January 19, 2025. It's a day that changed my life, although I didn't know it at the time. That day was the beginning of learning whose voice to follow — and whose to stop listening to.
For most of my life, I was excellent at listening to the wrong voices. The voice that said I needed to have it all together. The voice that said vulnerability was weakness. The voice that said if I could just achieve enough, earn enough, prove enough, I would finally feel like enough.
None of those voices were telling the truth.
"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me." — John 10:27
Learning to distinguish the right voice from the noise is a practice. It doesn't happen overnight. For me, it started with desperation — the kind that comes when every other voice has failed you and you have nothing left to lose by trying the one you've been ignoring.
That's when God's voice started to break through. Not loud or dramatic. Not a vision or a burning bush. Just a quiet, persistent truth that kept showing up in Scripture, in moments of stillness, in the words of people who had walked further down the road than I had.
The voice said: You are loved. Not for what you do. Not for what you achieve. Not when you get it right. Just — you are loved.
That voice changed everything. Because when you know you're loved like that, the other voices lose their power. The drive to perform, to prove, to numb — it starts to quiet down. Not all at once. But slowly, surely, as you keep returning to the right voice, the wrong ones fade.
What voice are you listening to? The one that demands more of you than you can give? Or the One that says you're already enough — and come as you are?