💌 the barrier you didn't know you were putting up that is keeping you stuck where you are

and what changes when it finally comes down

Jun 15, 2026

💌 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.

For a long time, I kept two separate versions of my life running at the same time.

There was the version where I believed in God, trusted His word, and knew what He had placed on my heart. And then there was the version where I actually lived, where I built my business, showed up online, and moved through my days without much evidence that those beliefs were shaping anything at all.

I wasn’t sharing my faith, and when I did, it wasn’t consistent. What I was actually doing was putting up barriers between God and the calling He had placed on my heart. And I kept them there for a long time without fully realizing it.

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“Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”

- James 1:21-22

James is not gentle here. Get rid of what is in the way. Humbly accept what God has already planted in you. And then do what it says.

The word he uses for humbly is important. It’s not passive. It’s not just sitting quietly and waiting for something to happen.

Humility in this context means positioning yourself to receive what God has already given, removing whatever is blocking it, and then acting on it. Hearing without doing is self-deception.

James says that plainly, and I think most of us know exactly what he means because we have lived it.

The question he is really asking underneath all of it is this. What evidence is there that you have the word in your life?

Not whether you read it. Not whether you believe it. Whether it is changing how you actually live.

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The barrier I kept putting up was the separation itself. I thought my faith and my work were two different things that occasionally intersected.

I had a calling that felt creative and professional and online, and I had my faith, which felt personal and private and separate. I kept them in different rooms and wondered why neither one felt whole.

What changed was not a dramatic moment. It was a slow realization that the separation was something I had created, not something God intended.

The clarity and peace I had been waiting for started coming when I stopped treating the newsletter as something I was building on my own and started bringing Him into it the way I brought Him into everything else that mattered. When I stopped performing a version of myself that left Him out.

And the version of this work that had felt heavy and uncertain started to feel like something I was doing with God rather than something I was trying to build for Him. That is what comes down when the barrier does.

James 1 calls us to live out our faith so that it is obvious. Not loud. Not performative. Obvious. The kind of faith that shapes what you create, how you show up, what you say and don’t say, and why you keep returning to the work even when it’s slow. That’s the evidence he’s talking about. Small actions over time that reflect what you actually believe.