Do the ordinary tasks of my day actually matter to God?

You’re doing all of it — the meals, the laundry, the emails, the driving, the remembering. And somewhere in the middle of it a question surfaces. Does any of this actually matter? This episode is about what happens when we move through our lives productive but not present, and what abiding in the ordinary actually looks like.

Through the story of Brother Lawrence and the theology of Andrew Murray’s The True Vine, this episode reframes the mundane as the very place God is forming you. The laundry isn’t the obstacle to your spiritual life. It is your spiritual life.

In This Episode

•Why productivity without presence leaves us spiritually exhausted
•How Brother Lawrence practiced God’s presence in unglamorous ordinary work
•What Psalm 16 teaches us about security and presence in our assigned portion
•How Murray reframes pruning as God’s precision formation in everyday life
•The three questions that help you abide in the ordinary instead of just endure it

Key Takeaways

•The ordinary moments of your day are not the obstacle to your spiritual life — they are your spiritual life
•Abiding is a connection you maintain in the middle of the doing, not a feeling you chase
•The laundry is the pruning — God is actively forming you in the mundane moments
•The fruit grows while you remain connected to the vine — not when you finally finish the list

Series Note
Episode three of the Simply Remain series, which began on episode 156.

Keywords

•Abiding in God in everyday life
•Christian women and spiritual exhaustion
•Finding God in the ordinary
•Spiritual formation in daily routines
•John 15 abiding and fruit
•Andrew Murray The True Vine

Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com

What does it mean to abide in God when your quiet time feels empty and your spiritual life feels flat?

You’ve been showing up — reading your Bible, praying, doing all the things — and something still feels off.

This episode is about what’s actually happening when that occurs. Not what you’re doing wrong. What’s actually going on. We go deep into John 15 to unpack what Jesus actually meant when he said remain in me — why the fruit that grows from genuine abiding was never meant to just feed you, and what it looks like to stay when everything in you wants to fix the flatness or conclude that God is gone.

Abiding is not a feeling you achieve. It’s a posture you return to.

In This Episode

•Why doing all the right spiritual things can still leave you feeling completely disconnected
•What John 15 actually says about dependence, pruning, joy, and friendship with God
•Why reading God’s word alone doesn’t produce transformation — and what has to be added
•How the fruit of abiding flows outward and feeds others not just yourself
•Why hormonal shifts can affect your spiritual life in ways nobody warned you about

Key Takeaways

•Chase the feeling and you end up performing. Stay in the posture and the fruit takes care of itself
•The Word has to abide in you — not just pass through you
•Grace positions you in the vine. Faith keeps you there. The fruit grows as the overflow of both
•The flatness in your quiet time might be the Father pruning — not evidence that something is wrong
•The fruit you bear isn’t yours. It’s Christ’s life flowing through a branch that stayed connected

Series Note
Episode two of the Simply Remain series. Start with episode 156 or jump in here — either works.

Resources

Song: Abide by Dwell Music

The True Vine by Andrew Murray

Keywords

•How to abide in God
•Spiritual disciplines and faith
•Feeling disconnected from God
•John 15 abiding in Christ
•Perimenopause and spiritual life
•Andrew Murray abiding in Christ

Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com

Are you exhausted from chasing outcomes that never quite deliver the peace you’re after?

Underneath every goal is a feeling — security, love, peace, worthiness. And that feeling is already available to you through abiding in Christ, not through achieving.

In this episode Jill opens a new series called Simply Remain, anchored in John 15 and Andrew Murray’s The True Vine. She names the works of the flesh we don’t recognize because they look like diligence, introduces the idea of hard moments as portals into faith rather than detours around it, and shows what remaining actually looks like in a real moment of grief and loneliness.

In This Episode

•Why the fruit of the Spirit is not a to-do list
•How to trace any outcome back to the feeling underneath it
•The works of the flesh that look like virtue but quietly deplete you
•What remaining in Christ looks like in a real hard moment
•Why your hardest circumstances are doorways into abiding

Key Takeaways

•You’re chasing the feeling underneath the outcome — and it’s already available through abiding
•The branch has one job: to stay
•Striving and controlling are works of the flesh — they never deliver what they promise
•Your hard moments are portals, not interruptions

Series Note
Episode 1 of the Simply Remain series, based on John 15 and Andrew Murray’s The True Vine.

