want to know what it feels like to be chosen over and over again.

Saturday felt like little sparks of connection that kept going out before they ever became a fire. Every time I thought we were connecting, it disappeared just as quickly. By the end of the day, my heart was exhausted. Instead of taking that pain to Jesus like I’ve been learning to do, I reached for something that would numb it.

For a little while, I drifted.

I let go of the anchor that had been holding me steady and reached for something else to quiet the pain.

I’m not proud of that. But I want to be honest about my own journey. Healing isn’t a straight line. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s incredibly messy… and this weekend was messy.

What surprised me is what God did in the middle of that mess.

Somewhere in the middle of all of it, walls came down. Conversations became more honest than they’ve been in a long time. I finally found words for the ache I’ve been carrying. The ache of feeling unseen. The ache of wondering if I will ever truly be chosen. For the first time in a long time, I think my husband didn’t just hear my words. I think he heard my heart.

There wasn’t one big dramatic moment. Instead, it was soft and slow. We missed church because we overslept, then spent the afternoon building our new chicken coop together. At one point I was kneeling on the ground stapling chicken wire while he stood above me fastening the sides. I reached up and flirted with him in a way I haven’t in a long time. He looked down and asked if he was in my way. I smiled and said, “No.” He smiled back, and we went back to work.

Later that evening we made a frozen pizza and sat on our bed having a little picnic while we talked. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about those moments, and maybe that’s exactly what made them so meaningful. They felt normal. They felt like friendship again. They felt like the kind of connection I’ve been missing. I felt seen, and maybe for the first time in a long time, he understood why this journey has been so painful.

Today I find myself holding two things at the same time: hope and caution. Part of me wonders if this was just another flicker that will fade away. Another part of me wonders if this is the small spark that God will gently breathe into a steady fire. The truth is, I don’t know, and I don’t have to know today. Real change isn’t measured by one conversation or one good day. Real change produces fruit over time.

So instead of trying to predict the future, I’m choosing something else.

I’m choosing light.

Again.

I’m choosing to bring my failures into the light instead of hiding them. I’m choosing to thank God for the good moments without demanding they become guarantees. I’m choosing to anchor my hope in Jesus instead of another person’s ability to love me perfectly.

One of the reasons I started Rooted & Anchored was because I didn’t want to pretend that following Jesus means having everything together. It doesn’t. Sometimes following Jesus means admitting that I let go of the anchor. It means admitting that I drifted and tried to quiet my pain in a way that could never truly heal it.

But letting go of the anchor does not mean I can’t reach for it again. The good news is that Jesus never lets go of me. He is still inviting me back. Still reminding me who I am. Still replacing lies with truth. Still teaching me that my identity isn’t found in whether someone else chooses me. It is found in the One who already has.

So today, that’s what I’m doing. I’m reaching for the anchor again. I’m choosing light again. And tomorrow, if I need to, I’ll choose it again.

– Aimee
July 20, 2026

The Road Called Freedom

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I recently finished Session Five, Worthless, in Jennie Allen’s The Lie You Don’t Know You Believe. She ended the teaching with one simple sentence that I have not been able to stop thinking about: You free changes the world. I have been thinking about those words a lot.

Looking back over my life, I have realized that I learned how to survive at a very young age. My parents divorced when I was 5. My birth mother was not consistently present in my life. I lost my grandma, who was the one constant in my childhood, when I was twelve years old. At fifteen, my life was completely uprooted when we moved across the country. At eighteen, I became pregnant, and my son’s biological father walked away. Later came years of raising children with Cystic Fibrosis, hospital rooms, fear, grief, losing Melanie, fighting for Rosie’s life, losing Rosie, and eventually discovering my husband’s betrayal.

I do not say any of that because I want people to feel sorry for me. I say it because when I look back, I can see that survival became my default way of living. I learned how to keep going, how to handle the next crisis, and how to push down what I was feeling long enough to figure out what needed to be done. I learned how to function while hurting. Somewhere along the way, survival stopped being something I did during hard seasons. It became the way I lived.

