the Desk That Changed Everything
It was a few months after my oldest son, Wade, passed away at 35. I was trying so hard to be the “strong Christian woman” everyone expected me to be. You know the one—the woman who has it all together, who trusts God perfectly, who never lets anyone see her ugly cry.
I was showing up and being present even when my mind was a million miles away. I was maintaining the schedules for my areas at church and doing my best to hold it together. There was a time I led GriefShare as if it were not a big deal to go home and fall apart. My friend, I was drowning inside, and I don’t know that anyone knew it.
But I couldn’t breathe. The weight of grief pressed down on my chest until I felt like I was suffocating. And underneath the grief was something even more painful: anger and confusion.
The haunting question I couldn’t escape:
Why didn’t You answer my prayers for Wade to be healed?
If there was a checklist I was supposed to mark off, I hit every checkbox. Prayed, fasted, confessed, and believed. I stood on the promises of God’s word with platforms from the 70s. You know those big wooden-looking sandals? Yeah, I was going to make sure I did everything right so my son would be healed.
But in the blink of an eye one afternoon, he was gone. My heart was crushed, and for the first time, my faith felt fragile. What a mess!!!
There was no way I was going to say that out loud. What Christian woman would admit that she was crushed and her faith shaken? We won’t even discuss the anger, because… well, that’s a sin, right? I kept showing up, and I kept serving. Smiling. Hiding. Pretending I was okay.
Until I couldn’t.
I was sitting at my desk, “Goodness of God” playing in the background — you know the one that says He has been good all my life?
And I just… broke. I couldn’t perform strength for one more second.
I got on my face—literally, face down on the floor beside my desk —and cried out to God: “Help me understand just a little bit. Please. Just help me understand.”
I don’t remember all the words that came next. They were raw, angry, and desperate. Questions that I was afraid to say out loud to people came tumbling out of my mouth. The pain and confusion flew out with wails of cries.
But I remember the one sentence that changed everything:
“I know how you feel. My Son died too.”
In that moment, the presence of God was overwhelming in my small office. All I could do was get still and quiet… even my breathing got quiet.
This was a moment when I wholeheartedly realized that God will never be anything other than what His word says He is. In this moment, when I felt closer to God than I ever thought possible, I realized He truly cares for the broken-hearted. In the middle of the darkest and most painful time of my life, my Heavenly Father was closer than anyone.
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18, ESV
In that moment, everything shifted. Not because God explained why Wade died. Not because the pain suddenly disappeared. But because I realized something I’d been missing for months:
I wasn’t alone in the pain. God hadn’t left me. He was right there, holding me while I fell apart.
I’d been trying so hard to travel the path of healing like a “true Christian woman”—keeping it together, not letting others see me broken, performing strength I didn’t have. But that day,
I learned that breakthrough doesn’t come from performing. It comes from pulling over, getting still, and letting God hold you in the mess.
That encounter changed everything.
Not just for me, but for what would eventually become Backroads & Breakthroughs.
In the moments that followed, as I was on the floor in a messy heap, I learned something.
Breakthroughs don’t happen when you are holding it all together and doing all the things. It’s in those moments of overwhelm when you are afraid to be authentically raw that you hit a place of breaking through the pain. It’s when you get raw and get still. Only in that place where you are still can Jesus meet you and encounter your situation with you. It’s in that place that His presence breaks the brokenness.
It wasn’t a someday when I got my act together.
It was in the messy, ugly cry on my office floor that He showed up and sat with me.
This is the truth that I want you to grab. In the overwhelm, exhaustion, and pain, you are not alone.
And your breakthrough isn’t waiting for you to get it all together.
You don’t have to wait for answers or perfect faith. And trust me, you don’t have to look like you have it all together.
It is when you pull over and stop long enough to let Jesus sit with you as you fall apart.
That moment — the desk — the floor — it’s the foundation of what would become Backroads & Breakthroughs. It is the place where an overwhelmed heart can pull over in all its mess and encounter Jesus… that is the transformation place that will take you the next mile.
My friend, breakthrough doesn’t happen in the fast lane.
You encounter the breakthrough when you get on the backroad. It happens when you get brave enough to stop performing and just… be held.
backroads reflection
Grab your journal and spend a few minutes with these questions:
- Do you have that space where you can pull over and just be authentic in your questions that you have for God?
- Where have you been showing up and “pretending that you have it all together?”
- Are you ready to just be held?
"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!"
Psalm 130:1, (ESV)
Want to journey together? Join our Backroads & Breakthroughs community on Substack, where we’re learning to pull over, get still, and encounter Jesus in the everyday overwhelm.
