I remember the exact moment I couldn't outrun it anymore.
I was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere between who I had been and who I didn't yet know I was becoming. I was on a long-haul flight to London for work — the kind of trip I used to love. I had always been someone who enjoyed flying. The altitude, the quiet, the strange gift of being temporarily unreachable. But that flight felt nothing like that. It felt like a trap.
There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to busy myself. No crisis to manage, no call to make, no argument to referee. Just me, the hum of the plane, and the thoughts I had been running from for months.
My family was falling apart. My son was sinking deeper into addiction and showing signs of mental illness that terrified me. My husband and I couldn't find our footing — every situation became a disagreement, every disagreement became an argument, because the pressure had exposed just how differently we saw things. And I was in the middle of all of it, trying to hold everyone together, trying to be the bridge, trying to be the answer. Somewhere over the ocean, with nowhere left to run, I had to sit with the reality I had been avoiding.
I was exhausted. And I was losing.
The Weight No One Could See
If you had looked at my life from the outside during that season, you might not have seen anything wrong. I was still showing up. Still traveling for work. Still leading. Still functioning.
That's the thing about the kind of falling apart that happens to high-achieving women — it doesn't always look like falling apart. It looks like holding it together so tightly that your hands shake. It looks like managing every detail because if you stop managing, everything might actually collapse. It looks like lying awake at night running scenarios, and waking up already tired, and pouring yourself into everyone around you while quietly running on empty.
The signs were there if I had known what to look for. The anxiety that had started creeping into flights I used to love. The feeling that I couldn't be away without something going wrong. The loneliness of being surrounded by people and still feeling completely alone in what I was carrying. The growing realization that my husband and I weren't just disagreeing about tactics — we were disagreeing about everything, and neither of us knew how to find our way back to each other while we were both drowning.
I wasn't failing. But I wasn't okay either. And I didn't have words for the space between those two things.
Maybe you know that space. Maybe you're in it right now.
The Encounter With God that Changed Everything
There was one moment that changed everything, though I didn't fully understand it at the time.
I was supposed to travel to Canada with other leaders from my company. The night before the trip, I was on a support group call — a group for mothers of children struggling with addiction. At the end of the call, they asked for prayer requests. I asked for prayer because I had this feeling I couldn't shake. A nagging, quiet, persistent sense that I wasn't supposed to go on this trip.
After the Zoom meeting, I started packing. And the feeling didn't leave.
That night, I made the decision to cancel. I told my travel companions I wasn't going to make it. I couldn't fully explain it — I just knew I had no peace about leaving, and for the first time in a long time, I listened to that.
The next day, things came to a head at home in a way that confirmed what I had sensed. A confrontation happened. A line was crossed. And by the end of that day, I had left the house with my son and checked into a hotel. We eventually moved into a property I had originally been purchasing as a rental — but it became something else entirely. I called it our wilderness house. Because that's what it was. A place of wandering. A place of waiting. A place where I had no choice but to stop pretending I was holding anything together.
It was in that wilderness house that I started to come back to God.
When the Unraveling Is Actually an Invitation
I want to say something to you that I needed someone to say to me in the middle of that season: What feels like falling apart might actually be God calling you back.
There is a moment in Luke 15, in the story of the prodigal son, that I think we often rush past. Before the son turns toward home — before any of the restoration happens — the Bible says he "came to himself." He came to himself. In the middle of the mess he had made, in the place he never imagined he would end up, something cracked open inside him. And in that cracking open, he remembered where home was.
The unraveling was the awakening.
He didn't have it together when he turned toward home. He turned toward home because he didn't have it together. And the father — the one Jesus uses to show us the heart of God — wasn't waiting at the door with a lecture. He was already running.
That's what I didn't know in my wilderness season. I thought my unraveling was evidence that I had failed — as a wife, as a mother, as a woman of faith. I thought if I had more faith, more strength, more of something, I wouldn't be in this place. What I didn't understand yet was that God wasn't watching me fall apart from a distance. He was the one orchestrating the very conditions that would finally make me stop and listen.
The nagging feeling before that Canada trip? That was Him. The no-peace that made me cancel? That was Him. The wilderness house I hadn't planned for? That was Him.
"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'" — Isaiah 30:21
He was behind me the whole time. Not abandoning me. Guiding me. Whispering direction into a season that felt like chaos.
He wasn't walking away from me. He was calling me back.
What I Had to Stop Believing
In that season, I believed something that I now know was a lie: that it was my job to have all the answers. That it was my responsibility to hold everyone together. That if I just tried harder, managed better, loved more strategically — I could fix what was broken in my family.
I couldn't. And not because I wasn't enough.
Because that was never my role to play.
Only God can hold a family together. Only God can reach into a person's darkness and pull them toward light. Only God can reconcile what seems irreparable. My job was never to be the answer. My job was to trust the One who is.
One of the most releasing things I eventually came to understand was this: God loves my son more than I ever could. God loves my husband more than I am capable of. His love for my family is not dependent on my performance or my proximity. When I started to release my grip on the outcome — when I stopped insisting that restoration had to look the way I imagined it — things began to shift. Not because circumstances immediately changed. But because I did.
I stopped trying to be God for my family. And I let God be God instead.
This Is What Being Called Back Looks Like
If you're reading this and something in you is resonating — I want you to pay attention to that.
The restlessness that won't let you stay comfortable. The hunger for something real in your faith. The awareness that what used to satisfy you doesn't anymore. The exhaustion that sleep isn't fixing. The quiet moments where, even in the middle of the mess, you feel something pulling at you — something that feels almost like hope even when it doesn't make sense.
That's not your breakdown. That's your invitation.
Return doesn't require you to have answers. It doesn't require you to be cleaned up. It doesn't require you to understand everything that happened or know what comes next. Return just requires you to turn.
I spent a long time seeking God while still holding onto control. I was praying, but I wasn't releasing. I was asking for help, but I was still insisting on my own outcomes. The shift came when I finally said — not my will, but Yours. When I became willing to accept whatever God's answer looked like, even if it was different from what I had been fighting for.
That was the moment the wilderness became a pathway.
You Don't Have to Carry This Alone
If I could go back to that woman on the plane — anxious, exhausted, trapped with her own thoughts over the Atlantic — I would tell her this:
You don't have to hold all of this together. That was never your assignment. Surrender sooner. Not because you're giving up, but because you're finally letting the right One take the weight.
And I want to say the same thing to you.
Whatever is unraveling in your life right now — your marriage, your family, your sense of self, your faith — it is not the end of your story. It may be the very thing God is using to call you back to Himself. Back to the place where you remember that He is God and you are not. Back to the peace that only comes when you stop striving and start surrendering.
He is not surprised by where you are. He is not disappointed. He is not waiting for you to get it together before He shows up.
He is already running toward you.
— — —
A Prayer
God, I don't have words for everything I'm carrying. But I'm here. And if You're calling me back — I want to come. Help me release what I've been gripping so tightly. Show me the way home. Amen.
— — —
Reflect
What is the unraveling in your life right now that might actually be an invitation? Sit with that today.