There will always come a point in life, in growth, where peace stops silencing itself, and it starts demanding to be chosen. A point where your soul grows restless in what once felt familiar. A point where the same space that used to ignite you and inspire you begins to feel too small, too heavy to hold. That is not failure, that is not something to ignore or to write off — it is direction. It is God showing you that what once held you gently, and in the most beautiful way, is now holding you back, is now asking you to trust the unknown. It is God’s grace disguised as discomfort, it is God’s guidance disguised as an ache, as letting go.

Because at the end of the day, you cannot build a future on anything that keeps you roped to the past. You cannot expect your new life to take root, to anchor, in an environment that was meant to carry you for a season, in an environment that is not equipped to sustain your growth. 

And yet, it is so incredibly easy to stay, it is so incredibly easy to settle, because leaving something you once prayed for with your whole heart can feel like self-betrayal. Because we often confuse fighting for something with loving it, we often confuse attachment and loyalty. Because we forget that God never asked us to endure, or to suffer, for what he already wrote out of our story, what he already encouraged us to release. When he asks you to let go, it isn’t to take from you, or to punish you — it is to return you to yourself.

Yes, it will hurt. Even when you know that it is the right thing to do, even when you trust in the story God is writing for you. It will hurt because endings are never just about other human beings; they are about who you were when you loved them, they are about the version of you who believed that this was it, that your heart could finally exhale. You will grieve not only what couldn’t stay, but you will also have to mourn the future you imagined within it. You will replay the memories, trying to find the one that could have rewritten the ending, the one that could have softened the hurt. 

But slowly, in time, you will come to see that the closure you are searching for was never meant to come from understanding — it was only ever meant to come from acceptance.

Letting go is an act of faith. It is trusting that God sees what you can’t. It is having faith in the belief that he is not punishing you with a quieter life, but rather, he is protecting you with it. You have to give yourself permission to stop reopening the doors that God already closed. You have to give yourself permission to trust that the right things will never require you to lose yourself in order to keep them, in order to be blessed by them. They will meet you where you are. They will expand with you. They will bring you closer to peace, not further from it.

This is the beginning, the becoming — not the ending. This is where you start again, not from a place of loss, but from a place of clarity, from a place of deep alignment. This is where you are being encouraged to have faith in the fact that sometimes loss is the only way God could lead you home. That grief and grace often share the same face. That the love you thought you so deeply wanted was never meant to eclipse the love that God was waiting to give you, the love that he had already written into your story.

You did not lose what was meant for you — you made room for what is still to come.

And room is always how God begins again. It is always how he does his best work.

God,

Place your favor over every area of my life that holds my hopes, my work, and my future. Guide me towards opportunities that align with the purpose you have placed within me. Let doors open that no one can
shut, and let the right people, ideas, and resources come into my life at the exact moment I need them.

Bless my finances with stability and increase. Help me steward what I have with wisdom. Multiply what feels small, stretch what feels limited, and bring provision in ways that remind me you are my source.

Strengthen my career with clarity and confidence. Give me the courage to pursue what you have prepared for me and the discernment to release
what no longer carries your grace. Let my work reflect excellence, favor, and the quiet assurance that I am being led, not pressured.

And God, cover my future. Shape it with peace. Protect it with purpose. Lead me into seasons where I can grow, contribute, and thrive. Let every step be anchored in you, and let every blessing you send draw me closer to the person you designed me to become.

Amen.

Stay single until you feel spiritually safe—until you don’t have to hide the way you speak to God or soften the way you listen for His guidance. Stay single until the connection roots, until it becomes an extension of your faith—not a place you feel the need to compromise it.

Wait for someone who doesn’t just respect your relationship with God, but honors it through the way they love you, through the way they show up. Stay single until you can pray together, until God becomes the foundation of your relationship, the reason for your bond. Wait for someone who knows that faith isn’t just what you believe—it’s how you treat each other when life gets hard, when the dark days arrive. Stay single until you crash your heart into someone who sees spiritual intimacy as something sacred, as something worth protecting.

Stay single until the silence between you feels holy, not heavy. Until you can sit in stillness and feel held—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. Stay single until the connection doesn’t rely on distraction or noise, but is rooted in something deeper, in something anchored. Wait for the person who can hold the quiet with you and call it enough.

Stay single until you no longer have to shrink—until your dreams are met with encouragement, not silence. Until your voice is welcomed in its fullness, and not made to feel like it is too loud. Until your heart is seen as a gift, not a vulnerability to be managed. Wait for the person who recognizes the weight of what God has placed inside of you—the person who doesn’t try to control it, but champions it. Someone who doesn’t compete with your strength, but protects it. Who sees your softness not as something to diminish, but as something sacred to honor.

