Foundation: Becoming Through the Mess
The first full week of January caught me off guard.
It began with excitement—new plans, fresh pages, the kind of hope that comes with a clean calendar. And then… it turned emotional. Saying goodbye to my sons for another season of college. Heavy in places. The news headlines. Tender in others. A week filled with empathy, conversations, responsibilities, and the quiet reminder that this work I do—this calling to help people design their lives—runs deeper than goals and content calendars.
Life, once again, showed up messy.
And maybe that is exactly where foundation is built.
In 2020, when the world went quiet, I found my first love.
Writing.
I sat down with two intentions before I ever typed the first sentence of my novel.
The first was this: What if everyone owned their own mess?
What if we didn’t hide, dodge, or minimize our wrongdoing?
What if we simply took responsibility, apologized, and chose accountability—what would our lives look like then?
The second was this: What if having a good relationship with others begins with loving yourself?
Those two questions became the heart of a story about an interracial couple navigating infidelity, racial tension, and childhood trauma. A story about brokenness, yes—but also about ownership, healing, and the courage it takes to face what is real.
I called it Broken.
I finished the book and entered the publishing world knowing very little about how it worked. Friends and family supported it. Readers showed up. And while I’m grateful for every person who held that story in their hands, the experience also revealed something unexpected: I wasn’t only an author.
I was also a coach.
For years, quietly and faithfully, I had been asking women one simple question:
“If your life were a house, how would you design it?”
God began opening doors for churches, conferences, and workshops. I found myself speaking about how loving yourself is the foundation of every beautiful life. About how God is the architect. How He makes good and beautiful things. How He is too big to make mistakes. How He is a creative craftsman who admires what He has made, including you.
Suddenly, Broken became more than a book.
It became a beginning.
It became the place where two parts of who I am met:
I am an author.
And I am a coach.
I use both to help people design their lives with resilience, creativity, love, faith, hope, connection, growth, and authenticity.
What surprised me most was how the story stirred conversations I never anticipated. Debates about whether to stay in a marriage after infidelity or to leave. Questions about the difference between passive avoidance and true kindness—the kind that leads to repentance. Readers wondering what happens next to David and Amanda, the Lloyd family, and the people who surround them.
Because the first publisher didn’t deliver what was promised, this season brings a new beginning. A new publisher. A relaunch of Broken. And the work of writing the sequel, Made.
This is foundation work.
Not flashy. Not easy. Often uphill.
But with every sentence, every page, every honest conversation sparked by this story, I am becoming. I am finding myself again, one stroke of the pen at a time.
Life is messy.
But posture matters.
I am choosing to build on truth, on grace, on faith, and on the belief that God still makes beautiful things from broken places.
Reflection for the Week:
Where is God inviting you to do foundation work in your own life even if it feels slow, messy, or unfinished?