We can DREAM BIG, because we have a BIG GOD.

For so much of my life, I only saw the following as my options—make money, be stable, become successful.

They’re not bad goals—they’re just comfortable goals, that lean more towards striving instead of submission.

I knew that I always had a heart for people. I would tell myself that I wanted to have a career that felt as though I was helping others, just as much as I was helping myself through my work. I wanted to feel like I was apart of something “bigger than myself”, hence my decision to join the military. And also, in full transparency, when there isn’t a government shutdown or an international war going on, most things about military life are relatively secure. Pay checks consistently coming on the 1st and the 15th of the month, additional money for meals and housing on top of your salary…tax free! Not to mention, great educational opportunities, aaannd if you ever get fired from your job, you don’t really lose your job, unless you do something worth getting kicked out of the military for (if you know, you know). The military is great in many ways, not just those mentioned. So, it’s safe to say that for me, I felt really stable in that career when it came to financial and job security. But, there was a time where I felt like I forgot to dream.

When people would ask, “What’s your dream job?” I genuinely didn’t know how to answer the question, without resorting to the rigid 5-year career plan I made for myself, which truthfully, never really felt like me. I felt as though my dreams died the moment I decided to find employment based on security rather than passions. By the looks of the plan, I had my whole life figured out; that is, until God threw me a curveball in the direction I am pursuing now.

When I was younger however, I was what the world calls, indecisive, about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I would jump between fashion designer, veterinarian, farmer, interior designer, Disney actress, singer, doctor, astronaut…you name it and I probably wanted to be it at some point; and I never stayed hooked on an idea for too long. I was always frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t just be normal and pick one thing to settle on, like everyone else in school, who just knew who they were and what they wanted to be. I had this fear that picking one option, would lock me into a way of life that I might end up hating. But eventually, like most adults, I decided to put the blinders on to hopes and dreams and settled on safety nets and survival.

Although I tried to settle, God had completely different plans for my life and He never forgot about those lost hopes and dreams. My recent decision to trust God completely and leave the military without much of a plan, has really been an eye-opening experience. I am learning more everyday, that the possibilities are endless with God. Accomplishing with the Lord isn’t limited to one career field or one title to define yourself by, except maybe, servant to the Most High. Let me explain what I mean, because here’s where it gets fun!

I attend Inspire Church, which has grown into a relatively large church with multiple campuses. About a year ago, I decided to join the serve team at church and give my time back to the Lord’s house. What I didn’t realize, is that there is a whole world of operations to the church, that expands well beyond the sanctuary we sit in every Sunday.

When I joined the serve team, I got to explore other portions of the church that are typically reserved only for staff access. It was wild to me, seeing vast open concept office spaces, collaboration rooms, studio rooms, filming booths, prayer rooms, and kitchen areas, all within a church. I thought to myself, WOAH, they’re running a whole God-ordained business operation in here, how did I miss this!? I don’t know why I assumed that the whole of the church could be summed up by the sanctuary, kids area, mini cafe, and maybe a few pastoral offices. No—there is a full fledged operations center in there! I think this blew my mind because I realized for the first time, that in the same way the church isn’t limited in its functional operations, neither are God’s children.

The senior pastor of the main Inspire Church campus, Mike Kai, has a very entrepreneurial mindset. Maybe it’s just me, but I personally hadn’t seen that up close, within a church I was attending before. Every year, there are a plethora of events, products, conferences, merchandise, planners, books, and more that all get produced and put out by the church and each product always points back to the Lord. Many products by the church are free, but other creative ideas are produced and sold as a way to pour back into the church, the mission and ministry, and I can’t say for sure, but I assume to help support the livelihood of staff members.

I’ve seen many people disagree with “mega church” methods, how they operate, and how much money must be flowing through them, because “shouldn’t God be free?” But the reality is, access to God is free, thanks to the blood of Jesus. You can pray and communicate with God through Jesus at any time of the day and actually receive a response…if you’re patient enough! Churches offer free access to the word of God all the time, every single week, on multiple days of the week, through sermons and free Bibles! And yet, the same is also true that, the Christian Bible itself, “…is the best-selling book of all time.” It just makes sense. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 8:18, “…remember that the Lord your God gives you the power to gain wealth…” So, if God gave us the ability to produce wealth, how much more important is it that we create products that point back to Him, which produce a wealth that can be stewarded for the advancement of His Kingdom? Don’t take my word for it though. Here are a couple more important points the Bible makes about creating:

Genesis 1:1 — “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:26 — Man was made in God’s own image.

If God is a creator, in fact, THE creator of all the world and universe, and we are made in His likeness, then we are also intended to be creators ourselves—by God’s power that works in us and through us. With such a gift to create, God gives us this power to earn and produce wealth through the work of our hands. Isn’t that so cool!?

Obviously, wealth generation isn’t just for our own gain. While yes, wealth supports our livelihood, it is also meant to be poured back into God’s Kingdom. I have to say, I am amazed and inspired by some of the Christian leaders of our generation, that are broadly displaying what it looks like to exercise God-given creativity; to produce ideas planted by God in the hearts and minds of His children, generate wealth from the products resulting from those ideas, and then steward that wealth to produce even more for God’s Kingdom. Many churches continue to advance the Kingdom of God by building more campuses to spread the Word of God, send people on international missions trips, organize community assistance drives, ensure free Bibles are available to the people that need it most, and ultimately act as the hands and feet of Jesus on this earth, fulfilling the calling of God on their lives.

The best part about this though, is that creating with God removes barriers and limitations. At my own personal church, not only is the lead pastor a pastor, but he has also become the author of multiple books, producing insightful life lessons from what God has taught him in his personal journey. Check out one of my favorite books by Pastor Mike Kai, “Blow your mind!”.

On the topic of removed limitations for Christians building with God, I recently watched a hilarious, heart warming movie, called “Relationship Goals” on Amazon Prime Video. This particular movie was so awesome to me because, it was based off of the book “Relationship Goals”, written by one of my favorite pastors that I watch on YouTube, Pastor Michael Todd, from Transformation Church in Tulsa Oklahoma. The book is a Christ-centered guide to building healthy relationships, inspired by Pastor Todd’s own experience with God, marriage, and stories of people he has mentored on relationships.

While a pastor becoming an author seems to be a typical theme that I’ve noticed, I’ve never once seen a pastor be all at once, a pastor, author and ACTOR!

SPOILER ALERT:

The movie, Relationship Goals, is a rom-com with a Christian spin, about two regular people, Leah and Jarrett, working in the news entertainment industry, who just-so-happen to know each other from another lifetime; they also happen to be competing for the same job. In a nut shell, Leah and Jarrett end up doing a cover story on the “Relationship Goals” book, which in turn helps them find their way to their own healthy relationship. While Pastor Michael Todd isn’t the main character of the movie, he and his wife Natalie Todd are featured in the film, recording the interview for the book. There is also an awesome scene where Pastor Todd is preaching at Transformation Church, in his natural element, but this time IN A MOVIE.

END SPOILER ALERT.

I thought to myself, WOW, only with God can you be a pastor, author, actor, and not to mention, a podcaster / music producer. Those last two parts weren’t captured in the movie, but are in fact other titles held by Pastor Michael Todd. It is all around awesome to witness someone boldly and proudly, display the creativity that God has blessed them with, in such a new and fresh way. Not only that, but it is amazing to see the fruit of it all, stewarded so well, that everyone around him, especially the congregation he leads, can benefit from his labor! Isn’t that the dream? Isn’t that the goal? To serve the Lord so hard, that you accidentally end up girl or guy-bossing so close to the sun, that the light of the Lord shines through your life bright for all to see and to also end up producing good fruit for those around you!? Now, don’t take that the wrong way—of course, the first goal is to simply be a faithful servant to the Lord, with everything else as an added bonus, but you know what I mean. It’s the epitome of Matthew 5:16, which says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Aside from established preachers, I have also seen God make multifaceted creators out of some of my very own best friends. Take Angelica Johnston for example. First of all, Jaw Dropper!

Second of all, Angelica and I have been best friends since, idk, birth. No, really—her mom started babysitting me at 6-months old and that’s when our friendship formed.

For as long as I can remember, Angelica has loved all things faith and fashion! As a young girl, she was always drawing new creative ideas for clothes and dreaming about fashion ideas. She even went on to chase her dreams by attending a fashion institute in San Francisco, California! And then she followed the Lord’s leading all the way down to L.A., where she co-launched the Christian Streetwear brand, RIL (Revival In Los Angeles), and designed the dopest “Holy Spirit” hoodies I’ve ever seen!

Not long after this launch, the Lord blessed her to start her own clothing brand, Holy Girl. In true Angelica fashion, she trusted God and took off running with it, completely by faith! But even better than that, not only is Holy Girl, a Christian clothing brand, Angelica has also turned it into a blog spot for everything from fashion trends to conversations with Jesus. She also designs and sells faith inspired jewelry, journals, and other accessories!

Typically, in business branding, we hear people say things along the lines of: pick a cohesive brand and stick with a simplicity that is easy for customers to remember; less is more kind of thing. Normally, you wouldn’t see clothes, jewelry, notebooks, and blogs all found together in one brand, but when God calls you to create, you’ll find that the possibilities are endless with opportunities to produce. And the best part is, somehow He makes it all fit intricately and cohesively together! God is so amazing <3

Those were just a few examples of Christians that I have seen stepping out of the box, pursuing purpose with God through more avenues than one, and I find it so inspiring.

Side note—I have also picked up on multiple trends in strategy circulating our current generation, for building successful Kingdom businesses and more importantly, building wealth with God. For one, if you’ve ever heard the saying that “the average millionaire has seven streams of income,” well, it’s no coincidence that this concept is drawn from a Biblical principle. In Ecclesiastes 11:2, King Solomon, known as the wisest king of Israel thanks to answered prayers from God, wrote the words, “Give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you don’t know what disaster may happen on the earth.” This comes straight out of a passage talking specifically about investing our God-given resources; more specifically, investing in multiple avenues of wealth generation, as opposed to limiting ourselves to just one. There’s a lot more to be studied about the Kingdom business principles, so you’ll have to stay tuned for more on that!

Subscribe now

As for me, after I was called away from the military, God originally spoke a Podcast into my life, called Working While Wounded, which was intended to serve as a healing ministry. The funny thing is, having a Podcast was an idea that I completely forgot I ever had. The dream was buried in a box of memorabilia, on an old vision board from two years ago, when adulting took priority in my life. Yet, God resurrected a part of that dream this year, and He kept the fact that I always wanted to help others, in mind! As I progressed in obedience by creating the Podcast, it expanded into an entire blog publication and YouTube presence as well, that has started shifting into what I now see growing into an entire digital community, that not only promotes faith and points back to Jesus, but also acts a source of encouragement for others to find true healing and rest in Him.

