I can’t tell you how much it means to me that (in)courage is one of my “safe places.” Let me explain.

You know how sometimes you go through something rough and you just keep telling everyone you’re fine while secretly avoiding the 2-3 people whose voices would make you break into inconsolable sobbing?

Yeah. This is the online version of that.

Some of you know me as a writer or a speaker who has her act pretty well put together, and while there’s some truth there (namely the fact that I write and speak), there is a whole lot that never makes it past the blinking cursor.

A WHOLE LOT.

So, these past few months have been a wee bit challenging. I’ve been balancing more than I should have allowed on my plate in the first place while intermittently uttering profound and mature statements like, “Today is the day I quit my whole life and move to the tropics.”

I’m just going to lay it out there and let you do with it what you choose.

I’ve basically been a trainwreck. Finally, Jess called me for the 87th time without me answering and texted me to tell me she was coming over that night and discussion was not optional. She knows me. She knows when I’m burrowing.

We talked for hours and I let all the brokenness spill out while she nodded and empathized. There were a lot of factors that were weighing on me, but with a book release around the corner I was feeling raw and unprepared. Because when you spend a year or so of your life tapping words out, it turns out there’s some pressure when other people start to read them.

And also vomit. There’s often vomit.

If all of this hasn’t enticed you into buying my new book, I don’t know what will. I’m a one-woman promotional hurricane.

Sigh.

Here’s the deal, though. This one really took the wind out of me. It was without question the hardest thing I’ve written, and the process genuinely changed me. I had to face parts of my faith that were easier tucked in shadows than revealed publicly, and it was harder than I had prepared for it to be.

When you’re known as someone who writes and speaks for Jesus, it’s not *ideal* to tell everyone that sometimes you doubt that God exists at all. In fact, it’s downright humbling.

But I came to a point in my walk with the Lord where I realized that it didn’t look at all like I was a girl following Him. It looked like I was a girl chasing Him. I didn’t feel like I was living out Christianity the right way, and I wondered why everyone else seemed to have great prayer lives and understanding of Him when I just felt like He was an elusive objective.

I faced it. Even the really ugly stuff. And I let Him teach me what I had misunderstood. I started looking at Him more than I was looking for Him, and I rested in the mysteries that I had once seen as barriers to true faith.

More than anything else, I learned to stop filling the gaps of my faith with religion.

And I wrote about it in the book that released a few days ago, “Chasing God.”

So.

I came here to this safe place to tell you that I’ve cried many tears over the journey He’s had me on, and even more when it was time to bind it up in pages and a hard cover and let people open it.

But I hope you do open it.

And when you do, I hope you’ll find the same freedom I did.

Thank you, thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

Love,

Angie

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