💌 Read This If You Feel Stuck in a Thick Fog
For the woman who has been trying to get back to the work
💌 Welcome to Take Heart Daily, a Creatorly series for gentle encouragement as you show up for the work God gave you. I hope these quiet reminders support you in the season you're in, wherever you are today.
I am 6 weeks postpartum with my third baby.
Toward the end of my pregnancy, I started researching how to make and sell planners on Amazon, then affiliate marketing on Pinterest, then creating content with TikTok Shop, and many other “quick” and “easy” ways to make money online.
I was chasing anything that promised income quickly, anything that felt more certain than the slow, quiet work I had already been building. The urgency I felt was real. But the direction it pulled me was away from everything I actually knew I was supposed to be doing.
I told myself it was practical. I had recently lost a contracting role, and we had gotten news that my husband's position might not be secure much longer since there were big changes coming where he works as well.
And with my impending life-changing season, I felt like I was not in a position to be taking things slowly and in His timing. What I was actually doing was letting fear make decisions that faith was supposed to hold.
And then came the fog. That’s the only word I have for it. There was a season where I could not open my own drafts. Could not respond to comments. Could not engage with the things I had worked to build.
It wasn’t laziness. It was something heavier than that. Like the gap between who I had been as a creator and who I was in that moment had grown too wide to cross in a single step.
The fog didn’t mean that what I felt like God was calling me to do was gone. What I kept having to remind myself, some days more than others, is that God does not waste what we walk through. The hard stretch was doing something, even when I couldn’t see what. I just couldn’t see it from inside it.
💌 If you're stuck in the fog right now and want to start moving again, you're welcome inside Creatorly.
No pressure, just a steady place to return to when you're ready to take one small step back toward the work. You’ll get behind-the-scenes strategies and resources to reduce the friction between where you are and where you want to be.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6
I’ve read this verse more times than I can count. But what landed differently when I sat with Proverbs 3 recently is the verse just before it in verse 3. “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”
Write them on the tablet of your heart. Not on your to-do list. Not in your content plan. On your heart.
That’s where the law of God is meant to live, not as information transferred from a page to your brain, but as something formed through relationship. Through actually being with Him.
And when I look back at this foggy season honestly, what I had let go of first wasn’t the work. It was that. The daily returning to Him before I returned to anything else.
The clarity I kept waiting for wasn’t going to come from more research or a better strategy. It was going to come the same way it always does. Through submission.
Through trusting the path even when I couldn’t see where it was going. Through writing His faithfulness on my heart and walking forward anyway.
Proverbs 3 also says that when you lie down, you will not be afraid, and your sleep will be sweet. That verse is for the woman lying awake at 2am calculating income and researching ways to make money instead of resting in what God has already placed on her heart. It was written for me in that season. Maybe it’s written for you in yours.
Each time I returned to Him, the fog lifted a little more. The promise isn’t that the path will be clear. It’s that He will be at your side and keep your foot from being snared. That’s enough to take the next step. Even a small one. Even in the fog.
I am not on the other side of this yet. Some days the clarity is sharp and I feel steady and sure of the work. Other days the fog comes back and opening a document feels impossible. I am learning to hold both of those days as part of the same work.
What I am not doing anymore is chasing the version of this that looks finished. I wasted enough time trying to shortcut my way to something certain when the only certain thing was already placed on my heart. That was enough. It still is.
💌 If you're in a season of returning, you're not alone in here. Paid subscribers get the full picture of what's being built, including the behind-the-scenes of my own reset this June (Don’t miss it this Wednesday).
You don’t need to have it all recovered before you return to the work. You just need one small step. Open the draft. Send the message. Write the one paragraph. The fog does not lift all at once. It lifts a little at a time, and movement is what moves it.
Your calling is not waiting for you to be ready. It is waiting for you to show up, in this season, with what you actually have today.
That is enough. It has always been enough.
Take heart. Keep going.
With joy,
P.S. This Wednesday inside Field Notes: The Month Ahead, I'm sharing everything I'm working from in June. My full publishing calendar, the three steps I'm using to move through the fog and back into consistent work, how I built a simple funnel between Instagram and Substack, and where the book fits into all of it. If you've been following along since I wrote about using Substack to write my book, this is the next chapter of that story. Come be inside for it. It's $100 $47 for the year.
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