In regards to the blog expansion, I suppose, looking back (as humbly as I can say this), I have always done well in writing classes and have usually struggled with writing within character limits, because I had too much to say! So, although writing comes naturally to me, I never knew how to apply that skill creatively—I only ever used it to complete assignments. But God led me down this path of not only filming weekly Podcast entries, but also writing weekly blog entries as well. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll write a book and become a full-blown author.

Ultimately, the pattern I am seeing, is that all it takes is one idea and one seed planted by God to launch you into a completely new life and identity; but often times, it doesn’t stop there. There’s constant growth and expansion with God, because He wants to see you step into the fullness of who He has called you to be!

There is so much to be explored about the ways that we can carry out our purpose and calling for God, if only we would refuse to let ourselves be boxed in by earthly circumstances and if we would, especially, refuse trying to put God in a box, regarding the ways that we think He may ask us to carry out a promise, a purpose, or a calling in our lives. God might tell you to become a Christian actor, which might even be completely out of your comfort zone, because God likes to stretch us. Would you decline that calling, just because it may be uncomfortable for you and because maybe you start hearing some people mention that it seems like a form of exploitative Christianity? Or, would you obey your Father in heaven, who is Lord over your life, and film 5 seasons, portraying Jesus in The Chosen, like Jonathan Roumie, so that up and coming generations of this day can experience the story of Jesus in a new way? That’s not to say a Christian show replaces learning about Jesus through the traditional means of reading His Word, but traditional means coupled with fresh, creative means of encounters can only broaden one’s exposure to the Lord, which is the goal; to share the Gospel far and wide, turning every heart back to Jesus.

After all, God is the creator of the universe and the One who can literally create everything out of nothing, in whatever way He chooses to. That’s one of my favorite parts about following the Lord right now; I get a front row seat to watching just how limitless He is, and just how limitless I can be by the power of God working through me.

So, the questions I leave us with today, are for two groups of people, because I have been both.

I believe God wants us to DREAM BIG with Him and dream limitlessly with Him. Just look around…the Kingdom of God has all types of creators from authors, fashion designers, pastors, preachers, and actors, to painters, architects, dancers, chefs, musicians and much much more! I imagine that a God as vast and as creative as ours, yearns to constantly expand, create, and open up seemingly impossible opportunities for His children to create as well, given that we are made in His image; as a reflection of His creativity.

So, let’s not live with doubt about what God can do for us and let’s not doubt just how expansively He can use us for His good works! Amen? Amen.

Sincerely,

Keliz — W|W|W

I want to be the generation that truly finds deeper healing and stops simply filling the holes in our hearts with empty pursuits of things that only lead to more damage.

This is a real, vulnerable discussion, about some of my family’s personal experiences with trauma. I feel it on my heart to share, because many of us come from generations of parents and grandparents who did not properly heal and who could not be an example for future generations of what true healing actually looked like; regardless of the reasons for that, it has left the rest of us fending for ourselves, trying to figure out how to do it on our own as adults.

Thankfully, in our generation, there are so many tools and resources for healing that are openly available to us, including Jesus, therapy, books, apps, community and more. There has been a more positive shift in the atmosphere surrounding the conversations on trauma and yet, understandably, some of us still have a hard time navigating it. All of the tools available today offer the help and assistance necessary for this growth, which may not have been available for previous generations or that may have even been simply rejected by them.

The point is—we have to be the ones to maximize all that’s available to us, because the tools won’t work unless we do. The wrench can’t turn itself.

So, it’s time to actually start addressing the complex wounds that still show up making negative impacts in our every-day lives and relationships—and it’s time to stop stuffing the holes with empty purposeless fillers, stop masking the pain, and stop avoiding the work required to actually heal.

I pray that this encouraged someone to address the wounds that have been sitting dormant for far too long. Jesus promised you a life rich in healing, peace, and joy—He just needs you to start taking the steps toward it and to hold on in faith when the process feels painful. He is your “fourth man in the fire” walking out all the difficult moments with you, and He is faithful to bring you through it.

Sincerely,

Keliz W|W|W

Jesus.

JESUS.

Jesuuuuus.

1 Jesus is like the sun shining through the clouds on a rainy day.

2 Jesus is like the smell of roses and wild honey.

3 Jesus is like the sweet touch of a kiss on the cheek.

4 Jesus is like twirling freely around in a flowy dress on a bright spring day.

5 Jesus is like a goodbye kiss on the forehead from your favorite person in the morning.

6 Jesus is like the hard working family man that puts food on the table and a roof over heads.

7 Jesus is like glitter, glue, and a blank sheet of paper.

8 Jesus is like a love letter that never ends.

9 Jesus is like the feeling you get after spinning around on a tire swing and then laying on the grass to watch the sky spin.

10 Jesus is like a breath of fresh air.

11 Jesus is like the warm embrace of a loving mother.

12 Jesus is like a tight hug from a loving father.

13 Jesus is like a warm cup of coffee on a slow Sunday morning.

14 Jesus is like a fully stocked fridge that never goes empty.

15 Jesus is like the well of spring water that never runs dry.

16 Jesus is like getting to sleep in because you have no responsibilities for the day.

17 Jesus is like drinking a cup of hot coco around the cabin fire place, after coming in from a day of playing in the snow.

18 Jesus is like when that view of natural scenery takes your breath away.

19 Jesus is like jumping into the cool ocean water and swimming out to see nothing but vast, blue and green hues for miles, while the waves push softly against you.

20 Jesus is like catching your breath at the top of a mountain peak after a long hike and as you look out, you see the Earth breathing, the birds of the sky soaring, the butterflies fluttering, and the trees swaying.

21 Jesus is like the neighbor with the perfect garden, who can actually keep their plants alive and thriving, because they spend time nurturing them, speaking to them, pruning them, and pulling all the weeds from them.

22 Jesus is like doing running cartwheels in a field of grass with your friends, falling over in laughter, and not caring who else around sees or judges you.

23 Jesus is like my dad taking me to the track to run with him on a hot summer day at 12 years old, building stamina in my little lungs and pushing me to greater ability. I was pretty lazy and didn’t always want to do that, but dad knew it was for my benefit hahaha.

24 Jesus is like that friend that loves to surprise you!

25 Jesus is like that pet that has become a best friend who eagerly waits to welcome you back into the house each day, willing and ready to be every sense of emotional support that you need when you walk through the doors.

26 Jesus is like the painting you created, which you surprised yourself with, because you had no idea you could create such art.

27 Jesus is like a vibrant box of paints with color palettes that you had no idea even existed.

28 Jesus is like watching a flower bloom and unfold in real time.

29 Jesus is like the warm sunshine kissing your skin through a window, lighting up specifically one part of a cold room…and it’s YOUR part of the room.

30 Jesus is like the friend that cheers you up with the funniest, goofiest, song and dance that they made up, bringing joy into a dim situation.

31 Jesus is like making lemonade when life hands you lemons.

What does Jesus feel like to you?

Sincerely,

Keliz W|W|W

What if humility and boldness can share a room?

Sometimes we confuse humility to mean maintaining a small mindset about ourselves, which can make us feel like taking up space isn’t necessary. But, in discovering the broader biblical term of humility, which is originally written as Anavah in Hebrew, we find that what’s required of us in regard to humility is actually the exact opposite of what we might think; humility in its full scope, is a call to take up no more and no less of your God-given space. By obeying God’s instructions and commands in your daily life, you can answer the call to kneel before others to serve and also to stand tall, boldly and courageously before them, as the Holy Spirit leads you to. In responding to God’s instructions, you will find the balance between boldness and humility, and begin to understand how they can both fit seamlessly into your life.

I pray this word helps anyone struggling with finding the balance, to gain clarity and understanding on God’s intentions for how you need to show up in this season.

Sincerely,

Keliz W|W|W

I pray this re-cap of the movie, Fireproof, and how it relates to our relationship with Christ was able to shed some insight into making sure that God remains the #1 priority in our lives above every relationship, so that the rest can fall into place gracefully.

P.S. Don’t come for my singing abilities LOL

Sincerely,

Keliz W|W|W

Have you ever struggled in your faith to understand the balance between embodying true humility without shrinking yourself to fit in? Me too.

In my therapy sessions over the past couple of weeks, my therapist has repeatedly asked me to define what humility looks like to me, over the course of the various seasons that I have walked through lately.

As a command I received from the Lord in June, humility looked like living by the verse, Philippians 2:3, “Consider others as more important than yourselves.” It looked like caring more about the needs of other people, even when I felt they didn’t deserve it and it felt like dying to my flesh by refusing to give into my personal desires, even when I felt I had a right to them. So, when my therapist asked me to define humility in that time frame, it sounded like I was doing just that—dying to myself and putting down all the needs I thought I had, to allow God to show me what I truly needed. Honestly though, the more that I explained what I was doing because of what the Lord had told me, the more concerns I received about self-abandonment. But as sure as the sun rises, so the seasons change.

Despite the worry and concern about my approach, when I remained obedient and learned what it looked like to really serve others rather than myself, only then did the Lord allow my season to shift from that specific command, because I learned what it was meant to teach me. Now, in this season, God has allowed humility to take on a new form of meaning that feels more expansive than it does limiting; and in this I have started to understand that humility and boldness can share a room.

Upon researching the definition of humility, I found that it has multiple meanings, depending on what context and language you are reading the word.

In English, the Cambridge Dictionary defines humility as “the feeling or attitude that you have no special importance that makes you better than others; lack of pride.”

We see humility show up across the Bible many times and the general consensus is that humility is a characteristic that we as Christians, need to embody. While that is true, we often take the concept of humility and warp it into something that causes people to feel that because they aren’t better than others, then they should not consider that their voice, thoughts, insights, or ideas really matter to put out into the world in a bold way; this view can have a debilitating effect on the perception of ourselves, our value, and our ability to show up the way we were meant to. In short, it can cause us to feel the need to shrink and assimilate to the thoughts of the world around us. So, I got curious about reading up on the Biblical context of humility and am going to explain another side of the term that is worth embracing—and it doesn’t include declaring that you lack a special importance, especially in the work of the Kingdom of God. You may be one of billions, but how much more impactful is it to know that out of all the people God created, He made sure to choose you to be here, for such a time as this. If that doesn’t scream importance, then I don’t know what does. Here’s what I learned:

Anavah is the Hebrew word used in original Biblical text, that was translated to humility in English, however its root stems from the word “anu” which means “to respond” or “to answer”. In a more cultural Jewish context, another variation of the term Anavah, has been said to mean, “taking up the appropriate amount of space.”

For a little background context, during my research on this topic, I also learned that Anavah (humility) is a core trait in the practice of the Jewish tradition of Mussar. I found that interesting because, Mussar is defined as an ancient Jewish practice that serves “as a guide for spiritual development, fostering awareness, wisdom, and personal transformation…helping individuals recognize their inner holiness and overcome inner barriers that obscure their inner light.” So, ultimately, Mussar is the practice of removing internal emotional barriers blocking access to the best version of yourself, which has a core practice of embodying Anavah, meaning to respond to the calling of something greater, and to take up a certain amount of space, while maintaining the balance of not over-aggrandizing yourself. From a Christian context, this concept completely blew my mind on the idea of humility, as it exists in our Bible today.

