Create Your Now Podcast

When was the last time you actually celebrated your spouse? Not on their birthday or your anniversary. Not some calendar-mandated holiday where Hallmark reminds you it’s time to show up. This is a random, ordinary, nothing-special kind of day, when you look at the person doing life beside you and say, “I see you. And […]

There is something about the start of a new school year that carries both excitement and weight. The backpacks are packed, the outfits are picked out, and the alarm is set for a time no one in the house has seen in weeks. But before the bus pulls up, before the shoes are tied and […]

I know you’re tired. I know that thing you’ve been carrying — that weight you keep picking up every single morning, even though nobody would blame you for setting it down — I know it’s heavy. And I know you’ve told yourself more than once that you’re not sure you have another round in you. […]

There’s a moment — and if you’re honest, you know exactly the one I’m talking about — where you catch your reflection and the first thing that crosses your mind isn’t kind. It’s not always about what you look like physically, although sometimes it is. More often, it’s deeper than that. It’s the look in your […]

Why is it that we can pour ourselves into everyone else’s schedule, everyone else’s crisis, everyone else’s to-do list, but when it comes to our own day, we just… wing it? We wake up, already behind before our feet hit the floor, and we spend the next twelve or sixteen hours reacting. Putting out fires. […]

Have you ever made a decision, felt good about it for a moment, and then spent the next three days replaying it in your mind like a movie you can’t turn off? You made the call. You weighed your options. You moved. And then — almost out of nowhere — the doubt crept in. Did I […]

When you feel like all you’re doing is running away from or toward all the things, it’s hard to find joy and peace in life. You can get down and out about your circumstances, and all hope feels lost. But as Paul says in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all […]

There’s a moment in every marriage where you have to make a choice. You can stand there replaying every missed pass — every time your spouse came up short, every promise that got fumbled, every “we’ll get to it” that never got to anything. Or you can do what the good ones do when the […]

Parenting is a never-ending, rhythmic song that plays over and over again. Some of the melodies are soothing to the heart — a sleepy child curled into your shoulder, a shared laugh over something silly at the dinner table, a “thank you, Mom” that comes out of nowhere and undoes you a little. But many […]

There is a particular kind of tired that comes from walking in circles. You look up and realize you have passed this same tree, this same doubt, this same conversation with yourself, more times than you can count. You are moving; your legs ache to prove it, but the scenery refuses to change. And somewhere […]

Life doesn’t always unfold the way we planned. One day the road looks clear, and the next, it curves somewhere we never saw coming. Unexpected turns can leave us feeling disappointed, confused, or uncertain about what is happening in our world and what God is doing in the middle of it. But here is what remains […]

There is a particular kind of tired that has nothing to do with sleep. It’s the tired that comes from carrying a dream for longer than you expected to carry it, from praying the same prayer for the hundredth time, from showing up to the same unfinished work day after day and wondering if today […]

A journey lasts a lifetime. It requires a chosen mindset, intentional thoughts, and actions that put an exclamation point to movement. Not a comma. Not a question mark. An exclamation point—a declaration that you meant to keep going. As you travel the various paths set before you, let this settle into your spirit: you didn’t come […]

There’s a moment right before your feet hit the floor. The alarm has gone off, the day is waiting, and for just a second you get to choose what you reach for first. Most of us reach for the phone. We reach for the to-do list already running in our heads. We reach for yesterday’s […]

Marriage was designed for intimacy. God built it that way on purpose — physical closeness is part of the gift. So why in the world would I tell you to keep your clothes on? Because there’s a kind of intimacy that has to come first. And if you don’t have it, the physical stuff becomes a […]

Parents have it rough sometimes. The struggle is real. We want to give our kids everything. The newest shoes. The latest gadget. The experience everyone else is posting about. We work extra shifts, stretch the budget, and say yes to one more thing—all because we want them to have what matters. But here’s the truth […]

Not very often do we think about bettering ourselves to the extent of excellence. Yes, we want to do better, but sometimes that gets nullified by the busyness of life and the chaotic moments. So instead of letting go of what you need to grow, take the time to boost your best. You get to […]

There’s a moment we all reach eventually. You come to the end of yourself — done, done doing all the things that aren’t working. Done pushing. Done grinding a little more, then a little more after that, trying to manage what, honestly, was never yours to control in the first place. And somehow, in the middle […]

Sometimes it’s the littlest things that spark a thought that deepens the meaning. As I was sitting with my granddaughter reading a book, there was a point in the story where it talked about being scared. In her sweet, innocent voice, she sang the words, “Don’t be afraid.” Her confidence exploded from her heart, while […]

We are masters at paying attention to the wrong things. The comment someone made three weeks ago. The comparison trap on social media. The “what if” that hasn’t happened and might never happen. We hand our focus over to noise, and while we’re distracted, the path meant for us — the one carved out specifically for […]

Somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up a quiet, exhausting belief: that heaven is a reward we earn. That if we pray enough, serve enough, show up enough, say the right things, avoid the wrong things — we’ll have finally done enough to deserve a seat at the table. Here’s the truth that […]

When we get married, we bring dreams into the relationship. Some of those dreams we built as a couple, sitting across from each other at 2 a.m. talking about the life we wanted. Others we brought in on our own — dreams we had before we ever said “I do,” goals we were chasing long […]

As parents, it’s easy to lose sight of the goal. We stress about how good we are at this — replaying conversations, grading ourselves on tone, wondering if we handled the moment the “right” way. Somewhere in that pressure, we start believing our job is to have it all put together. So when we’re handing […]

You know the phrase, “Been there, done that.” It’s the verbal shrug we give when something no longer impresses us, no longer scares us, or no longer has anything left to teach us. To put a twist on the phrase to serve you better, why not enhance it: been there, dump that. Because here’s something […]

Fear rarely shows up looking like fear. It shows up looking like “that’s just who I am.” It shows up as “I’ve always been this way.” It shows up in the sentence that starts with “I’m not the kind of person who…” — and ends right before you find out you actually could have been. That’s […]