Writing Archives : Life with the King

July 23, 2026July 23, 2026

7 Years of Life with the King

I invite you to celebrate with me as Life with the King turns 7 this week! Last year, I wrote about the birth of this blog in my post, Seeking Life’s Deeper Truth on July 24th, 2025.

This post today also happens to be the 100th Life with the King blog post. Halleluiah, all glory be to God!

After 7 years, while 7 is known as a number of completion, I somehow get the feeling it’s just beginning. Some statistics: blog visitors have increased nearly seven times in the last two years. My most-accessed post is the very first blog ever posted in July 2019, What To Do When You Struggle With Faith, with over 1,250 views. The blog is meant to be shared with people who might need encouragement, who might be seeking Truth, and who might feel lonely in their faith journey. There has always been a hunger for Truth, Life, and God, but I’m seeing it multiply just in this blog’s stats.

God has given us all gifts to share for the good of all people, and He will give you what you need to make His plans for your gifts a reality, even if it takes 7 years or 77 years. Never give up. I’ve learned in my own life with the King that whatever God has given you to do, whether writing a blog or not, is worth doing. He will refine and transform you through it. He will help us see it through.

I wasn’t qualified to write about faith because of great faith or anything like that, but instead because of the shortcomings I had with faith. It was my doubt and failure to have faith that put me on a journey of seeking Truth and starting this blog. I knew what it was like to do the wrong thing and live the wrong way in God’s eyes. I knew I was a sinner 7 years ago, and I know I am a sinner now. But the more years go by, the more I know that “…God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It’s all about what Jesus did for us, not what we have done, wrong or right. In putting our faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for us, we are, rather unfairly, forgiven. Halleluiah!

I was reading about that “unfairness” today in Romans 5. It reads, “one trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Romans 5:18), which sounds pretty unfair to me. There have been times in my life where I felt completely trapped by and resentful of that tie to sin that I could do nothing about whatsoever. It was inherited simply by being a human being just like Adam and Eve were human beings.

But there is hope, for the very next thing Paul writes is, “so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” (Romans 5:18). Jesus’ act of righteousness, sacrificing Himself for us to pay the penalty, makes inheriting justification and life just as easy for us to have as our inherited sin! “For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Adam disobeyed God, Jesus obeyed God. We were made sinners by Adam, and we were made righteous by Jesus. It sounds simplistic until you realize the poetic depth and profundity of what Jesus did to undo the curse, oppression, and lordship of sin and death over the lives God lovingly crafted for us to live with Him in freedom and peace. We are loved enough by God for Him to bring that life, freedom, and peace about to completion (Philippians 1:6).

It’s all about what God has done for us, it’s not about us. It’s not about striving to be perfect, it’s all about Jesus. The reality is that we truly are desperate for Him, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2). We’re just so prone to forget. But even in our forgetfulness, there is so much grace from God, “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:16-17). There is grace upon grace for each one of us. Jesus is the Truth. Halleluiah!

If you’re a longtime subscriber, please know that I’m so grateful for you! I’m amazed every post is actually being read, even after 7 years of writing—thank you. And if you aren’t already, please take a moment to subscribe.

May you experience God’s kindness, peace, and grace in your own life with the King. Amen.

“For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

February 26, 2026March 3, 2026

Introducing: Your Life with the King

I am so excited to officially announce a new branch of the Life with the King family, Your Life with the King. It is finally ready to share with you, after many months of prayer and preparation. I’m starting a business that helps people tell their life story. More on that in a moment.

Now looking back, Your Life with the King seems like the natural progression from what this blog originally started as back in 2019, a way to tell my own story in hopes that it would help others. But it wasn’t so clear to me at first. It started with a request from a longtime friend. Would I help her to video record her story for her kids to watch one day? Something special happened when I considered it; I experienced a sense of knowing and peace and energy. Ideas came flying into my mind as if they’d been placed there, in fact, much like the feeling I got when I knew I needed to start this blog. I knew I had to write it all down. This didn’t seem like a passing fantasy but instead, something God was telling me to follow Him into.

Still, it took months for me to make sure it wasn’t from me. I needed to be sure God wanted me to see the idea through. I prayed and thought about it. I tried to ignore it for a while to see what would happen. The idea came back, over and over. I talked to my sister about it, and she told me to keep seeking the Lord. If He was behind it, she was all in. Wait on the Lord. So I waited. Maybe this was something I was only supposed to consider for my friend.