What I took all of this information to mean, is that God’s original intent for calling us to humility wasn’t to make us shrink, it was simply to get us to respond to whatever it is that He is trying to get us to do in any specific season, circumstance, or situation, because in obeying Him we would uncover the purest, greatest, and most holy versions of ourselves. Isn’t it beautiful that all that we are and all that we were created to be can be found in just responding to the voice and instruction of our creator? Now, here is the important aspect to grasp.

It’s true—on one side of the coin, humility can look like considering others as more important than yourself (Philippians 2:3), or like Jesus humbling Himself to wash the feet of the disciples who were supposed to be serving Him, even the one who He knew was betraying Him (John 13:5), and like forgiving others as your Father in Heaven has forgiven you, especially when they don’t deserve it (Ephesians 4:32). When put into practice, all of this can sometimes feel like self-abandonment, which is why some people don’t always advocate for this type of humility. And the truth is, it is a form of self-abandonment, because you are dying to your flesh; that’s exactly the point. But, there’s an important and significant difference between embodying this form of humility from your own will, out of a place of fear of rejection or people-pleasing versus embodying it as a response to a command from God. Doing something like this out of your own strength will almost always get you into holes you will struggle to get out of, so I don’t recommend it. But, when you are heeding the specific instruction of the Lord to engage in this type of humility there will be fruit produced from it; as you allow Him to be the one who sets your boundaries, telling you how much of yourself to give away and how much of yourself to keep, you will see that what you abandon in response to His command, will not outweigh what you gain from Him through your obedience, even if it may cause temporary emotional discomfort. The Bible says that when you come to Christ, your new life is hidden with Him in God (Colossians 3:2), so whatever you give up of your old self as an act of obedience to the Lord, will reveal the new version of yourself in the new spiritual life that you receive from Him. This is a tremendous gain. You can also trust that when God tells you to do something that feels counterproductive, Jeremiah 29:11 stands true, that the Lord your God has plans to prosper you and not to harm you. God spoke this when the Israelites were headed into 70 years of captivity in Babylon, and He’ll speak it again when He strips you of pride and tells you to tear down the emotional walls of defense you’ve built up in your life, without asking the Architect of your life how to build them. This may make you vulnerable and exposed to people who don’t deserve it and yet it will teach you through His strength, how to love them anyways. There might be some seasons of what feels like shrinking, but look forward to the fact that once you’ve learned what you needed to learn and done what you needed to do to embody the humble characteristics of Jesus Christ, then there’s a whole other version of humility to look forward to.

On the other side of the coin, humility can also look like David, the lowly and seemingly unimportant shepherd boy taking the position of King over Israel (1 Samuel 16), or Hadassah (Esther), the lower class Jewish girl taking the position of Queen in Persia to save the Israelites, or Moses, the adopted boy with a stutter, standing up to the Pharaoh of Egypt declaring the word’s of the Lord before Pharaoh, to let God’s people go.

When we look back at the first three examples of humility, they appear to depict the epitome of what the word is. The examples do reflect the essence of the word as it is defined in English; lack of arrogance in the ability to place the needs of others above your own, lack of pride in the ability to forgive others when they were wrong, and the lack of self-inflation and lack of concern for personal image, as the leader of a group gets down onto His knees and washes the feet of those who were supposed to be serving Him. Nothing is wrong with these acts. After all, it is what the Bible demonstrates as a righteous way to live, but if living with humility is a God-given command, then we can’t just pick and choose which side of the definition we are going to live out and which we are going to discard or write off as arrogance.

For example, the next three stories of David, Esther, and Moses don’t jump out as humble, in the way that we understand the word in English. The roles that they step into—kings, queens, and leaders of nations, are all roles that seem to take up a lot of space and to some, even imply inflated self-esteem, grandiosity, and pride. Young David was called arrogant by his own brother (1 Samuel 17:28) when he prepared to fight a giant 10 times his size with a slingshot, a stone, and no body armor; but that didn’t stop him, because David knew he could defeat Goliath, the giant, by the power and favor of the Lord. Esther could have been considered arrogant when she decided to enter the presence of her husband, the king, to plead for the lives of the Israelites, without first having been summoned by him. At that time, there was a death sentence for those who found themselves worthy enough to enter into the presence of the king without his permission, and on top of that, have the audacity to request something as well (Esther 4:11). But, through the grace and covering of God, Esther obeyed, putting her life at risk to approach the king, and yet found favor with him, ultimately being able to convince him to protect the lives of the Jewish people. As for Moses, who was he to think that he could go before the Pharaoh of Egypt, whose family Moses had been adopted into and that he eventually ran away from, and demand that Pharaoh let all of his Israelite slaves go? That takes a lot of audacity, boldness, and some might even call arrogance, but yet, he obeyed God and he was successful in his boldness because it glorified the Lord.

What these three individuals have in common, is that they each stepped into their positions, not because they lacked humility, but because they embodied it. They didn’t selfishly desire their positions for power and stature, and they didn’t carry out their tasks because they considered themselves as more important than anyone else. They did it all because they revered the Lord so much, that they owed it to Him to respond to His calling on their life with a fully submitted “yes,” no matter how big or how small the task was, no matter how much space it required them to take up or not. Through their acts of humility, they activated the fullness of who they were meant to be and carried out the intended purpose that God had for their lives. By submitting to the request of God, and being obedient, these individuals not only glorified the Lord, but they themselves became well known in Biblical history for their strength, courage, and faithfulness. This doesn’t mean that they did it for self exaltation or even that they were free from sin and perfect by any means; on the contrary, the Lord’s power was displayed through each of their weaknesses: David could only defeat Goliath with nothing but a slingshot and a rock, because of the sheer power of His faith in God, Esther only received favor with the king after dying to herself on a three-day fast with no food and water, making herself fully dependent on the Lord for the outcome, and Moses was only able to deliver the Israelites from Egypt despite his internal fears that he was unworthy due to his stutter, because God gave him the ability to do so. God gave him a staff that would show the power of God rather than simply speak it, raining curses over the land of Egypt. God was also kind enough to give Moses the support from his brother Aaron as a companion, to not have to walk out the calling alone. God used each of these people to not only glorify His name, but to also allow them to walk in full purpose and experience the miracles of God in real time as they humbled themselves before Him, offering themselves as vessels to be used, no matter the expense to their comfort. This is also humility.

When humility is described in a way that means to not over-inflate yourself, that can apply as much to being considerate of others around you as it can to being considerate of the God you serve. When you humble yourself before the Lord, it means that you acknowledge His supreme power over your life and the rest of creation. In that same frame of mind, if the Lord presents an assignment to you that might feel larger than you feel worthy of—maybe for you that’s publicly speaking about His gospel, becoming an entrepreneur that is building businesses that advance His kingdom, becoming an influencer in the marketplace whose purpose is to point people back to Jesus, or even becoming the president of an entire nation— when many would consider some of these assignments to be “self-serving” or “lacking in humility”, could you consider it instead to be the epitome of humility? Could you answer the call that God has on your life no matter how big or how small it might be? No matter how much space it might require you to take up? Because humility isn’t about shrinking, it’s about occupying no more and no less of the God-given space that you have been called to, whether that is a big space or a seemingly small space.

Yes, humility can look like selfless and servant leadership, killing your pride, and loving others as Christ loves the church. It can also look like stepping into the fullness of who you are in exactly the ways that God commands you to. The balance is found in listening to His specific instruction for every given situation in your life and readily responding to that instruction as the willing servant of Christ that you are. To deny God’s call when it seems too big for what you feel you can carry or handle, or even to deny it because it may seem beneath you, is to, in a sense, say that He is not the Lord over your life.

Imagine that you are the servant to a king and you take an oath to do all that the king asks of you, yet when he asks a simple task of you, to bring him a glass of water, you deny him. You refuse to complete the task, because you think that you are too good for the task and that you should instead be in charge of managing one of his territories with his people. That would be considered lacking humility, having a heart full of pride; it implies that you don’t care about the desires of the king that you swore an oath to. Now take that same situation, only this time the king actually is asking you to serve him by being the leader of one of his territories, ensuring the people in the land are kept in good spirits and are appeased with the king. Your responsibility is to tell the people about all the good works that the king is doing for the land and for the people, and to share vulnerably about how good the king has also been to you. However, instead of accept the task, you tell the king no, because you don’t feel worthy of such a great responsibility, in fact, you only feel worthy to serve him a glass of water. This would be a form of shrinking and unbeknownst to many of us who engage in this behavior, it is also a form of lacking in humility the same as the first scenario. How so? This denial creates a type of false humility, in which we think we are being modest in not reaching for the task of greater responsibility, but we are actually just masking the insecurity that we have in our own ability to properly serve the king and accomplish his intent. True humility, would submit to the King in any of His requests, because you consider Him as the Lord over your life and hold His words and commands in such high regard, trusting that if He chose you for a task, then He must trust you to do it. In embracing humility for all of its meaning, we have to understand that no matter where it is that God calls you to, you can trust that your King has your best interest in mind, so that you learn and grow from every task and that He also has an agenda for you to fulfill which is for the good of His entire kingdom, not just you. So, if He called you to a task, then trust that He will give you the tools and the resources necessary to carry it out and sustain you through it.

These two sides of humility can coexist the same way that the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God coexist in Jesus Christ. One side is gentle and meek and the other is a bold, courageous, powerhouse unleashed. Humility, when studied in its original form Anavah, wasn’t meant to make us feel smaller than everything in the world around us, but it was meant to help us understand that indeed, we are smaller than the God who is not just the Lord over our lives, but the creator of them, and therefore there is a need to submit to His commands, His will, and His purpose for us. Often times, His commands will lead us to selflessly serving others, many times when they don’t deserve it. This might make you feel small at times, but you can trust that if it is done at His instruction, then through the process, He is likely teaching you how to be rid of pride to help you avoid a downfall in your life that often follows a heart full of pride and arrogance (Proverbs 16:18). At other times, God’s purpose and calling on your life will often push you to step into a version of yourself that is more confident, more bold, more creative, and more uncomfortable than you’ve ever been, because it will show you that who you were really meant to be, in all the fullness and richness, could only ever be sustained and revealed by God, the One who created you. Through truly listening and responding to the instruction of God in your life, you will get to experience both sides of the coin of humility and that’s what keeps the harmonious balance between simultaneously refusing self-inflation and self-deprecation, which lands you somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, with a righteous heart before God.

Rabbi Michelle Pearlman and Rabbi Sharon Marsin put it beautifully in saying “…humility is not defined as being so humble that you disappear; rather, it is about having all of your character traits in balance so that the inner light of the soul shines pure and clear as originally intended.” The way that alignment is found between all of your traits, is through allowing God to direct you and lead you in exactly how to use and apply the traits that He has given you, ultimately allowing Him to use you as His vessel for His good works on this earth.