Then came September 8, 2023. When my husband’s addiction and infidelity was disclosed, every bit of my energy went into surviving again. Every day became about making it to the next day. I spent countless hours trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to understand why, trying to decide whether our marriage could survive, and trying to quiet the lies that suddenly seemed louder than the truth. I carried fear, grief, anger, confusion, and exhaustion all at the same time. I was doing what I had always done. I was surviving.

But eventually, survival was not enough anymore. One day, I drank so much tequila trying to escape the pain that I passed out. I couldn’t deal with the pain anymore, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I tried to numb it. I wanted relief, even if it was only temporary. Looking back, I see that day as a wake-up call. Escaping was not healing, and numbing was not freedom. I had reached the end of myself.

I had spent most of my life asking, “How do I survive this?” God began teaching me to ask a different question: What would it look like to be free? At first, I thought I was looking for freedom. What I know now is that I was looking for Jesus, and He was leading me toward freedom.

Over the last year and a half, God has been taking me down a different road. It is not a road where all the pain disappeared, every question was answered, or my marriage was instantly restored. It is a road where He has been slowly removing the chains I did not even realize I was carrying. He has been showing me the lies I believed about myself: that I had to earn my worth, that I had to perform, that I had to be useful, that if I didn’t measure up I didn’t matter, and that my value could be determined by someone else’s choices.

Instead, He has been teaching me who I really am. I am His beloved daughter. I am loved before I accomplish anything and before I get everything right. I am loved because of who He is, not because of what I do.

One of the other things that stood out to me in the session was the idea that a relationship can be better than it was before because the people in it have gone through conflict and worked it out. That really hit me when I thought about my marriage.

For years, I thought my husband and I were going through conflict. The truth is, we went around it. We moved on. We got quiet. We let time pass. But we didn’t really deal with what was underneath it. You can’t work through what’s been hidden.

Now, for the first time in our marriage, we are learning to tell the truth, face what is real, and work through conflict instead of simply going around it. It’s slow. It’s painful. It’s painfully slow. But it is different. We are not just going through conflict anymore. We are trying to work it out.

I don’t know exactly what the final outcome of our marriage will be, but I do know that God is doing a different work in us. Maybe that’s what redemption looks like. Not instant change, pretending the damage didn’t happen, or rushing back to the way things were, but faithful perseverance. One difficult conversation, one truth told, one surrendered heart, and one step of obedience at a time.

The other thought that has stayed with me is this: People who are still chained spend all their energy trying to survive, but free people have something left to give. That sentence stopped me because I have spent so much of my life using all of my energy to survive.

When you are chained by grief, fear, shame, striving, control, or lies, there’s not much left for anything else. Every day becomes about getting through the day. As I have allowed Jesus to set me free, I have noticed something changing. I am beginning to have room again. Room to notice other people, encourage someone else, dream, serve from love instead of striving, tell the truth about what I have walked through, and let God use my story.

I believe God can use the circumstances of my life and the things I have walked through to help someone else walk through them. But I can’t help another person find freedom if I am still completely chained to the pain. That doesn’t mean I have to be perfectly healed before God can use me. It does mean I have to keep allowing Him to lead me out of captivity. I have to keep surrendering what I can’t carry, letting Him expose the lies, and follow Him.

Second Corinthians 1:3–4 says that God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the comfort we have received from Him. God does not waste our pain. He frees us so we can point others toward freedom. He heals us so we can point people to the Healer.

I’m walking on the road called freedom now. I still have days when the old lies whisper, moments when fear feels familiar, and places where God is uncovering wounds I didn’t know were there. I still have a long way to go, but I don’t want to go back to the road called survival. Survival helped me endure things I had to walk through, but it was never meant to become my permanent home.

Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Jesus did not set me free so that I could keep living as though I were chained. He did not bring me this far so I could return to the old road. He is teaching me how to live differently; not merely surviving, pretending, numbing, or striving to earn my worth, but rooted in Him, anchored in His truth, and walking toward freedom.

