Today, we continue our conversation with my friend, Brooke Phillips. She speaks from her pain points, sharing the kind of wisdom and clarity gained only from walking through suffering. And the greatest gift? She pours it back out into our seasons, our pain - pointing us toward what's on the other side: Hope.

We spend a lot of time thinking about, dreaming of, maybe writing down what we want our relationships to look like, BE like. And then we're in a relationship and we have to figure out - what of this really matters, and what is just a part of the deal? When you strip everything away - and in this case e v e r y t h i n g is stripped away - how do you rebuild? There's still hope. Because our God only writes good stories.

Years 9 and 10 have carried some of our greatest growth points. Our most painful, frustrating, confusing growth points. Our most rich, deep, soul-finding growth points. On this episode, the one time a year I convince my husband, Ryan, to pick up a mic, we look back and inspect how we're different, yet still feel the same about each other. Sometimes, the reality actually is better than the dream.

I wish someone would've told me how easy it is to harden your heart. How easy it is to grab on to your preferences and sacrifice anyone and anything at the altar of what I want or think is most right. As we kick off Realities of Relationships, Charaia and I talk about what her heart has been for since she started sharing her writing a couple years ago. How do we stay soft in a really hard world? How do we approach conversations that could be triggering with a soft heart and open hands? And how do we come back from deep pain caused by people we love the most?

These are two people I count it a privilege to spend time with. Khari and Kaley drop in every month for our Did Anyone Tell You segment, where we talk about the things of the month that could prove super beneficial to know if you find yourself playing trivia or trying to make small talk as you fill up you two gallon water bottle you got at the beginning in January when you committed to drinking more water in 2022. I'm never quite sure where the conversation is going to go, but man do I love being along for the ride. I hope you do, too. Here's the January 2022 edition…

We're in heart of talking about how we can cultivate peace because I'll tell you one thing - no one EVER told me how hard peace is to keep. My conversation with my friend Connie, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, who has talked with us before about creating boundaries and dealing with our shame. This time, we're talking about pursuing peace in spite of. Because that's what we all really have to figure out, how do we grow and maintain peace in spite of our circumstances. By the end, I hope you're better than before you pushed play. 

Instead of letting thoughts float in and out, leaving whatever damage they may in their wake, what if we thought about our thoughts? That feels overwhelming. And I don't actually know where to start on the concept. So, I asked my friend Allysen, a counselor with degrees and experience to equip us for peace. She talks through what happens to start the spiral and, practically, how do we work our way out of it? How do we maintain our footing when the avalanche of thoughts, feelings and circumstance keep knocking our feet out from under us? 

I’ve spent years treating peace as a commodity to be gained or earned instead of a seed waiting to be fed and watered.

These are the seven things I found myself saying to those I’ve had the privilege to walk beside this year. These are the seven things I found myself saying to…myself this year.