From an initial impression, the balancing act of humility can feel complex and complicated. The good news is that we aren’t the ones who really have to balance it, God is. We are just the ones that have to be submitted, surrendered, and willing to allow God to use us the way He needs to, daily. We do however, have to be careful to not let the world or our own minds and hearts sway us into thinking that we have to shrink smaller or take up more space; we only need to show up in the ways God is telling us to in any given season, because He has graced us to do so. That’s why as believers and followers of Christ, we must humble ourselves before the Lord daily, seeking His wisdom and guidance for how to face the world, the way that He intended us to. When God calls you to accomplish a task that seems beneath you, like washing the feet of your enemies, humble yourself and do it, even if it doesn’t feel fair; because God knows your heart, and there may be some pride in you that He needs to remove through such a process like that, or who knows, maybe He just wanted to use you to do a kind thing. And when God calls you to step out in great faith to accomplish a task that seems bigger than you, that feels impossible, maybe that’s never even been done before, you have to humble yourself to accept His task, believe that He is the God who can make it happen, and pray that He would strengthen you to show up as boldly as He needs you to, in any place that He sends you to, all because He is the Lord over your life. Even better than that, He is a Lord who loves you and wants the best for you.

I pray that this helped someone who is trying to understand the balance of humility, while fighting the urge to shrink or even the urge to give into selfish ambition. Remember, you were designed with purpose for a purpose, and God considers you as special, chosen, and as an important part of His plan, if you’ll just allow Him to use you. Show up this season in the ways that He is asking you to, no matter how it may appear to anyone else!

Sincerely,

Keliz W|W|W

What if the separation you’re experiencing is actually just a preparation for your next season?

Sometimes, God will allow seasons of separation that might feel painful to get us alone long enough with Him so that He can examine our hearts, heal our wounds, and purify us to be made holy and set apart to carry out His next assignment for us.

It’s time to stop fighting against the current of separation and instead let the waves carry you into the presence of God.

Sincerely,

Keliz • W|W|W

I made an Instagram post the other day that said, “I’ll never understand the way God can make you feel like the sun shines and the waves crash just for you.” That statement couldn’t be any more fitting for the season of life that I have been in, and that I feel many Christians have been in. Among all the beautiful things that God is doing in my life right now: giving me creative freedom and expression through Working While Wounded, releasing me into purpose, and filling me with so much unexplainable peace, there’s also been many waves crashing up against me all in the same breath.

My question is, what if the waves of life aren’t crashing against us, but instead they are crashing for us?

On July 4th, 2026, I had a vivid dream. I was in a city and there was massive flooding rushing through. It was like a tsunami; the waves were crashing against every building, and the water began rising to the rooftops. I remember being with my closest older sister, and we had to climb to one of the tallest rooftops before the water got to it. When we got to the top, there was a stage there for musical performers like a DJ. On the stage were two large, all-white, box-shaped speakers. We were both frightened, just waiting for the water to rise, because there was nowhere else to go. Eventually, the waves came rushing over the rooftop, and we both clung to one speaker each, using them as a flotation device. For a while, my sister and I floated next to each other, trying to stay together while still clinging to our own speakers. But then the waves started to pull us further apart, to where we could no longer hold onto each other. In the dream, I had a deep seated fear about being separated from her, but then I remembered that she had two of her own children that she needed to go and look for, so I realized that I had to stop trying to fight for us to stay together so that she could go and do what she needed to do for her children. Finally, I stopped fighting and I let her drift away. As I was letting go, I saw flashes of moments in my real life where I had been separated from people in different seasons: from relationships ending, to friendships fading, to moving across the ocean away from what was left of my family after the passing of my mother. Some separations were temporary and some were permanent, but God was teaching me something in all of them.

In every season of separation, whether I wanted the separation or not, God used it to make me completely reliant on Him. Often, He has used isolation seasons to get me alone with Him long enough to allow a deep healing to occur, and to hear His voice and instruction more clearly. Still, in every season of separation, it has also felt so lonely and sad at times; like it required grieving what once was.

Many times, I felt like isolation was caused by people not showing up for me, and even rejecting or abandoning me. That’s not to say I don’t take accountability for the roles I played in separation, but still, those are the feelings I dealt with from time to time, walking through separation. I know there’s plenty of us who have experienced similar feelings. If that is you, can I just say that God may have had a vastly different reason for your separation season, than what you might be interpreting? I will let the story of Joseph prove it.

In Genesis Chapter 37, we are introduced to the God-given dreams of Joseph, the son of Jacob whom God renamed “Israel”, because he wrestled with God. The Bible says that Joseph, was known to be loved by his father Israel more than any of the other sons, and that his brothers hated him because they knew this fact. As if that wasn’t bad enough, at 17 years old, Joseph begins to receive prophetic dreams that his 11 brothers would eventually bow down to him and he shares these dreams with his brothers, pouring salt into the preexisting wound of inadequacy. Some time later, Israel sends Joseph out to meet his brothers in the field to report back on how his brothers are doing, since they had been assigned to pasture the flocks. So, Joseph goes to meet his brothers, but before he could reach them, they plotted to kill him because of their hatred towards him. Thankfully, one of his brothers, Reuben, spoke up to say that they shouldn’t kill him, but instead told the rest to simply throw him into an empty pit, so that unknowingly to the rest, he could come back to save Joseph. So, when Joseph finally arrived, they stripped him and threw him into the empty pit in the field. Brutal.

Yet another of his brothers, Judah, had a bright idea; Judah proposed that rather than killing their brother, which brought them no value, they should instead pull him out of the pit and sell him to Ishmaelite travelers going to Egypt, so that he could be sold into slavery, because then at least they could gain a profit off of Joseph. Egregious.

So, they sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites, who then sold him to the Egyptians as a salve. All the while, the 11 brothers let their father and mother believe that Joseph had been devoured by a vicious and wild animal. Repulsive.

Joseph, now separated from his family in a land that he knows nothing about, becomes the slave of Potiphar, an officer of the Pharaoh of Egypt. In an unexpected turn of events, Joseph was blessed by the Lord and everything he did was made successful, so much so, that Potiphar entrusted his entire household to Joseph and gave him authority over all of his possessions. But, of course, here come the crashing waves. One day, Potiphar’s wife, who had caught eyes for Joseph, tried to seduce him to sleep with her. Now Joseph, being the righteous man of God that he was, denied her and ran away so fast that his robe fell off. Probably embarrassed, Potiphar’s wife made up a story that Joseph is the one who tried to sleep with her, and she had the robe to prove it! This eventually leads to Potiphar throwing Joseph into prison. A shame.

Now, separated from what was once considered success, Joseph sat in a prison cell wrongfully accused, and yet, the Lord was still with him. The Lord blessed Joseph so much in that season of separation, that the prison warden gave Joseph authority over all of the prisoners and everything that Joseph did was made successful. While in this position, because Joseph had the gift of interpreting dreams through God, he interpreted the dreams of one of Pharaoh’s cupbearers who was imprisoned at the time. Essentially, he interprets the dream to mean that in three days, the cupbearer would be released from prison and restored by Pharaoh back to his position of cupbearer. All Joseph asks for in return, is that the cupbearer will remember what he did for him, mention his name to Pharaoh, and ask Pharaoh to release Joseph from prison due to his innocence. Three days later, Pharaoh restored the cupbearer to his position, just as Joseph had spoken, but the cupbearer forgot about mentioning Joseph. Of course.

TWO years later, Pharaoh has a dream that needs to be interpreted, and it was then that the cupbearer told Pharaoh the story of how Joseph was able to precisely interpret his dream prior to being released from prison, so Pharaoh sent for Joseph. Convenient.

Long story short, Joseph was able to interpret Pharaoh’s dream to mean that there would be seven years of abundance in the land of Egypt, followed by seven years of famine. Joseph recommended to Pharaoh, that someone be appointed over the land to ensure food from the seven years of abundant harvest was properly stored and preserved for the seven years of expected famine, so that they could sustain themselves in the dry season. So, Pharaoh decides to appoint Joseph as his second in command over all of Egypt, and to see to it that this task was carried out.

Joseph is exalted in this time with no one outranking him in all the land except for Pharaoh. He is given all power and authority, a wife, and two sons whom he named Manasseh and Ephraim, meaning “God has made me forget all my hardship and my whole family” and “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

All of this brings us to the moment in which the famine occurred, which affected all of the surrounding regions near Egypt. In a true full-circle moment, when Joseph’s family hears that Egypt has grains that were stored up in a previous season and are now being sold to people, Israel sends 10 of his sons down to Egypt to buy grain. What they didn’t know, is that Joseph was the one in charge of selling all the grain. PLOT TWIST.

When the 10 sons arrive, they bow down in front of Joseph asking to buy grain. They did not recognize Joseph, but Joseph certainly recognized them and was harsh with them. He does not sell them the grain, but instead decides to imprison them for three days. But then, he has a change of heart. Because Joseph was a God fearing man, he tells one of the brother to remain in prison while the rest take grain back to their family, but must to return with the 11th brother. Joseph wept from the pain they had caused him as he sent them off, but even in his pain he was gracious enough to fill their sacks with grain and replaced the silver with which they purchased the grain back into their sacks so that the family could have provision. When the brothers return, their father Israel doesn’t want to lose anymore sons so he tells them not to go back. Eventually, they all run out of provisions and so their father has no choice but to send them back to Egypt for more grain. When the brothers go back this time, Joseph eventually reveals his identity to them. Joseph does something astonishing in this moment though—as he recounts how his brothers sold him into slavery, he makes a declaration that it was not them who sent him to Egypt, but it was God. Joseph believed that God had him go into Egypt ahead of the famine, to be positioned as a ruler over the land, so that he could store up the provisions that would eventually provide food for his family when the famine came. Joseph believed that God planted him in Egypt for that specific task and that specific purpose, never questioning why it had to be done the way that it was. Joseph simply believed that God used the circumstances in his life, and the seasons of separation as a way to prepare him for what God needed him to do.

Joseph in a complete God-given grace kind of moment, tells his brothers that there will be five more years of famine, but because of his position within the land of Egypt, he would give them and all of their families a place to rest near him in Egypt in the land of Goshen. He orders the brothers to reveal all of this to their father Israel, and to bring the entire family back to Egypt with them so that he can provide for them. And then he sends them off each with a kiss. When they return with their father and all of their descendants and livestock, there is a powerful moment of restoration and reconciliation between Joseph, his father, all of his brothers and their descendants. He introduces them to Pharaoh and because of Joseph’s favor with Pharaoh, the blessing is given for the family to have all that they need in the land of Goshen, and ultimately the family bows down in gratitude to Joseph for what he has done for them.