Meanwhile, I felt more and more strongly over the months that I needed to create something new in the world. I didn’t want to try to align myself with an agenda or a vision statement created by someone else. I knew I needed to do something that aligned with what God gifted me in, something with writing, something that helps people, and something with meaning. Anything else, and it’d just be a fleeting dream that I’d abandon. I got a nagging feeling that I had wide gaps in resources. Then, without much effort on my part at all, I found a helpful class, and a webinar, and then a seminar. Suddenly I went from no support to all the support I needed in every area. I began to be reassured by the Lord. I began to have peace. The ideas aligned with the resources I now had. I soon felt a readiness, a drive forward. God gave me the green light.

So I bought the domain, I registered with the state, set up the accounts, and today I am thrilled to announce Your Life with the King is open for business!

When I couldn’t go on in my 9-5 anymore in 2024, I knew I had a long way to go. It would take a huge change to start living in a way I could thrive. I had no idea what that would look like at that time, as I wrote about in my blog post, Jesus’ Kingdom vs. my kingdom. I didn’t feel like there was a way out. But God. God always provides. He provides us with what we need to live fully and freely; to bring our gifts and talents to the people that need and appreciate them. I just had to be willing to take the leap. So today, I’m leaping.

About the business side of things, Your Life with the King provides a way for me to help you, your family, and friends, to record your legacy on video. In my mind, video is the next iteration of the book; video is the medium that future generations will gravitate to to hear stories. The Lord commands us as followers, “Write down for the coming generation what the Lord has done, so that people not yet born will praise Him” (Psalm 102:18 GNT). Your Life with the King makes that easy for you, and for the next generation as well. Each one of our stories is important and worth telling and knowing; I’m excited to help people do that! If you’re an entrepreneur, I want to help you record the story of the purpose behind your business and what drives you. If you’re a parent, I want to help you record your experiences, background, and faith stories for your family. If you’re a person who hasn’t told your life story yet, I’d love to help you do that.

As an academic at heart, I thoroughly research people, events, and experiences in people’s lives as a interviewer. I’ll then thoughtfully choose questions to help your stories shine. As a client of mine, you won’t have to perfectly choose every word as if you were writing the stories all on your own. I’ll expertly guide you through the process, using oral history research guidelines, previous podcast production experience, and the care of a compassionate listener. My interviews and the way I prepare and set you up will allow you to feel safe and supported as you speak about your life and experiences.

Now I can confidently say that I have been through many experiences in my life, and trust that I can draw out the best of my clients during conversations with empathy and safety. There is no story too scandalous, no person too broken. I welcome all to tell their stories. We need them. The next generations need them. We need to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Your Life with the King is an avenue that the Lord has given me to help see that vision through. It’s also the way that I now feel led by God to obey the command to “write down for the coming generation what the Lord has done” (Psalm 102:18).

I’ve written what God has done in my own life on the Life with the King blog for nearly 7 years. Now it’s your turn. Come over the Your Life with the King and share your story.

Grace and Peace.

July 25, 2020July 25, 2020

Life with the King Turns One!

Sharing words with the world has been one of the scariest and most rewarding decisions I’ve ever made. I’ve always loved writing, but only since last year did I get up the courage to share it for the world to read.

The idea to share a behind-the-scenes peek into Life with the King (LWTK) came from a question from one of YOU fantastic readers: Where did you start and how are you finding contentment and creativity in artistic style?

I always love hearing your ideas; thank you for reflecting with me on the first year of the Life with the King blog!

Why start writing in the first place?

Just like many of the stories I tell in this blog, it all started with an internal struggle.

I have wanted to be a writer almost as long as I’ve been able to read. The problem was, I didn’t know what I would write about. The more I learned, the more I learned how much I didn’t know, and the more I doubted that what I had to say would be either new or helpful.

I also knew that if my writing wasn’t vulnerable, it wouldn’t be great. And I wanted to write something great. I didn’t, however, want to be vulnerable. So, I put writing off.

I journaled off and on; I wrote occasional poems and plays and essays. But I never called myself a writer.