Maybe the free really do change the world, not because they are strong survivors, but because they know the One who broke their chains.

-Aimee
July 16, 2026

Perfect Peace, Even Here

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I used to think emotional regulation meant learning how to not feel so much. I thought healing would mean I would not be as emotional or as easily affected by things. Maybe if I could learn to control my reactions better, I would finally feel stronger and more secure.

But I am realizing that is not what God is asking me to do. He is not asking me to pretend I am fine when I am not. He is not asking me to push down grief, anger, fear, or disappointment. He is not asking me to become numb. He is teaching me to bring those emotions to Him before I let them take over.

There are still moments when something that may seem small can send my mind racing. It can be a change in someone’s tone, a facial expression, a delayed answer, or a conversation that does not feel finished. My mind immediately starts trying to figure out what happened. I replay the conversation. I wonder what was really meant. I question what is true, what is safe, and what I might have missed.

Betrayal taught me that what I thought was true might not have been the whole truth. It taught me that there could be another reality happening that I did not know about. Because of that, my mind still looks for what I might be missing. Sometimes my body reacts before I have even figured out what I am feeling. My heart beats faster, my chest feels tight, and I feel like I need answers right away.

For a long time, I thought the goal was to stop having those reactions. Now I think the goal is to learn what to do when they come. I am learning to pause, breathe, pray, and pay attention to what is happening inside of me before I react. I am learning that a feeling can be real without being allowed to lead me.

My feelings are not wrong, but they do not always tell me the whole story. Fear can make something feel urgent. Anger can make me feel like I need to act immediately. Grief can make it seem like the pain will never end. I am learning to bring all of that to God and let Him help me sort through what is true.

Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”

I have always liked the words perfect peace, but I think I used to picture them differently. I thought perfect peace would come when my life felt peaceful. I thought it would happen when my relationships felt secure, when I had answers, and when nothing unexpected was happening around me.

But that is not what this verse says. It does not say God will keep everything around me peaceful. It says He will keep me in peace when my mind stays fixed on Him and I trust Him.

That means perfect peace can exist even here. It can exist in the middle of uncertainty. It can exist while I am still healing. It can exist when I do not have all the answers and when someone else’s choices are completely outside of my control.

Peace does not mean nothing is wrong. It means I know where to turn when something is wrong. It means I can remind myself that God is still God. He is still with me. He is not confused or caught off guard. He sees what I cannot see, knows what I do not know, and understands what I cannot make sense of.

God is not asking me to figure everything out before I can rest. He is asking me to trust Him.

Sometimes that means turning my mind back to Him over and over again. Peace is not always one big spiritual moment. Sometimes it is a lot of small choices throughout the day. It is choosing not to keep replaying a conversation. It is telling God what I am afraid of. It is waiting until I am calm before I respond. It is choosing what I know is true instead of following where fear is trying to take me.

If you are healing from betrayal, emotional regulation is not about excusing what happened or pretending you are okay. It is not about becoming quieter, less emotional, or easier for everyone else to be around. It is about slowing down enough to let God meet you in what you are feeling.

For me, being rooted and anchored in Jesus means learning to pause before I react. It means telling God the truth about how I feel and asking Him to help me choose the next right thing. And God can handle the truth. He can handle my anger, my questions, my fear, and the moments when I do not feel peaceful at all.

Psalm 62:8 says, “Pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” I love that verse because it reminds me that I do not have to hide any of this from God. I do not have to clean up my emotions before I come to Him. I can pour everything out and trust that He will meet me there.

I have not mastered this. Not even close. There are still times when I react too quickly. There are still moments when fear becomes louder than truth. There are still days when my mind feels anything but steadfast.

But I can see God gently rebuilding the places in me that have lived in survival mode for a long time. He is teaching me that peace is not found in controlling every outcome. It is not found in knowing everything or making sure I am never hurt again. Peace is found in Him.