Even though the theme of Joseph’s life for many years was pain and separation, the dreams given to Joseph by God were true. It took many years to get to prosperity and to see the promise of God come to pass, but in every season of separation that caused him pain, God was with him, and he was shaping Joseph into the man that could carry the promises of God with the right heart posture.

I believe that when Joseph initially had the dreams of being a ruler over his family at 17, he was eager to share them with his siblings and because he was already the favorite child, there could have been this sense of arrogance or pride attached to trying to see that promise manifest. I don’t believe that God necessarily orchestrated the evil things that Joseph’s brothers did to him, but I do believe that He allowed it to pass knowing full well that God would be with Joseph wherever he went, and that in the process of what others meant for evil, God used those moments for good in Joseph’s life. Through those difficult seasons God rid Joseph of pride and taught him humility, faithful obedience, and compassion.

By the time that Joseph was declared a ruler over Egypt he had experienced so much in life that could have made him bitter, and for a moment he almost let his experiences harden his heart against his family when they returned to ask him for a favor. But because his faith was in God, because God had shown up for him, provided for him, and restored him to fruitfulness after enduring refinement, Joseph had mercy on them. Joseph had developed a heart like Jesus through his seasons of suffering that created compassion, humility, and grace rather than bitterness. That is something only the power of God can do in our hearts.

I love this story because of the example that it sets to change the way that we see our seasons of trial, tribulation, and especially separation, by looking at them instead as seasons of preparation for all that God has in store for us. It also shows the Lord to be a restoring, compassionate, and loving God who cares about the promises He has spoken over our life, just as much as He cares about making us into the person we need to become in order to faithfully carry them.

In my own recent season of separation from a nearly three-year long romantic relationship, my ex-boyfriend and I decided to take a break. Initially it was only going to be for one week, but one week turned into two, and two into four. Over the course of that separation I was highly uncomfortable, because what I didn’t understand was the depth of my anxious attachment that I had developed in the midst of that relationship. There were time during that break that I felt so frustrated that we didn’t talk for so long, that I just wanted to text and say “I’m done.” But, whenever I asked God if I could break off the relationship, He would tell me to stay put in the silence. So, I obeyed, but what I experienced in the silence was far from anything peaceful. It was filled with anxious thoughts about the future and unbearable feelings of abandonment, unfairness, disregard, etc. If you name it, I probably felt it.

The one thing that God kept speaking to me through that situation, was Philippians 2:3 “consider others as more important than yourselves.” Reluctantly, instead of reaching out and fighting for the conversation I desperately felt I needed to have, I settled into the space to honor what my ex needed in that moment, which was space. Yes, it felt unfair—and after four weeks of crying all the tears that I could cry and thinking all the negative thoughts that I could think, I found myself face down on the floor asking God for help because I knew there was something bigger at play; space shouldn’t cause this much pain. Little did I know, being face down in front of the Lord would be His instructions for me in the next season I would walk into, assuming a posture of complete submission.

One memory that God brought me back to in that moment of pleading to Him, was an experience I had with my father as a little girl. My parents were split up and my mom had remarried. One day, I made a birthday card for my step-father, and inside it read “Happy Birthday Dad!” I put a lot of effort into creating the card by hand and I showed it to my dad while he was dropping me back off to my mom’s house; his reaction was the opposite of what I expected as a ten year old girl. Instead of him thinking I was so creative and kind, he became emotionally cold and I think was really hurt by the fact that I had called my step-father “dad.” As an adult I can only imagine what he was experiencing in that moment—maybe a version of his own fear of rejection and abandonment coming from the worry of being replaced as “dad.” It’s no secret that my father has struggled with emotional regulation and has had to grow into that as he’s gotten older, but haven’t many of us? I’m not saying that his reaction was right, but I am saying that I can empathize with what he might have felt.

As I noticed his response—the coldness, the emotional shut down, I knew that something I said or did had hurt him, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I jumped out of the car and he drove off without saying much. I wouldn’t hear from him for about a week after that. I spent what felt like every day trying to call, text, and leave voicemails just wanting to talk and smooth things over. The space and the silence had become so painful, that one day, I was lying on the floor trying to call again, but I was sent to voicemail; I immediately burst into tears with my face in the ground wondering why he stopped loving me, why he didn’t want to talk to me anymore, holding so much grief and guilt in my little heart, for what I said or did that could have had such a detrimental effect on him. That is the memory that God took me to, in my most recent season of silence and separation. And now I know, that God led me into that season so that He could expose the deeper, underlying issue of that decade old wound which kept rearing it’s ugly head in the form of anxious attachment, plaguing many of my relationships with men over the years. To be clear, this wasn’t the only thing that contributed to my development of this attachment style, but I believe it is the very first that I can remember. Even so, God is the God of restoration and I praise Him for strengthening my relationship with my father over the years!

However, because this particular wound hadn’t properly healed, it kept reopening in different situations in my life. And in this most recent experience, I knew then that God told me I couldn’t move from the uncomfortable space that caused it to pop up again, because in order to heal it, He had to expose the root of it. So I sat in the uncomfortable.

But I didn’t just sit—In my free time I worshipped, I kept going to church, I filled my time with sermons online, I opened up to safe community, I stayed in therapy, and most importantly I prayed. I prayed that God would heal my wounds, I prayed that He would deliver me from that anxiety, and that when he delivered me, that He would fill the space in me with the fruits of His spirit. And that’s how I got through that season of separation and how I came to a place of deeper healing and peace in the silence.

About a month later, after being pretty drained from all the healing I had been doing, I finally felt like I came to a point of recovery and rest with the Lord. I woke up one day with lyrics from Maverick City Music’s song, The Story I’ll Tell, playing in my head. I kept singing “all that is left is highest praises. So sing hallelujah, to the Rock of Ages.” Those words perfectly explained what I was experiencing; that after throwing every temper tantrum I could throw in the presence of the Lord and after I had fought against giving the space but eventually obeyed the Lord in the command of Philippians 2:3, I had finally exhausted and emptied myself. I was so emptied of myself, that it felt like I had nothing left except praise for the Lord because of what He was exposing in me that still needed to be healed and because He was actually using the thing that I did not want, separation, to heal it. And somehow, in all of that, separation went from being a thing I despised, to a thing I welcomed.

I realized in this process that anxiety will make you to cling to everything other than God, thinking that you need to make sure you have a solid grip on every aspect of your life, to ensure that you can control the out come. But, anxiety is an attack on your mind and a lie from the enemy. It tells you that you need to be in control, which would then mean that you have to refuse to allow God to be in control. All this time, God was asking me to open my hands, to loosen my grip, and to willingly give Him back the control of the relationship, of my life, and of all of my decisions, because He wanted me to trust that He had my best interest in mind. When I finally surrendered it all to him, both the pain from my past and the pain from my present, it was like I could breathe again. Jesus gave me His peace that surpasses all understanding, in the midst of things feeling like they were falling apart.

As I was starting to truly feel more rooted in God than the relationship, at the 6-week mark of separation, still my boyfriend at the time, and I, decided to go separate ways. Just because I surrendered it, didn’t mean that God had to give it back. I always say that if God calls you to release something He will either restore it better than it was before or replace it with something better. So, I held onto this thought process through the break up. But I have to admit that it felt so strange, that God told me I couldn’t walk away, yet God was telling him to let me go and to not get in the way of my relationship with the Lord. I thought that because I was obedient, that God would make sure we stayed together and that this time it would be healthier, because the wound that I couldn’t clearly see before had finally healed. But God had other plans. I still can’t fully grasp it, but I know that in the initial separation, God prepared me to be able to release the relationship, by removing my anxious need to cling to it. He gave me the peace, the security, and the comfort in His plan for my life to be able to calmly, gently, and lovingly agree to walking away from the relationship without blame, feelings of guilt, anger, or a sinful attitude. That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt to walk away, it just means God gave me the strength to do it despite the pain. And today, I cling to the promise of Jeremiah 29:11, that God knows the plans He has for our lives, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us a future and a hope.

This is just one of the more recent examples of how God has used separation in my life to shape me, heal me, and mold me into a version of myself that looks more like Jesus and more like the person that He created me to be before the world got its hooks into me. It does suck that stepping into this new version of myself feels like it comes at the cost of my comfort, but there’s a God side to every painful situation. My God side in this situation is that during the fifth week of the relationship break, just before it became an official break up, God revealed Working While Wounded to me as a part of finally stepping into my purpose and calling. He knew there was an old version of myself that needed to be shed before I could pursue that though, so the break up was just a part of the process that I had to go through to shed it. The Podcast assignment was a huge blessing because not only was it an answered prayer from over 2 years ago, but it was also something that allowed me to occupy myself more with Jesus than with concerns about the things that I was going through at the time. That’s not to say it was a distraction to not face my situation, but rather it was an opportunity to invite God into the middle of what I was going through, and focus on producing pain into God-given purpose that promoted healing—the very thing I needed in that moment. With God as my anchor, I walked through hurt and loss that didn’t defeat me, because I still had Jesus, purpose, and calling. I think it can be easy for many of us to lose sight of ourselves in things like relationships and careers, and so when, or if those things come to an end, it leaves us feeling hopeless, like we’ve lost the very things that once fueled us.

That is exactly why it’s so important to allow God to be our source and our fuel, and to build our identity on He who is the Rock and in who He says we are; not in who we think we are because of the titles that may be attached to our names, whether that be wife, boss, friend, sister, brother, girlfriend, athlete, superstar, employee, etc. We must be rooted in our God-given identity and anchored in our God-given purpose in order to survive the storms of life.

The beautiful thing about the Great Wave of Separation dream that I had and the paralleled break up that I was going through, is how the Lord made me feel like the waves weren’t crashing against me, but that they were crashing for me. The waves were causing separation in my life so that I could find myself solely dependent on the voice of the Lord, allowing Him to heal me in ways I would have never given Him the opportunity to when I was so busy worrying about making relationships work, being the best at my job, and clinging to everything other than Him. When I was too consumed with my own life, I wasn’t giving God a minute to show me the results of His examination of my heart, so that He could heal me. I didn’t understand how critical that healing was for the next season He wanted to launch me into, until He sat me down, in true Fatherly fashion, so that I could listen.

The Holy Spirit revealed to me later on, that the all-white speakers from the dream that my sister and I were both floating on, were representative of the sound of God’s voice being echoed into our lives. Sometimes, God’s voice will lead you away from people you love, and you may not understand why. Like Joseph, separation may happen in the brutal form of sibling betrayal or it may happen in the form of a mutual break up. Regardless of the circumstances, God wants you to know that He is with you whenever the waves of separation come crashing in, and the way to stay anchored in the storm is by clinging to the sound of His voice. In situations where others may be led away from you by the voice of God, allow them to follow His voice without shame and without guilt. If His instruction to either of you is to separate from each other, then you must not stand in the way of that. God has a purpose and a plan for every single person in this world, and yes, many times that purpose and plan is bigger than our own feelings on any given situation. We may not like His plan, but our job isn’t always to like it or even understand it, it is simply to trust that He has our best interest in mind and to be obedient in going along with His plan.

