Life-Giving Words of Hope & Encouragement

Fourteen years ago, my writing journey didn’t begin with a big plan or a polished platform, it began in a hospital.

My daughter spent 40 days in the NICU. Every day felt like holding my breath. Every monitor beep mattered. Every ounce gained was a victory. And every post I wrote was not content, it was a prayer. It was me putting words to fear, hope, exhaustion, and faith when I did not have much strength left. I learned then that writing can be worship. It can be a lifeline. It can be the way you keep your heart open when everything in you wants to shut down.

Time goes by so fast. Honestly, it feels like it’s speeding up. I blinked and my little girl is 14. Fourteen. I thank God every day for her, and for how much fuller our lives are with her in it. She is a living reminder to me that God does not forget, God does not waste pain, and God is never late, even when it feels like silence.

Before she ever took her first breath, we lived through a long stretch of waiting. We tried and we prayed and we hoped, and for a long time it did not look like it was going to happen. Prayers felt unanswered. And if you’ve ever been there, you know how heavy that can feel. Watching everyone else bring life into the world while you are still waiting, attending baby showers with a smile while your heart is breaking, it can feel like salt in the wound.

But looking back now, I can see what I could not see then.

As I share in my book Between Promise and Fulfillment, God had already set the appointed time. It was never a question of whether He was good; it was a question of whether I could trust Him in the middle. I had to learn how to plant myself at the crossroads of God’s will and His perfect timing, even when I could not connect the dots. Even when hope felt risky. Even when it would have been easier to numb, disengage, or quit believing.

And here’s what I know now: those memories are sweet because they are stitched with grace.

The NICU days did not just produce a miracle; they produced a message in me. They taught me that God meets us in hospital rooms. He meets us in unanswered prayers. He meets us in the slow middle where nothing seems to move. And when you look back, you start to see His goodness all around, not because the pain was small, but because His faithfulness was bigger.

If you’re in your own “between,” still waiting, still praying, still wondering if God sees you, I want you to hear this: you are not forgotten. The appointed time is not random. The delay is not denial. And the story you are living right now may become the testimony that strengthens someone else later.

God’s goodness has been all over my story. And if He did it for me, He can do it for you.