Maybe perfect peace does not mean I am never shaken. Maybe it means I know where to return when I am.

Untangling Hope

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I have been struggling to understand godly hope. What does it really mean to hope? Is it only hope in my salvation? Hope that, in the end, Jesus wins?

I have been praying about this a lot, and on Saturday I asked God very specifically to help me understand. I asked Him for wisdom because I want to have hope, but honestly, I don’t feel very hopeful right now.

Then Sunday morning, less than two minutes into the sermon, I quietly said, “Okay, God. I’m listening.”

I still don’t think I fully understand godly hope. Or maybe I am still struggling to let go of worldly hope. The hope that I will have the “marriage of my dreams.” I am not giving up on the possibility of a new covenant marriage with my husband. But I am beginning to untangle the difference between wishing and biblical hope.

Psalm 130:5 says, “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.” The word hope here carries the idea of staying anchored while waiting.

There is that word: anchored.

I recently learned that early Christians often used an anchor, rather than a cross, as a symbol of their faith. Being anchored is not passive resignation. It is choosing to remain expectant because of who God is.

Isaiah 40:31 says, “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.” That verse brought me back to the little name cards sold in Christian bookstores in the 1990s. Mine had Isaiah 40:31 printed on it.

This kind of hope is not weak, worldly wishing. It is being tied to God and strengthened while I wait. It is not hoping life turns out exactly the way I want. It is anchoring myself to God while I wait.

My hope needs to be rooted in the character of God, not in my circumstances.

Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”

There is that word again: anchor.

Being anchored to God does not mean the storm is gone. It keeps me from drifting during the storm.

I think that during the first few years after learning about my husband’s pornography addiction and infidelity, I was drifting. Worldly hope says, “Maybe things will work out.” Biblical hope says, “God will remain faithful no matter what happens.”

Biblical hope is not certainty that I will get the earthly outcome I want. It is certainty that God will remain faithful, present, redeeming, and true.

That does not make my grief disappear. It does not make me stop longing for healing and restoration. It does not guarantee that I will have a beautiful marriage or relief from pain. But it does mean my soul can stop resting on whether earthly outcomes happen exactly the way I want them to.

I picture a whiteboard filled with all my wishes for what I wanted my marriage to be. I think I need to erase that board and hand God the marker.

God is not against me. My suffering is not proof that He has abandoned me.

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…”

Not all things are good. But God works them for my good.

When I look back over the last twelve months, I can already see fruit God has grown in me. My relationship with Him has deepened. I have learned that I can love my husband despite the pain he brought into our marriage. I have learned how to have joy in the storm.

I have learned how to set healthy boundaries so I can respond with more gentleness and peace. I am learning patience. I am learning self-control.

I don’t know what God will draw on that blank whiteboard. But I can look back and begin to see some of the beauty from ashes He has already created.

I would never wish this journey on anyone. But I can finally begin to see that God has not wasted it.

-Aimee

Even the Smallest Thread

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I am currently in the messy middle of healing from betrayal and infidelity. Some days I can see how far God has brought me. Other days I still feel like I am standing in the middle of all the damage trying to understand what happened and what comes next. Healing has not looked the way I thought it would.

I think I expected there would be a point where I would feel better and then just keep moving forward. But it has not been like that. There have been good days and hard days. There have been days when I have felt peaceful and days when something small has brought all the pain back again.

One thing God has really been showing me lately is that this suffering has not been wasted. There were times when I felt like I was barely hanging on by a thread. I did not feel strong. I did not feel rooted. I did not feel anchored. I just felt like I was trying to make it through the day.

Looking back now, I can see that even in those really dark moments, there was still a tiny thread connecting me to Jesus. Deep down, I think I knew I needed Him. I knew I could not do this on my own. But I had not fully laid everything down at the foot of the cross yet. I was still trying to carry too much. I was trying to understand everything. I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. I was trying to manage my emotions and the healing process. And, if I am honest, I was also trying to manage my husband and his recovery. I wanted to know what the outcome was going to be. I wanted to know if everything was going to be okay. I wanted to know if all of this pain was going to lead somewhere.