Stay single until you feel both known and free. Until you no longer have to explain or defend the way your heart moves through this world. Until the relationship feels like a place where you can exhale, where you can be truly seen. Stay single until love feels like an answered prayer—not a repeated lesson.

At the end of the day—stay single until love feels like peace. Stay single until love feels like clarity, like guidance, like something holy you don’t have to fight to keep. And when it comes, when it arrives and meets you in truth, in safety, and in stillness—you’ll understand. You’ll see that God was never withholding something special from you; He was protecting you. Every closed door was closed with grace. Every unanswered prayer was divine redirection. Because this was always the kind of love worth waiting for. This was always the kind of love you were hoping He had written for you.

You stop talking about the thing that hurt you. You stop checking in on it, stop naming it, stop bringing it into rooms where it no longer seems to belong. And for a while, that silence feels like peace, like hope. You convince yourself that because you’re not aching over it anymore, you must be healed.

But healing isn’t always the absence of pain, and avoidance has a way of disguising itself in ways we least expect it to, in ways we cannot express. 

Sometimes we don’t move on—we just move forward. We get back to work. We say yes to motivating plans. We fill our calendars. We keep ourselves in motion. But in the quiet moments, in the unguarded spaces, the ache still makes itself known. It takes the shape of a name spoken too casually, or a memory that resurfaces, or a corner of your heart you realize you’ve kept off-limits even from yourself.

And that’s when you start to ask yourself, “Am I really healing, or am I just surviving?”

This space is tender, it’s disorienting, and it’s more common than most human beings like to admit. At the end of the day, avoidance is easier than facing what hasn’t been resolved. It asks less of us. It feels like control. But the hard truth is that what we refuse to name often refuses to leave, to heal. Unprocessed pain doesn’t just vanish—it finds quieter corners to live in.

This is not a call to dig up everything you’ve ever buried. This is not an invitation to rip yourself open in the name of healing properly or perfectly. This is a gentle reminder that you do not have to fear what is still tender inside of you. You do not have to rush your way into wholeness. God is not impatient with your process. He is not measuring your progress by how composed you seem or how many days it has been since you last fell apart.

Healing is not linear. It is not always obvious. Sometimes, the real breakthrough comes when you stop trying to prove that you’ve moved on and instead allow yourself to be honest about where you are. You are allowed to feel the weight of what happened. You are allowed to still have questions. You are allowed to be in progress.

You may not know if you’re in a season of healing, or a season of surviving—but the fact that you’re asking means that something has shifted. Something in you wants the truth more than you want the comfort of numbness. That desire, however small, however quiet—is sacred. 

God doesn’t need you to have the full answer. He just needs your permission to meet you in the middle of the unknown— and he will, every single time.

This essay was written by Rebecca Simon. Her new book is called 111 Devotionals For Women Healing Through Faith and you can find it here.

As 2026 starts, I place my family into your hands – not with fear, but with trust. You know every person I love, every worry I carry for them, every silent prayer I’ve whispered when I didn’t know what else to do. Thank you for sustaining us this far.

In 2026, l ask for health that is steady and protected – in body, in mind, and in spirit. Where there has been strain, bring restoration.

Where there has been exhaustion, bring renewal. Guard our days, our routines, and the quiet moments we often overlook.

I pray for happiness that is rooted, not fragile. Joy that shows up in ordinary mornings and shared laughter. Peace that settles our hearts even when life feels uncertain. Help us treat one another with patience, kindness, and grace, especially when things feel heavy.

Cover our home with your presence. Guide our steps with wisdom.

Keep us close to what truly matters. And as this year unfolds, remind us that we are never walking alone – not as individuals, and not as a family.

I place what’s ahead in your hands, God.

Amen.

If you’re a woman looking to deepen your understanding of Scripture and yourself, we have our new book available now from the God & Man team. It’s called 111 Devotionals For Women Healing Through Faith and you can find it here.

Finding peace doesn’t come from having all the answers. It comes from trusting the one who does. Trusting that God sees the road ahead more clearly than you ever could. Trusting that he knows what needs to fall away, what needs to stay, and what needs time to grow. Trusting that even in seasons where nothing feels settled, he is still arranging the details with care.

And the more you trust him, the more you begin to recognize His leadership in the gentle shifts — the opportunities that align effortlessly, the friendships that feel like provision, the strength that returns when you thought you were finished, the sense of “this is where I’m meant to be” that settles in your spirit.

God doesn’t lead you aimlessly. He leads you intentionally, lovingly, and with perfect clarity. You might not understand every step, but you can rest in the truth that every step is held.

