Fourteen years ago, my writing journey did not begin with a big plan, a polished platform, or some carefully mapped-out vision for ministry.

It began in a hospital.

More specifically, it began in the NICU, beside a tiny baby girl who had already captured my whole heart.

My daughter spent 40 days in the NICU. Forty days of waiting. Forty days of praying. Forty days of watching monitors, listening for alarms, celebrating tiny improvements, and trying not to fall apart when the reports were not what we hoped to hear. Every day felt like holding my breath. Every monitor beep mattered. Every feeding mattered. Every ounce gained felt like a victory. Every step forward felt like mercy.

And every post I wrote during that season was not just content.

It was a prayer.

It was me trying to put words to fear, hope, exhaustion, and faith when I did not have much strength left. It was me processing pain in real time. It was me reaching for God with trembling hands and a tired heart. It was me choosing to believe that if I could still write, I could still worship. If I could still testify, I could still trust. If I could still put one sentence after another, maybe my heart had not completely shut down.

That is where I learned something I have carried ever since: writing can be worship.

Writing can be a lifeline. It can be the place where grief becomes prayer, fear becomes surrender, and pain becomes testimony. It can be the way you keep your heart open when everything in you wants to close off, numb out, or hide.

I did not know then that those raw updates, prayers, and reflections would become part of a much bigger story. I was not thinking about a writing journey. I was not thinking about books, blogs, devotionals, or ministry through words. I was simply trying to survive the moment and honor God in the middle of it.

But God was planting something.

Time goes by so fast. Honestly, it feels like it is speeding up. I blinked, and my little girl is 14.

Fourteen.

It hardly seems possible. The same baby I once watched through wires, monitors, and hospital glass is now growing into a young woman. The same child I prayed over in the NICU now fills our home with life, laughter, personality, and purpose. I thank God every day for her. I thank Him for the gift of her life. I thank Him for the joy she brings. I thank Him for how much fuller our lives are because she is in it.

She is a living reminder to me that God does not forget.

He does not waste pain.

He does not overlook tears.

He does not ignore prayers.

And He is never late, even when the waiting feels like silence.

Before she ever took her first breath, we lived through a long season of waiting. We tried, prayed, hoped, and believed, but for a long time, it did not look like it was going to happen. Prayers felt unanswered. Hope felt fragile. The future felt uncertain.

And if you have ever been there, you know how heavy that kind of waiting can feel.

Watching everyone else receive the thing you are still praying for can be incredibly painful. Seeing birth announcements, attending baby showers, smiling while your heart is breaking, celebrating other people while secretly wondering if your turn will ever come, that kind of waiting can feel like salt in the wound.

You want to be happy for others, and you are. But at the same time, there is an ache inside of you that asks, “Lord, what about us?”

That is one of the hardest places to live, the space between the promise and the fulfillment.

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. The delay was not random. The waiting was not wasted. The silence was not absence. It was never a question of whether God was good. The real question was whether I could trust Him in the middle, before I had the answer, before I saw the outcome, before the prayer was fulfilled in front of me.

I had to learn how to plant myself at the crossroads of God’s will and His perfect timing.

That is not always easy.

It is one thing to trust God after the miracle. It is another thing to trust Him while you are still waiting. It is one thing to praise Him when the promise is in your arms. It is another thing to worship when your arms still feel empty. It is one thing to say God is faithful when the story makes sense. It is another thing to keep believing when you cannot connect the dots.

There were times when hope felt risky. There were times when disappointment made it tempting to disengage. There were times when it would have been easier to numb the ache, lower my expectations, or stop believing for something that hurt too much to keep asking for.

But God kept meeting me there.

He met me in the waiting.

He met me in the unanswered prayers.

He met me in the hospital room.

He met me in the NICU.

He met me in the long middle where nothing seemed to be moving.

And now, fourteen years later, those memories are sweet to me, not because they were easy, but because they are stitched with grace.

That does not mean the pain was small. It was not. It does not mean the fear was imaginary. It was real. It does not mean the NICU days were simple to walk through. They were some of the hardest days of my life.

But God’s faithfulness was bigger.

The NICU days did not just produce a miracle in my arms. They produced a message in my heart. They taught me that God meets us in the places we never wanted to be. He meets us when we are tired, scared, confused, and stretched beyond what we thought we could handle. He meets us when the prayer is still unanswered and the outcome is still unknown.

And when you look back, you begin to see His goodness all around.

You see it in the strength you did not know you had.

You see it in the people He sent at just the right time.

You see it in the prayers that carried you.

You see it in the peace that made no sense.

You see it in the doors He opened.

You see it in the testimony that began forming while you were still crying.

That is what God does. He does not waste suffering surrendered to Him. He takes the very places that felt like they might break us and turns them into places where His grace is revealed. He takes the chapters we never would have chosen and uses them to write something that can encourage someone else.

I did not know, fourteen years ago, that the words I wrote from a hospital season would become part of the foundation for so much of my writing today. I did not know that pain would awaken purpose. I did not know that testimony would become a calling. I did not know that the story I was living would someday help me speak hope into the lives of others who were still waiting, still praying, and still wondering if God saw them.

But He did.

And He does.

If you are in your own “between” right now, between the promise and the fulfillment, between the prayer and the answer, between what God said and what you can currently see, I want you to hear this:

You are not forgotten.

The appointed time is not random.

The delay is not denial.

The waiting is not wasted.

The pain is not pointless.

And the story you are living right now may become the testimony that strengthens someone else later.

Keep trusting God in the middle. Keep praying when it is hard. Keep worshiping when you do not have the full picture. Keep writing down what He is doing, even if all you can write is through tears. One day, you may look back and realize that the place you thought was only painful was also the place where God was planting purpose.

Fourteen years ago, my daughter’s life reminded me that miracles still happen.

Today, her life reminds me that God is faithful across every season.

God’s goodness has been all over my story. Not just in the easy chapters. Not just in the answered prayers. Not just in the moments of celebration. His goodness was there in the waiting, in the NICU, in the fear, in the tears, in the silence, and in the slow unfolding of His plan.

And if He did it for me, He can do it for you.

The God who writes true stories is still writing yours.