A word of encouragement for those walking through a similar season—If God is allowing the Great Wave of Separation to wash over your life, the best thing you can do for yourself is not fight against the current, tiring yourself out. Instead, let the wave carry you into the presence of God, because that’s what it looks like when the wave is crashing for you, bringing you into a space more deeply connected to the Lord. To be made holy, is to be made set apart, distinctly separated, from your surroundings. It is time to let the Lord “separate the chaff from the wheat” as we see in Matthew 3:12. I know it might feel painful and it might even feel unfair, but if your prayer at any point in life has been to be made more like Jesus and to be set apart for God’s will, then trust that His process will produce that version of you. Take comfort in knowing that there is purpose and a great calling attached to the version of you that He produces, not the one you tried to produce yourself.

Stay faithful, stay obedient, stay pursuing your purpose — even when it hurts.

Sincerely,

Keliz W|W|W

God knows every seam in the fiber of your being, the number of every hair on your head, and every detail of the plan that He has for your life. So, trust the Great Designer with all of your heart. He knit you together in your mother’s womb and left no detail of who He called you to be to chance or happenstance. He is a God of detail, and He is inviting you in to see the full glory of His artwork, that is you!

Visual I. My 2024 Vision Board

Visual II. The Official W|W|W Logo

Visual III. The Initial W|W|W Logo

Visual IV. The W|W|W Core Brand Palette

Visual V. GUBA

Visual VI. GUBA (The Mantle Coat)

Note: Working While Wounded is also shot in video format for separate platforms, so occasionally, there will be references to visuals throughout the podcast. I will always do my best to ensure all visuals are captured at the end of every entry, so that the listening community has the option to view the images for context!

Mantles Past and Present: What Mantles Are and How They Work? by Roberts Liardon

What Are Mantles? How to Recognize the Transfer of God’s Anointing by Roberts Liardon

Guba Family History

Guba (The Mantle Coat) Photo

Subscribe now

Can we talk about God being in the D.E.T.A.I.L.S for a minute!?

When I first heard God whisper, “Working While Wounded. This is the name of your Podcast. It has oil over it. It is a healing ministry,” I was in disbelief. I had just spent the entire month of June feeling rag-dolled by the deep healing and refinement process that the Lord loves to bless us with. So, on July 1st, 2026, during my midnight prayer hour, when God put me on divine assignment to start the Working While Wounded Podcast (which has now evolved into a digital community), I was surprised to say the least. I wasn’t asking him for it in that moment. He just dropped it into my spirit, so naturally I jotted it into my journal.

But how like God is it, to have me reflect back to two years ago. After rummaging through that one memory box with old notebooks and birthday cards, full of nostalgia, you know the one…I sat staring at my 2024 vision board. Right off of the edge, I saw two cute little blocks of a magazine paper cutouts that read “PODCAST” and right next to that it said “I HEALED.” I laughed, because around that time, a podcast was something that I originally thought about doing with my cousin, more like sister; but we lived an ocean apart, we were both busy adulting, and honestly, come on, the market was already completely saturated with podcasts. Long story short, it wasn’t something that was on my radar at all.

Then I thought about how in January of 2025, the Lord called me away from my military career to do…well, actually He never told me what exactly. All He said was “Submit your packet [to get out of the military], now.” So, after a month of tussling back and forward with Him, because I am NOT the kind of person that likes doing anything without a plan A to Z, He obviously won and I obeyed. And now, here I am, writing this blog entry with a whole lot more time on my hands and exactly 45 days until I am officially a civilian worker again. Apparently though, God has decided to fill all this new found time with the W|W|W assignment. And to tell you the truth, it’s scary—and yet, I am excited for it at the same time.

The night He told me the name of W|W|W, I saw it visually before it was ever physically anything. I saw “WORKING while WOUNDED”and specifically, I saw “while” written in cursive, but “WORKING and WOUNDED” written in bold letters, hence the logo. The wording is exactly how I pictured it when the Lord showed me the name of Working While Wounded. It was a primarily bold font with a cursive accent, which I think fits the brand perfectly. The emphasis is on working to serve out your God-given purpose WHILE you’re wounded, not after you’ve healed, because healing from God comes as you go. And make no mistake, He is Jehovah Rapha, The Lord Who Heals!

Now, I am laughing again, because after I was done journaling all that God was telling me about W|W|W, I immediately went to funzie branding ideas—I’m talking going crazy creating logos from Pinterest and CapCut with dots, stripes, and no color scheme whatsoever, just thankfully no stars. I felt like I was 12 again, and my midnight creativity was running wild. The cringey part is that I actually used the midnight-frenzy logo mockups as my first profile picture and banner on YouTube.

I had no idea where I was going with that, I just knew I was going somewhere. Even though I’m a little embarrassed, it was so fun tapping into a child like creativity. As I continued to seek God more on what W|W|W was supposed to be, I thought to myself that I couldn’t try to build something intentional, that communicates alignment, while having all these wild, insignificant, and mixed-matched patterned prints; at least not for this assignment. I think the Lord was just letting me have my fun, which I really appreciated. But, at the end of the day W|W|W is His community, and I am just the person allowed to steward it. So, as the week went on, I continued leaning into what God envisioned for W|W|W; not just the graphics, but the voice, the presence it creates, how it makes others feel, does it scream or does it invite? Those questions started shaping the details, and they became important. I worked all week on it and eventually, with the help of God, AI, and Canva, W|W|W settled into an established branding kit—a part of which was the core brand palette.

My personal favorites are Mustard Seed, Wine of the Covenant, Covenant Olive, and Risen Linen. They are so warm and inviting, but the best part is they tell an intentional story that points back to Jesus.

Mustard Seed: In Matthew 17:20, Jesus tells His disciples “For truly I tell you, if you have the faith of a Mustard Seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Working While Wounded is exactly the result of my mustard seed sized faith in this season. God spoke a word to me about it, and I have decided to have just enough faith to act on that word, and see what He spoke come to pass. Everything in the start up season is slow, the building process can take a long time, and so, it’s hard not to lose heart in what God said is true, but this is my attempt to have faith in His word.

Wine of the Covenant: In Luke 22:20, at the last supper with His disciples, before His death, Jesus told them with glasses full of wine, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” How precious a reminder to know that God sealed His covenant to us through sending Jesus, His son, to sacrifice Himself for us and cover our sins with His blood, which still works and is still healing and covering us today. It reminds me that my freedom and my life were bought with a high price, and so I only want to honor the one who set me free.

Covenant Olive: This one is special. It takes me back to Jesus in Gethsemane in Mark 14:32. Where just before His crucifixion He was in the Garden praying to God for relief in the assignment that He was given to sacrifice Himself for humanity. He was under extreme pressure and yet He still remained obedient to God’s will and what flowed from that decision of obedience was not only the precious blood, but also the anointed oil. I write in depth about my experience with a pressing season in my previous entry, GETHSEMANE: The Place of Pressing. Specifically, I write about how W|W|W is also a result of my spirit overflowing with oil, because of how merciful Jesus is, even during the painful, pressing seasons.

Risen Linen: This is sentimental because it is a reminder that this life is not our final inheritance; that through what Jesus did, we can live in eternity with God in the Kingdom of Heaven, when this life passes away. In Matthew 27:59, it says that after Jesus’s death, “Joseph took the body, wrapped it in clean, fine linen, and placed it in His new tomb.” 3 days later at Jesus’s tomb, in Matthew 28:7, an angel of the Lord told Jesus’s disciple, Mary Magdalene, “I know you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is not here. For He has risen, just as He said.” After Jesus endured the pressing season and completed His assignment, He was resurrected and given new life in eternity. That’s also a promise that we get to hold onto. When we die, there is a place that we can go, where we live in this same joyous eternity with God, but it is our decision to make.

When I look at all the detail wrapped up in W|W|W, I fall in love with Jesus all over again, and I pray that it would be a community that causes others to fall in love with Him the same way. I didn’t know branding could be so much fun and tell such a story, until I decided to let God lead the design. God was down into the details of every color and every text font in the logo.

Okay, now I’m laughing REALLY HARD, because as I was thinking about all of this branding: the warm tones, the voice of W|W|W, and all things concept, the Holy Spirit reminded me of another cringey memory, but this time from three years ago (insert eye-roll because the Holy Spirit thinks it’s funny for making me bring this up). Everyone meet, GUBA. Yeah, you can laugh, because WHAT DID SHE JUST SAY!?

Ya’ll, I’m actually so embarrased of this one, because what was I thinking? But, let me explain. In 2023, I was going through a lot of therapy, because my mom passed away in 2021 (you can read the About Me post on any of my platforms for more backstory on me). At some point, I had gotten to a place in my healing journey where I thought I wanted to share it with the general public?? I don’t know, I guess I had this concept that I wanted raw, open, honest, and transparent conversations about dealing with grief, trauma, and the journey of finding your way back to yourself. My immediate action for this was to make an instagram account (L.O.L). The above image was my logo, but that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that I was digitally putting this logo on hoodies, fanny packs, socks, and literally trying to make something out of nothing. Like, girl…not to mention the NAME—GUBA!? HELLO? Who in their right mind is gonna wear that!? Also, who, what, where, when, why, and how did I even come up with that?

Well, the term GUBA was based off of the concept that on this page, I wanted to talk all things life, trauma, growth, and healing (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, The Abundant). In fact, I wanted this to work so bad, that when the acronym didn’t make sense as GBUA, I had a minor moment of dyslexia, and came up with GUBA, because I thought it flowed better. So, then I just started drawing it, and I still, to this day, can’t believe I actually made a post. Thank God I didn’t follow anyone I know, because they would have been like, “BLOCK.” All joking aside, let me tell you how the LORD showed up in a massive way, even in this goofy moment that I had completely forgotten about.

Thankfully, God did not allow GUBA to make it past that one instagram post, because truthfully, I believe that if He did, I probably would have been doing a lot more bleeding on the internet than pouring oil on it, which wouldn’t have been fun for any of us. Fast forward to 2025, two years after I was re-baptized, the Lord spoke to me for the very first time, about what I believe was the very beginning of W|W|W. By this time, I had been praying for a couple of years that God would heal me from my trauma wounds, but I was also consistently asking Him to use me as a vessel for His good work. Never truly feeling worthy of a calling, I kept praying, but I wasn’t actively pursuing it until 2025. So, as I began to more deeply seek the Lord, He revealed Himself to me in new ways.