Keywords

•Abiding in Christ
•John 15 vine and branches
•Fruit of the Spirit
•Christian podcast for women
•Overcoming striving and perfectionism
•Spiritual growth for women

Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com

How do I stop letting church hurt define me?

You’ve probably spent a lot of time thinking about what happened. Who was wrong. What should have been done differently. And honestly, you’re probably right about most of it. But here’s the question that doesn’t get asked enough: what is the experience forming in you? Not just what happened — but who are you becoming while you’re processing it?

In this final episode of the church hurt series, Jill walks through the story of Absalom from 2 Samuel 13 — a man who witnessed a serious injustice, watched it go unaddressed, and carried it in silence for two years. What happened next is one of the most sobering pictures in Scripture of what unprocessed pain can do in a person’s life. Not because he was wrong about what happened. But because being right didn’t protect him.

This episode isn’t about minimizing what was done to you or rushing to forgiveness before you’re ready. It’s about keeping your eyes on Jesus in the middle of it — doing what’s yours to do, releasing what isn’t, and trusting God with the rest.

In This Episode
•Why being right about what happened doesn’t automatically protect you from what carrying it does to you over time
•The story of Absalom, Tamar, and David from 2 Samuel 13 — and what it shows us about unprocessed pain
•The difference between processing your hurt and just circulating it
•Why stuffing it down doesn’t work — and what to do instead
•How to identify what’s actually yours to do and how to surrender the rest to the Lord
•Practical steps for moving forward without losing Jesus in the process

Key Takeaways
•Seeing something clearly doesn’t make you free of it — freedom requires bringing it to the Lord
•Silence is not neutral. What you carry without addressing will eventually move in a direction you didn’t choose
•There’s a difference between processing pain and recycling it — and one leads somewhere, the other doesn’t
•You can do what’s yours to do and trust God with the outcome, even when the outcome isn’t what you wanted
•The goal isn’t to minimize what happened — it’s to make sure your heart doesn’t become the bigger problem

Series Note:
This is episode 4 of a 4-part series on church hurt. You can start here or go back to the beginning — each episode stands on its own.

Keywords:
church hurt healing, Christian women faith, how to forgive church hurt, processing spiritual pain, church trauma recovery, emotional health faith

Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com

Have you ever left a church situation feeling like you couldn’t quite shake it — even after time passed?

In this episode, Jill sits down with a panel of three women who have all experienced some form of church hurt. But this conversation isn’t about who was right or wrong. It’s about what was happening inside them — the grief, the rejection, the slow shift from hurt to resentment — and what it actually took to process it without becoming someone they didn’t want to be.

These women are honest. One stayed at her church. One left. One was in leadership when everything fell apart. Their stories are different, but the inner work they each had to do looks more similar than you’d expect.

If you’ve ever sat in a church pew watching someone through narrowed eyes, replaying a conversation you can’t let go of, or felt like you left a church but carried it with you anyway — this episode is for you.

In This Episode
• What it looks like when hurt quietly shifts into seeing someone as an adversary
• How three women processed church hurt in very different circumstances
• Why staying and leaving can both leave things unresolved
• What it means to reconcile your own heart when the other party won’t
• The role of community, counseling, and intentional inner work in healing
• How church hurt can shape the way you trust, lead, and show up — without you realizing it

Key Takeaways
• You can leave a church without leaving the experience — healing requires intentional work either way
• Forgiveness is a choice that doesn’t require an apology to begin
• The question isn’t just what happened to you, but who you’re becoming as a result
• Processing hurt in community — not alone — makes a real difference
• The pain doesn’t have to write your story; God can redeem it if you let him

Series Note: This is part 3 of the Church Hurt series. Next week, the series closes with a look at the story of David and Absalom — and what it reveals about what happens when pain goes unprocessed.

Keywords: church hurt healing, Christian women podcast, processing church trauma, forgiveness in the church, emotional health faith, leaving a church, church conflict recovery

Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com

Have you ever been in a church situation where something felt off, raised it, and had it go nowhere — and now you’re trying to understand why?

You can’t have an honest conversation about church hurt without looking at leadership. The structure around leaders and the humanity inside them shapes everything.

In this episode Jill starts with something that sounds obvious but rarely gets said honestly — pastors are human. Fully, vulnerably human. And when that reality doesn’t have the right support around it, things drift. Slowly. In ways nobody sees coming.