I thought about starting a blog many times in my 20s. In 2012 I experimented with a travel blog and gleefully documented one of my trips nearly every day. But when it came to writing about life and meaning, the things that interested and fascinated me the most, the task seemed just beyond my reach.

I can’t properly explain how, but I knew intuitively that I didn’t have the life experience yet to produce the depth of content that I wanted to be able to share. I was aware enough to know a well of wisdom about this topic existed, and also that I needed more years in flesh and blood reality to anchor whatever it is I’d write about in that wisdom. So I waited, telling myself I’d write something great someday, trying to make myself feel better about not really doing what I loved. I told myself for years that I just had to be patient. To trust that someday writing would find me again.

How did LWTK start?

During my 20s, reality developed. I moved twice, had 3 jobs, 3 relationships, a family crisis or two, and a personal crisis of faith. Last year, I finally had a story that I was ready to tell.

It was then that writing became something I could no longer not do. Speaking to the question of contentment, I was at a point where I just wasn’t content until I started taking steps toward sharing my story through writing. I took this as a clear signal that writing this story was at least part of what I was meant to do here on this earth.

Yes, part of me felt it was a little self-indulgent to be writing about myself and my experience directly. But again the contentment wasn’t there until I sort of held my nose and did so. After all, writers must write what they know. Artists must express what they feel and observe. That’s the only way I know of to be honest, and honest writing is all I’d ever want to read. Or offer.

Despite being completely terrified, I published my first blog post one year ago today. I told my friends, “If only one person is helped and doesn’t feel alone in their faith experience, it’ll all be worth it.”

Needless to say now, it’s been more than worth it.

It’s been a life-giving creative outlet to write my story with the Lord, sharing what He has taught me in the process of rebuilding shattered faith.

And there is so much more to share that goes beyond the scope of this blog. My hopes to write that book someday are now more alive than ever, all starting with saying “YES!” to obey that tug on my heart.

Behind the Scenes

To get a little more vulnerable still, the writing journey while mostly positive hasn’t been all rosey. There was so much passion and momentum when this began a year ago. Not only that, but I was also helped and inspired by my sister Abby, who had launched her own blog just a month before. In those first couple of weeks, we packed our laptops on our family beach trip to keep consistent with our blogging. Without an internet connection where we were staying, we simply got up early nearly every day and drove off to find air conditioned WiFi, leaving the family asleep to work on our writing together. The first few weeks were relatively easy because of the excitement around it and the forethought I had put into a handful of topics.

However writing on my own was harder. Topics eventually run out. Blogging took time, discipline, and energy that I had underestimated in the initial rush of novelty. I soon struggled to post blogs weekly, working a full time job as well as a part time job. Discouragement set in and I stopped posting for several weeks at a time, not because I wanted to stop, but because I had to. I couldn’t continue if I was associating the blog with a feeling I dreaded.

Because I love this blog. It took a great deal of time, attention, and planning to get it up and running. I have pages and pages of notes just from working out what to call it. I talked to friends about their own blogs and what they learned along the way. The online hosting process alone took me weeks to set up. I set up a post structure to keep me focused before I ever started writing content.

Just because it was tough and discouraging at times didn’t mean I was going to give up on the blog.

And that’s exactly how God feels about us.

God didn’t give up on me, even when I quit on Him. He will never give up on you either.

This time, I wasn’t going to let go of the opportunity I’d been given that easily; I had already done that whole letting-discouragement-stop-me thing in my 20s. Not anymore.

How do you feel about the blog now?

I remember telling my family this January, “I finally feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.”

Writing is my act of obedience to God. There is meaning in the sharing of Life with the King, and that makes the pain I endured apart from Him have a purpose now. Writing is indeed my way of artistic expression. Bringing truth and light to the darkness is what God does. My aim for LWTK is to bring attention to what I see God doing. We all need a reminder to look for it, myself included.

Today, I can call myself a writer. Today, I can say that God is Good.

I hope Life with the King will continue to encourage you as it begins its second year; no matter how desperate or painful your faith journey might seem, God hasn’t and won’t ever give up on you. Even when you don’t see Him or experience His presence. Even when you don’t believe Him. There is still hope, and joy is still possible.

Don’t give up. You are not alone, and there is grace even here.

“I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever” (Psalm 145:1-2).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to the blog, it helps me continue writing about Life with the King. Grace and peace.