Picking Myself Up, One Epiphany at a Time

This season has felt like one long stretch of in between. In between answers. In between whom I was and who I am becoming. Some days it feels like I am barely holding myself together. Other days it feels like everything is unraveling faster than I can catch it.

But even in the heaviness, God keeps showing up in ways I didn’t expect.

My ward family has been a quiet strength in the background. The kind of support you don’t always notice until you suddenly realize you would have fallen flat without it. And at stake conference, something in the messages reached into the exact places I was hurting. I felt seen in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I had the opportunity to serve at the food pantry with a friend. I thought I was just going to help for a few hours. Instead, God placed someone kind and warm in my path. I ran into her again at our stake conference, where I would have been sitting alone, and instead I found myself welcomed in the pew beside her. She spoke words I didn’t even know my heart was waiting for.

But the deepest shift came from a different friend. Someone who at the time I wasn’t even that close to. I almost didn’t message her. There was a nudge from the Spirit. A quiet, persistent whisper that wouldn’t leave me alone. I kept trying to ignore it. I kept telling myself I didn’t want to bother her. I kept trying to carry everything alone.

But the nudge stayed and I reached out. What happened next felt like God Himself stepped into the room.

My pain momentarily became our pain. Part of my story her story. She let me cry and we cried together. The kind of crying that comes from deep places. The kind that breaks you open and heals you at the same time. We met for lunch. Talked for hours. And over the last few days, she has become a steady, unexpected blessing. Someone who understands the storm because she has walked through similar. Someone who sat with me in the places I thought I had to sit alone. Someone who reminded me that even when life feels like it’s falling apart, God is still stitching things back together.

Tonight, at an activity we watched the women’s conference, one of the speakers said something that went straight into the center of everything I’ve been carrying.

“You can do hard with Jesus, or you can do hard alone. But that choice is yours.”

I felt that. Deeply.

Because the truth is, I’ve been trying to do hard alone. Trying to be strong alone. Trying to hold it together alone. Trying to pretend I’m fine alone. But God has been gently reminding me that I don’t have to be.

He has been sending people. Not to fix me, but to sit with me. Not to rescue me, but to remind me I’m not abandoned. Not to take away the hard, but to help me carry it.

These everyday epiphanies. The perfectly timed conversations. The unexpected friendships. The quiet support of my church family. They aren’t coincidences. They’re evidence. Evidence that God is in the details. Evidence that He sees me in the middle. Evidence that even when life knocks me flat, He’s already placing the people who will help me stand back up.

I’m still in race. Still waiting for answers and still figuring out what comes next.

But I’m not alone. And that truth, that steady, hope filled truth, is what’s helping me dust myself off and keep going.