First, he took me through a series of tests in obedience. He asked me to set down a situationship that I was in at the time, but I really didn’t want to do it, because I thought it was the worst possible timing that He could have had to ask me to give that up. The guy that I was talking to, had finally just decided that he wanted to make our situation a committed relationship. In retrospect, God was right and it was the best choice I could have made. And it ended up being a set up for the next bigger act of obedience He would ask of me: to leave my career in the military. Then, a few months later, He asked me to make more time for Him, to go and serve in His house, which meant one of my favorite hobbies had to go. And there were plenty of other requests, but those were the biggest. All that to say, in a season of what felt like losing, was really God producing a willingness in me to submit and to trust Him with each decision, no matter what it felt like it cost in the moment. With each act of obedience His voice got clearer. It was like I could be in the Bible for days, fasting for days, worshipping for days and not grow weary. But, then I got into a spiritual lull around April 2025, all the way until June. In June 2025, I attended Shantia Dajah’s First Class Summit Women’s Conference, and the Lord completely revived my spirit and spoke an unexpected word to me at the very end of the conference, during the closing prayer. The last page of my journal for that season reads “Healing is your mantle.”

That is what He spoke to me one year ago, and I was simply, confused. The only time I had heard the word mantle before, was whenever my mom told us to put something on the mantle (a shelf-like structure) in the entry way of our house. So again, confused, because, “what do you mean a piece of furniture is my calling, God?” I also felt like I hadn’t been hearing the Lord talk much in those few passing months of 2025. But, during the conference (the whole 4-hours), I was asking God to speak; to break the silence. And in one small moment at the end, finally I heard something. And all I could think to myself after the fact was, “what’s a mantle?”

From that day on, I began my research on mantles, because, seek and you will find (Matthew 7:7), always seeking first the Kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33). As I am researching, I find a surprising amount of data on mantles; a sermon specifically about healing mantles, another article about the healing mantle, which then led me to a book, Mantles Past and Present: What Mantles Are and How They Work. I later realized that these were all products of the same person, Roberts Liardon, and the dots had finally connected. Liardon’s book, Mantles Past and Present: What Mantles Are and How They Work, talks specifically about the healing mantle that has been prevalent and passed down in America. This particularly peaked my interest, because of the specifics of what God spoke to me.  

I want to pause here and emphasize that I’m not saying I carry the great healing mantle in America, nor am I calling myself a prophet, a pastor, a preacher, or anything of that degree. In full transparency, those titles come with the type of heavy spiritual warfare that I don’t even want to know anything about right now. So, all that I am explaining here, is what I believe God spoke to me about what He has placed on my life and what I came to understand about mantles. By no means am I an expert in anything that I am writing, so as always, take it all back to the Lord in your prayer time, as you see fit.

So, let’s get into what I learned about mantles. What are they actually? In my handy dandy research, it all circled back to the book of 1 Kings, where Elijah’s prophetic mantle was spoken about. In verse 19:19, under the paragraph titled “The Call of Elisha”, whom God commanded Elijah to anoint as his prophetic successor, the verse says,

“So Elijah went and found Elisha son of Shaphat plowing a field. There were twelve teams of oxen in the field, and Elisha was plowing with the twelfth team. Elijah walked by him and threw his mantle over him. Elisha left the oxen, ran to follow Elijah, and said “Please let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.”

This specific mantle was symbolic of the divine calling on Elijah’s life. Elijah is often remembered as one of the greatest prophets of his time, with one of his famous acts being calling down fire from heaven to glorify the Lord’s name. His mantle was both a spiritual covering and gifting from the Lord, but in the physical it was an outer cloak or garment that was typically worn to protect people from the outside elements, such as weather.

In the Harrison House article, What Are Mantles? How to Recognize the Transfer of God’s Anointing, by Roberts Liardon, which the Holy Spirit led me to during my research,Liardon describes the mantle as a “supernatural ‘cloak´ that God places on a person of His choosing to accomplish a task of significant importance” and when the mantle is passed from one person to the next, it is described as “the transfer of God’s anointing”.

Although a mantle is described as a physical piece of clothing, the divine transfer of it happens in the spirit realm and is more closely understood as the passing of a divine assignment from one chosen person to the next. In 2 Kings Chapter 2, the time is coming where Elijah’s work on the earth will be complete and he will allow Elisha to take over his prophetic position in his place, as God commanded. So, Elisha, after following Elijah for several years, asks Elijah in 2 Kings 2:9 “Please, let me inherit two shares of your spirit.” A few verses later, Elijah is taken up into heaven by God. Then, in 2 Kings 2:13, it says “When [Elisha] could see [Elijah] no longer, he took hold of his own clothes, tore them in two, and picked up the mantle that had fallen off Elijah,” meaning that he assumed the role that Elijah had left behind. Liardon describes what happened with Elijah, Elisha, and this transferring of the mantle as “simply a natural manifestation of a spiritual reality” (What Are Mantles? How to Recognize the Transfer of God’s Anointing, by Roberts Liardon).

I like to believe that God had that encounter described in detail, not so that we could all be running around looking for a magic prophetic coat, but instead so that we could actually conceptualize and understand the transfer of a mantle. It’s also important to note here, that in 1 Kings, God told Elijah that Elisha would be his successor, but it was not instant. Some estimate that the time between Elijah initially throwing his mantle on Elisha and Elisha actually picking up Elijah’s mantle after he had been taken up into Heaven, to be about 10 years. And to be more clear, that was about 10 years of Elisha choosing to follow Elijah; to learn from him, to understand how to steward the mantle, and to learn how to actively pursue it, by asking for it in the form of receiving a double portion of Elijah’s spirit when he departed.

One way that Liardon described the mantle was as “a loose, sleeveless garment, cloak, or shawl similar to a cape or a wrap, that a person wears to protect from the outside elements” (What Are Mantles? How to Recognize the Transfer of God’s Anointing, by Roberts Liardon). I have often seen Elijah’s mantle depicted as a red cape like garment in paintings. However, upon more research I have also seen it described as a large, loose fitting, outer-garment made with materials like heavy wool, coarse animal hair, or sheepskin—which made a lot of sense to me, given that it was typically worn to protect from outside elements and for warmth in colder weather.

You might be asking why this understanding of the physical description of a mantle was so fascinating to me, given that its symbolism is more spiritual than anything. So, here’s how God tied it all into GUBA. Yeah, we’re back to the weird name.

Clearly, GUBA sounded like nothing but baby babble when I made it up. But, as God would have it, about a month ago, I got a nudge from the Holy Spirit to look up what GUBA means. I came across different definitions, from geographic regions, to meals, to non-profit organizations, but one stopped me. On family search.org it showed Guba as a surname derived from the “Hungarian (and Slovak dialect) guba ‘overcoat made of coarse cloth¨” (Guba Family History | Family Search). Now you just know, when I saw that matching up with what I had discovered about mantles, I kept digging. I found more books and articles about the traditional Hungarian Guba worn by shepherds and craftsmen long ago, and then I found pictures! You might laugh (I know I did), because when I typed in GUBA in terms of a coat, to look at google images, this is what came up:

After a good laugh, I began to notice the details. The wool, the sleeveless overcoat, the surroundings, the sheep. Then I started to recognize that this man is probably a shepherd of his flock and the coat he has on is what he is wearing in the harsh field conditions for protection. In other words, this man is wearing a mantle, also known as a Guba (or Suba in different coat variations).

As you can imagine, I’m a little mind blown by this point. When I first had the idea for GUBA, there was something of substance that I wanted to get out of it, but the coat didn’t quite fit in that season, and it wasn’t tailored for the person I was at that time. But now, years later, God is revealing more to me about this mantle He has placed on my life for healing. And no, I still don’t know what that is fully. I don’t know if He’s talking physical healing, emotional healing, or both. I can only imagine that He wants to both heal me personally and also use me as a vessel to help lead others back to Him for deep healing.

For me, the point is that if I understand what I read from the story of Elijah and Elisha, then I know that, even though God spoke it, I myself must still be willing and ready to pursue it actively; not just passively wait for it to come to me. And because I know that faith without works is dead (James 2:17), then as I meditate on the word that God spoke, I must also cultivate my faith in believing His word, by actively working to seek Him, seek the purpose He has for me, and allow Him the space in my life to bring forth the fruit from the seeds that He has planted in me long ago, which are only starting to sprout just now.

In this season, I have a greater understanding that even back when GUBA was a wild, one-off idea, God was planting a seed for what He would later reveal to me as a mantle, carrying healing. This would eventually become Working While Wounded, the platform used to steward the mantle’s intended purpose. All the while, in the waiting, I, the person behind it, was being shaped, refined, and prepared in my spirit, through development of my faith and character, to help see the mantle through, but more importantly, to be willing and ready to pick it up when the time is right.

Three years ago, I couldn’t exactly see what God was doing, but through the continuous pursuit of Him, He gave me eyes to see. This whole time, He was intricately weaving together this coat, this mantle, this garment of protection for me to wear, as I carried out His purpose to help shepherd His flock back home to Him. I am in awe every single time I think about this, because it’s not a light task, nor am I worthy of the calling. It feels like a heavy burden of trust, yet it’s one I am excited to surrender to Him so that His power can do all of its work through me.

Two things we know:

1. God loves an underdog.

2. God knit us together in our mothers’ womb (Psalms 139:19).

When I think of the first point, I think that when GUBA plopped into my head, it was specific. The word that came to mind wasn’t Suba, which is the other version of the Hungarian fur coat, that has nice embroidery on one side and fur on the other, often worn during festivals (Suba | MetMuseum). What strategically was placed into my head was GUBA, the coat of straight matted wool, worn primarily by workers and shepherds of the field; the poorer kind, the ones filled with humility and integrity. This reminds me of King David. God anointed David, who was not only a shepherd boy, but also the youngest of all of his brothers, to become King in place of Saul (1 Samuel 16). The bible says that God specifically described David, even with his many transgressions years later into his life, as “a man after [God’s] own heart, who will carry out all [of God’s] will” (Acts 13:22). So yes, God loves the underdog, the humble worker, the one everybody counted out.

Jesus says in Matthew 9:27 that the “harvest is great [which is in reference to people coming back to Christ], but the workers are few.” So, how rich is it to be given something that symbolizes work in the Lord’s great field, for His great harvest? And as for the second point, God knit us together knowing His plans for us before we even breathed our first breath.

So for me, this tasking from God wasn’t a happy accident that I stumbled upon, even though it felt random at the time it was revealed. What I thought the Lord had just started knitting together three years ago, He had actually been knitting together since before time even existed for me. And the same is true for you.

Maybe you don’t know if God has something for you, but I believe He has a plan for every single one of His children, and maybe He is just waiting for them to ask what that is. Remember, I was praying for purpose and to be used as a vessel for years before He actually said anything about it. It didn’t make my purpose any less real, just because it hadn’t shown up yet. Maybe there’s something you’ve been scared to ask the Lord about in regard to what He has in store for your life or if He has anything in store for you at all. I’m here to tell you don’t be scared, because all of us who exist today, were created for such a time as this (Esther 4:14). So, if there’s any time to starting seeking your “why” for being here, it’s now.