You will end up exactly where you need to be — not because you forced it, but because God guided you there with a wisdom you’ll one day be grateful for.

Rebecca Simon is the author of Let Go, Trust God and Finding God Every Day. Read those books here.

If you’re ending this year tired but hopeful, uncertain but still trusting, know that it’s enough. You don’t have to have everything figured out tonight. Let this be the moment you exhale, give thanks for what carried you through, and step forward lighter than before.

God,

As this year comes to a close, I come to you honestly – aware of what this year asked of me and how deeply it challenged me. You saw the strength it required, the patience I had to learn, and the moments | held on when letting go felt impossible. Thank you for staying close through every high and low, even on the days I didn’t feel strong or faithful.

Tonight, I place in your hands what I am ready to release. The disappointments I still carry. The questions that never found answers. The versions of myself that existed only to survive. I trust that nothing I walked through was wasted, even if I don’t yet understand the purpose behind it.

As I step into a new year, I don’t ask for certainty or perfection. I ask for peace in my spirit and courage to move forward without fear. Help me enter what’s next, lighter than I was before – trusting you more, resisting less, and believing that good things can meet me without pain attached.

I give you what’s ending, and I trust you with what’s coming, God.

Amen.

The very situation that feels confusing, slow, or frustrating right now may be the exact thing positioning you for what you have been praying about. Sometimes God allows the path to twist so that it can lead you somewhere better than the straight line you wanted. His timing isn’t meant to punish you—it is meant to prepare you.

Today, God reminds you:

“My timing is perfect. Very soon, you’ll see how everything you are walking through has been leading you toward a blessing you didn’t expect. What feels uncertain right now is part of a plan unfolding with precision. Trust Me with your whole heart. The breakthrough is closer than you think, and blessings are already on their way.”

When God says blessings are on the way, it isn’t wishful thinking. It’s a reminder that He is arranging what you cannot see, aligning what you cannot control, and protecting you from what you are not meant to carry into the next chapter. Trusting Him with your whole heart means believing that even the waiting has purpose, even the delays have direction, and even the uncertainty has a hidden blessing attached.

What is coming will make sense of what did not. And when it arrives, you will realize that God was never late—He was perfectly on time.

If 2025 asked you to wait, let go, or start over, trust that it wasn’t wasted. You’re not stepping into the next chapter empty-handed — you’re stepping into it clearer, steadier, and more ready than you realize.

2025 wasn’t preparing you for more — it was preparing you for better. It slowed things down so you could see what was no longer working, what cost too much to maintain, and what you were holding onto out of habit rather than truth. This year didn’t ask you to become someone new; it asked you to stop forcing what wasn’t aligned.

A lot of this year was about quiet release. Outgrowing patterns that once helped you cope. Letting go of versions of yourself that survived, but couldn’t carry you forward.

Learning the difference between what feels exciting and what actually feels steady. Between what’s familiar and what is right.

In 2026, what’s reaching for you isn’t asking you to prove yourself or push harder. It’s meeting you where you are, ready to grow with you. The life ahead isn’t built on survival anymore. It’s built on alignment, softness, and the quiet confidence that you are exactly where you need to be in order to receive what is meant for you.

This article was written by Rebecca Simon. She is the author of Let Go, Trust God. Read the book here.

When you look back, you can trace the moments when things worked out in ways you couldn’t have orchestrated, when you were protected without realizing it, when a problem shifted at just the right time, or when you ended up exactly where you needed to be. Those weren’t lucky breaks—they were reminders that God has always been working on your behalf.

Today, God is Saying:

“Look back and remember the moments when I made a way for you—when the solution arrived out of nowhere, when the timing was too precise to be coincidence, when the door opened exactly when you needed it. Think about the times I protected you, redirected you, provided for you, and worked things out in ways you didn’t expect.

Do not let your mind settle on the problem; settle it on Me. What you dwell on shapes what grows in your life. Fix your thoughts on My goodness, on My promises, and on My faithfulness. What I am preparing for you is greater, richer, and more meaningful than anything you have experienced before. I will answer your prayers, and I will do it in a way that reveals My hand in every detail.”

God’s invitation isn’t to obsess over what isn’t changing fast enough, but to anchor yourself in the truth of who He is. What you meditate on shapes your spirit. When you focus on fear, fear grows. When you focus on God, peace grows. Hope grows. Expectation grows. Trust grows. And in that place of trust, your perspective shifts from “Will God come through?” to “Of course He will—He always has.”

The future God is preparing for you is not a repeat of your past. It is bigger, more aligned, more purposeful, and more beautiful than the chapters behind you. His timing may stretch you, but it will never fail you. And when the answer comes, you will see His fingerprints all over it.