Jill walks through what church structure was actually designed to look like, what Scripture says about accountability in leadership, and what the story of Saul teaches us about how good people with real callings end up somewhere nobody intended.

In This Episode
•Why leadership is lonely in ways most congregations never see
•What the New Testament actually says about church structure and accountability
•How gradual drift happens — and why it’s harder to catch than outright failure
•Why the contrast between Saul and David is the most important part of the story
•What “if you don’t choose humility you will be humbled” looks like in real life

Key Takeaways
•The structure around a leader exists to protect them — not limit them
•Drift looks like a series of small reasonable decisions until suddenly it doesn’t
•Scripture cares more about what happens after failure than whether failure happened
•Anointed doesn’t mean infallible

Series Note
Part 2 of the Church Hurt series.

Keywords
church hurt, pastor leadership, church accountability, spiritual drift, toxic church, Christian leadership

Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com

Why is church hurt so hard to sort through—even when you’re trying to approach it thoughtfully?

In this episode, Jill begins a new series exploring the complexity of disappointment and tension within church communities. Not every situation is clear-cut. Sometimes something feels off, but there isn’t full agreement on what’s right or wrong—and that’s where it becomes difficult to process.

Rather than rushing to conclusions, this episode slows things down and looks at what may be happening underneath the experience. Jill walks through why these situations feel heavier than other types of conflict, why it’s hard to talk about concerns without feeling like you’re causing division, and how quickly our interpretations can start to shape what we believe is true.

This episode isn’t about assigning blame or figuring out who’s right. It’s about understanding the layers—so you can respond with more clarity, humility, and steadiness.

In This Episode:

• Why church experiences often carry more emotional and spiritual weight
• The tension between wanting to be careful and needing to process something that doesn’t sit right
• How internal processing can shift into certainty without realizing it
• Why these situations are rarely as simple as they first appear
• The layers involved: leadership, culture, interpretation, and your own internal response

Key Takeaways:

• Church hurt often feels heavier because it involves trust, belonging, and shared faith
• Not every situation is clear—many involve differing perspectives rather than obvious right and wrong
• It’s possible to move too quickly toward silence or certainty without fully understanding what’s happening
• Slowing down your thinking creates space for clarity and wisdom
• You don’t have to resolve everything immediately to begin moving forward thoughtfully

Series Note:

This episode is part of a four-part series on church hurt. In the coming weeks, we’ll look more closely at leadership, hear from women who have walked through these experiences, and explore how to process what’s happening in your own heart.

Keywords:

church hurt, Christian relationships, church conflict, spiritual discernment, emotional processing, Christian growth, navigating disappointment, faith and relationships, church leadership, Christian mindset

Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com

Why do so many Christian women feel emotionally exhausted, internally divided, and disconnected from themselves even when they deeply love God?

In this surprise standalone episode, Jill talks about the tension many Christian women quietly carry every day — knowing the truth while still feeling anxious, reactive, overwhelmed, shut down, lonely, or emotionally scattered inside. Many women have learned to either get stuck in their emotions or disconnect from them completely and perform faithfulness while exhausted underneath it all.

This episode explores what Scripture means when it calls us to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jill talks about emotional honesty, compartmentalization, authentic Christian community, and what it looks like to bring your mind, emotions, and will before God in a more integrated and wholehearted way. She also shares the deeper vision behind her upcoming Wholehearted workshop.

In This Episode
• Why many Christian women feel internally divided
• The two emotional ditches women often fall into
• Why emotions are not the enemy
• What Scripture means by wholehearted living
• How compartmentalization impacts emotional and spiritual health
• Why shared language and authentic community matter

Key Takeaways
• Spiritual maturity is not about becoming less emotional
• Many women are exhausted from performing faithfulness while disconnected internally
• Emotions can become invitations to awareness, surrender, and growth
• Wholehearted living means bringing your mind, emotions, and will before God honestly
• Healing and growth often happen more deeply in honest community

Series Note
This is a standalone bonus episode outside Jill’s normal monthly podcast series schedule.

Keywords
• Christian emotional health
• Christian women and emotions
• wholehearted living
• faith and feelings
• emotional healing for Christian women
• Christian personal growth

Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com or www.myhappyvault.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com