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I spend so much of my life telling kids in foster care, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm steady. You can trust me." This week, God turned that around on me. I'm the one who's scared. I'm the one testing whether He's steady enough to stay. And He stays.

I opened my inbox this morning expecting the usual: a school reminder, a calendar invite, something I forgot to sign. Instead, there was a note from a photo editor at Guideposts. My story, "Love Like a Momma," will be featured in the March/April issue of Angels on Earth magazine. I read it three times. Then I read it out loud. Then I made Joel read it, because clearly I could not be trusted to process this alone. If you know me, you know I move fast. I want the plan, the next

I don't know who needs to hear this today, but if you are in the quiet right now, if you are in one of those fluorescent-lit rooms where the weight is enormous and the witness list is short, I need you to hear me say it plainly: You are not alone. You were never alone. The invisible doesn't mean unseen. It means the One who sees you is bigger than whoever else is in the room.

In the joy and in the lonely. In the kitchen dancing to Forever Day music and in the car with the quiet commute and the full eyes. In the answered prayers and in the doors that close without explanation. He promised — promised — to be with us. Not just in the highlight moments. Not just when it all adds up. In the high and the low, the exuberant and the suffering, the clarity and the fog.

With shaking hands and tears I kept wiping on my sleeve. Because she was excited and that was real, and her joy was worth more than my pain had any right to claim.

Seven days. After 1,642 days of waiting, of court dates and caseworkers and decisions I wasn't allowed to make, of loving children I had no legal right to call mine — seven days until I do. Seven days until my daughters are officially, legally, permanently Sankeys. I should just let that be joyful. And it is. It absolutely is. There is a specific kind of joy that only exists at the end of a very long wait — the kind that has been stress-tested and wrung out and still comes up

You don't have to have a plan. You don't have to fix it tonight. You don't have to know the right next step or the right next word or the right way to hold this.

Six practical sections — lament, rest, reach, pour it out, thanksgiving alongside the ask, and remembering the record — all grounded in specific Scripture.

On the days the cultivation feels impossible and the roots feel dry and you have nothing left to give and you're not sure God even sees what this costs you — He does.

Jesus being sovereign over all time means He's not just present with you in the chaos of foster care — He authored the chaos knowing exactly where it ends. He didn't look down and say "oh wow, didn't see that court date coming." He wrote that court date. He wrote the child who came to your door. He wrote the sleepless night and the breakthrough and the goodbye and the reunion. He's not reacting. He's reigning. There's a massive difference and it changes everything about how y

I built my life on the belief that standards and shame are not the same thing, and neither are boundaries and humiliation.

How the Church can actually love people well — at every age, in every season, especially the ones the world forgot

Intentions live in the clouds, which is a lovely place to visit but a terrible place to raise children. The kids in your house are not waiting to find out what you believe. They already know how to read hands. Give them something good to read.

James 1 doesn't say "count it joy when the trial finally makes sense." It doesn't say "count it joy once you feel ready." It says count it joy because the testing is doing something to your endurance that comfort was never going to do. I'm not being asked to enjoy the trial. I'm being asked to recognize the gym. That reframe changed my whole week.

Gratitude makes me light. Dangerous in the good way. The kind of dangerous that can sit in the hardest places, with the hardest people, in the hardest seasons, and still smile because the smile isn't dependent on the circumstance — it's dependent on the One who hasn't moved.

The gap between who you were and who you're becoming isn't a hallway of shame. It's a training ground. And you are, every single day, being shaped into someone who doesn't just know grace — but lives from it.

What's becoming real in you? Resilience that doesn't perform for an audience. A love that stays after it's been tested. A standard that doesn't crumble when the room gets loud. A faith that isn't theoretical because it's been lived through nights when theory wasn't enough.

When the "I'm not enough" thought shows up — and it will — don't argue with it. Replace it. Out loud if you have to: "I am precious and honored in His sight. He started this work. He finishes what He starts."

Jealousy feels like it's about you — what you don't have, what someone else got. But it's actually you appointing yourself judge over someone else's blessing. And here's the brutal math I keep coming back to: every moment spent jealous is a moment spent blind to my own grace. How much mercy did I walk right past? How much peace just sat there, unclaimed, while I was busy keeping score on someone else's scoreboard?

God doesn't get the glory in the polished version of me. He gets it in the real one — the one He keeps showing up for anyway.