But God has been teaching me that I cannot carry all of that. I cannot control another person. I cannot make someone change. I cannot force healing. I can tell the truth. I can make healthy choices. I can listen for God’s direction. But I cannot control the outcome.

When I finally reached the point where I stopped trying to carry everything myself and truly turned toward God, that connection started growing stronger. John 15:5 says: “I am the vine; you are the branches.” I have read that verse many times, but it means something different to me now.

A branch cannot live on its own. It cannot produce fruit by trying harder. It has to stay connected to the vine. I think I have spent a lot of my life trying harder. Trying to be strong. Trying to fix things. Trying to earn love. Trying to hold everything together.

But Jesus does not ask me to do any of that on my own. He asks me to remain in Him. I can honestly look back now and see how staying connected to Jesus has slowly changed me and started producing fruit in my life again. I am learning to trust God more. I am learning to surrender things I cannot control. I am learning that my worth is not determined by someone else’s choices. I am learning that peace does not come from knowing how everything will turn out. It comes from knowing that God will be with me no matter how it turns out.

That does not mean I always feel strong. Sometimes I still feel like I am barely holding on. Sometimes my prayers are short. Sometimes all I can say is, “Jesus, help me.”

But even that matters. Even that is still a connection. Even that is still turning toward Him.

I think there are times when we believe our faith has to be big and strong for God to meet us. But maybe sometimes faith is just a tiny thread. Maybe it is simply saying His name. Maybe it is opening the Bible when we do not feel like reading. Maybe it is choosing to pray when we do not know what to say. Maybe it is trusting that He is still there, even when we cannot feel Him.

If you feel like you are barely holding on right now, keep holding onto Jesus. You do not have to pretend you are stronger than you are. You do not have to have all the answers. You do not have to know how the story is going to end. Just keep turning toward Him.

Looking back, I can see that the thread was never as fragile as it felt. It was holding me to Jesus. And Jesus was holding me too. Even the smallest thread matters.

-Aimee

Between His Shoulders

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There are certain Bible verses that stay with you through different seasons of your life. For me, one of those verses is Deuteronomy 33:12: “The one the Lord loves rests between His shoulders.” I first held onto that verse after my daughter Melanie died when she was just 18 years old, waiting for a double lung transplant that wasn’t meant to be. I pictured myself riding piggyback on God’s back. My arms were around Him, my head was resting on His upper back between His shoulders, and He was carrying me because I did not have the strength to keep walking on my own.

That picture brought me so much comfort. I was not trying to be strong. I was not trying to figure everything out. I was just being carried.

That image has stayed with me through so many hard things since then. Through losing my daughter Rosie 22 months after her double lung transplant. Through learning about my husband’s addiction. Through learning about his infidelity. Through the night before our Full Therapeutic Disclosure, when I knew I might hear things that would hurt me deeply and change the way I remembered parts of my life. That night, this verse came back to me again.

I did not know what I was going to hear the next day, but I knew I needed to hear the truth. I also knew that the same God who carried me when Melanie and Rosie died would carry me through this too. I do not understand why my life has included so much loss. I do not understand why I had to bury two daughters and then walk through betrayal trauma. Maybe I will understand someday. Maybe when I get to Heaven, I will not even need the answers anymore.

But I do know that God has never asked me to carry any of it by myself. He has carried me when I could not walk. He has held me when I felt like I was falling apart. He has stayed close when I did not know what to pray or even what to think.

When I think about everything I want to write here, this is where it begins. Not with betrayal. Not with grief. Not even with healing. It begins with God carrying me.

This blog is about what God has done in my life through the hardest things I have ever walked through. It is about learning to trust Him when I do not understand. It is about becoming rooted and anchored in Him when everything around me feels uncertain. And it is about resting between His shoulders when I do not have the strength to take another step.

-Aimee