I hope you enjoy this take on GUBA, Mantles, and how it all led up to the formation of Working While Wounded. I pray that a seed was planted on the good soil of your heart today through this message—that you receive a deep knowing, that God has a plan for you, a plan to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). I pray that as you seek Him in that plan, He will not only reveal all things to you in their time, but will accomplish them quickly in their time (Isaiah 60:22). I encourage you all to never stop seeking Him and His kingdom. To God be the glory.

Sincerely,

Keliz • W|W|W

Here’s a little secret that I recently learned after walking through a season of pressure from all sides: It usually means God is trying to produce something special through you.

If you are in a place of deep discomfort, feeling heavy and like favor is working against you, yet you’re holding on to hope for the promises that God made you, I’m right there with you. Take a listen to this podcast entry as I rehash my article, GETHSEMANE: The Place of Pressing. In this podcast entry, we talk about real-life struggles, worries, and concerns, and also how to stay postured at Jesus’s feet during those moments. We reflect on how Jesus dealt with the pressure of self-sacrifice in the Garden of Gethsemane, or “Oil Press”, moments leading up to being betrayed by his disciple Rudas, oops, I mean, Judas Iscariot, who handed him over to the Pharisees and Roman officials to be crucified; more importantly, to fulfill the promise of salvation for you and me.

All that Working While Wounded is and all that it will become is a result of the work of God. I am just the person that He entrusted this community to, after undergoing a long season of pressing and preparing. I believe this community is special and that God is going to move through it. Thank you for being a part of the Working While Wounded community. Together, I hope to build a space to support one another in chasing after God and His purpose for our lives, through sharing testimonies, wisdom in Scripture, and having honest conversations about what this walk with Jesus is really like. I hope you enjoy watching, listening, or reading this entry and I pray this word blesses you as much as it did me.

Sincerely,

Keliz

Visual I. Overflow

Note: Working While Wounded is also shot in video format for separate platforms, so occasionally, there will be references to visuals throughout the podcast. I will always do my best to ensure all visuals are captured at the end of every entry, so that the listening community has the option to view the images for context!

Subscribe now

Jesus never promised that following Him would make life easy, but He did promise peace, rest, healing and His presence in every step. Jesus invites the weary and burdened to come to Him—not after life is put back together, but right in the middle of it falling apart. That’s where I discovered the deepest peace of my life. It wasn’t when my circumstances changed; it was when Christ met me in them. He taught me to trust Him, strengthened my faith, and showed me how to turn pain into purpose through surrender and obedience, even while I was still healing—even when it hurt. Working While Wounded builds community centered on Scripture, testimony, and honest conversations about what it really means to follow Jesus. Together, we explore the stewardship of faith, obedience, and God’s purpose for our lives—especially through life’s painful seasons.

—
I’m Keliz White and this is W|W|W.

The mission is simple:
Encourage faith.
Inspire obedience.
Walk in purpose.

Let’s get to work.

Matthew 11:28 | 28:19–20

Visual I. My 2024 Vision Board

Visual II. The Microphone of My Dreams

Note: Working While Wounded is also shot in video format for separate platforms, so occasionally, there will be references to visuals throughout the podcast. I will always do my best to ensure all visuals are captured at the end of every entry, so that the listening community has the option to view the images for context!

Subscribe now

Welcome to Working While Wounded!

I’m so glad you’re here 🤍

Enjoy this reflection on what W|W|W is about at its core and a little about the person behind the page, all inspired by God, the true creator.

The mission is simple:

Encourage Faith.

Inspire Obedience.

Walk in Purpose.

Even when it hurts.

Let’s get to work!

What does it mean to be in a place of pressing?

Lately, life has felt like pressure and tension from all sides, and by lately, I mean the entire first half of 2026. But to be completely honest, probably more like the last year and a half. So, buckle up, because we've got a lot to cover.

It was about the middle of January 2025, when I received a not-so-nonchalant nudge from the Lord: “Submit your packet to get out of the Army, now.” I hesitated for about a month, because I wasn’t even sure I heard that right. Did He really want me to leave a career that I had put my all into and spent the last seven years fighting to achieve? But, God didn’t let up. Sermon after sermon, prophetic YouTube word after prophetic YouTube word, stories were told of current pastors and historical biblical figures like Nehemiah, who were called away from their positions and jobs to fulfill God’s greater purpose for their lives.

Still, I questioned God about what I would do outside of this career field I was in. I have a niche degree in Global Security and Intelligence Studies, an active security clearance, and experience in the Intelligence and Security fields; basically, my resume has national defense written all over it. There’s ample job opportunities for people like me, but I couldn’t imagine He wanted me to walk away from a stable life that had already been curated within the military, just to go and do the same type of work on the civilian side of things. So, I questioned and I debated the whole month. Finally, I just asked the Lord to confirm it by His word if He truly wanted me to leave the military, because I couldn’t make sense of it. Not long after that, He did.

The verses that He anchored me to were Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you — this is the Lord’s declaration — plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope” and the big hitter, Matthew 6:24 “You cannot serve both God and money.” The last verse really stirred my spirit. I recalled that just a few weeks earlier, in December 2024, I had written a paper that became a self-exploration exercise about “My Why” for being in the military. All great leaders need a solid “why,” but what came out in mine didn’t quite seem to fit.

Don’t get me wrong, yes, it’s true that the military is more stressful and challenging in many ways than any other job I have worked, but there was this part of me that enjoyed the challenge, was proud to serve, and honestly thought I would serve for 20+ years. Not to mention, it was a blessing that helped pay almost my whole way through four years of college, enabled me to buy my first home, allowed me to travel, and gave me a sense of financial security I never had before. That being said, as I was writing “My Why” for being in the military, what came out sounded a lot more like I needed it as a safety net, and that just didn’t sit well with me.

Since I was a child, I yearned for stability, both financially and emotionally. These were things that fluctuated in my childhood and caused me to strive for success, stability, and certainty in life. A.K.A becoming a control freak, needing to know every next move, making backup plans for my backup plans, and essentially taking my life by the reins to make sure I had it all figured out. 

"I hope this message encourages anyone who is in their own Gethsemane, that painful place of pressing, to allow the process of what God is doing in you and through you to be completed."

Continuing to explore and analyze the areas in my life that were built around safety and security, I found it funny that the degree I clung to in college was Global Security and Intelligence Studies. A part of me always wanted to make the world a better place and to help protect people, which isn’t a bad goal in life. But the adult me, writing my feelings on a page, was now clearly seeing the little girl that thought, “If I can control my external environment and make it safe and secure, then at some point my internal environment will have to catch up.” And so, in 2018, I began the pursuit of security, both globally and internally. 

Long story short, the Lord put that Matthew 6:24 verse into perspective. And to put the cherry on top, I heard it while it was paired with a Sermon that was talking about Nehemiah leaving his cup bearer position to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. The pastor also directly (with a dash of love) called out people who were more concerned with building their earthly inheritance than advancing the kingdom of God. I just didn’t have much words after that sermon except...Okay God, I heard you loud and clear this time.

I understood that it was time for me to walk away from my earthly securities and a relatively successful life, to answer the call of where it is God wanted me to go and what it is He wanted me to do. As I am writing this today, I still don’t know exactly where and what that is. At this point, I am still doing all that I can to utilize my skill sets and am actively trying to apply them to a different work environment. And, I mean, for all I know my purpose in advancing the Kingdom may not be a complete 180 degree career field shift. Maybe it looks just like this: using my free time to produce and share what the Lord is asking me to, which is perfectly fine by me. Whatever the case is, the Lord has been slowly revealing different instructions for me on how to move forward in this season. In fact, this blog, and the entire Working While Wounded project, is all a part of that. 

Sorry for the long detour, but also, I'm not sorry. I thought you could use more background information to help understand the journey. Plus, the Lord gave me this blog idea as a space where I can post all of my written-out thoughts that are later condensed into a podcast episode on the Working While Wounded Channel, which, by the way, is now available on YouTube — Feel free to check it out!

If you're asking yourself why the Podcast is only on YouTube and not on any other Podcast streaming platform, which would technically mean it's just a YouTube channel and not an official Podcast yet...well, all I have to say is Hebrews 11:1, Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what is not yet seen, so we're getting there!

Now, let's dig into what you’re really here for: 

What the heck does it mean to be in a pressing season?

WHY is it so painful?

And oh, by the way, what does Gethsemane actually mean?

In full transparency, I’m not sure I can answer it all with 100% certainty and accuracy, but what I can tell you is what the Lord has been putting on my heart lately (and what a little bit of Google research taught me) in this difficult season of transition from my old career to my new purpose, from my old self to my new self, and from one step of obedience to the next.

For those of us who didn’t know (myself included), Gethsemane is the garden in which Jesus Christ went to pray to God before He was betrayed by one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, and handed over to the authorities to be crucified (You can read more about this story in the book of Matthew, chapter 26). 

Now, what Google taught me is that Gethsemane is translated from Aramaic and Hebrew origins as “Oil Press.” And can I just say that it will never cease to amaze me the way I have read over the same words in the bible a hundred times and never understood the deeper meaning until prompted with that question from the Holy Spirit, “What do you think that means?” so that I am led to do more research and gain fresh revelation! Amazed.

Anyways, so, in this Bible story of Matthew 26, Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane “deeply grieved to the point of death” praying to His Father in heaven, saying Abba, "...if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” See, He knew that He was about to be sent to His death by crucifixion on the cross, to fulfill the prophecy as the ultimate sacrifice that would cover the sins of all people, for you and for me, to reconcile us back to a relationship with God. I can only imagine the weight and pain of that burden.

What really stood out to me, though, is how one subtle shift in understanding highlighted something so important. The Garden of Gethsemane went from being just a place with a name I didn’t understand, to now having a deeper meaning in the term “Oil Press." It gave me a new understanding of the purpose of Jesus being in that specifc place, and how it directly relates to our lives today.

What I have come to understand over the years is that oil in the bible is holy and serves many different purposes. For example, it was used to anoint, it was used to heal wounds, it could be used to make meals, and when created and sold, it could even be a means of provision.

In those days, the primary process for producing oil was to use heavy stones to press down on olives and drain the oil out of them. So, now we have a physical understanding of what "Oil Press” meant.

When I look at this story of Jesus in His place of pressing, and I read how He was deeply grieved, I imagine there was just this feeling of crushing, like the literal weight of the world was on His shoulders, because it was. And it was so heavy that even Jesus asked God to “let this cup pass,” and that is a feeling I deeply related to. I don’t know what it’s like to carry the burden of the entire world all your life, but I know the feeling of deep pressure and pain. The pressure of the world to perform, to hustle, to "make it". The tension and pain in relationships with those we love and deeply care for. The crushing thoughts of anxiety that will make you think your world is going to end if you don’t have the next steps figured out. And in this past season, I can tell you I have felt them all at once…and it started with my obedience.

In this particular story of Jesus, immediately after He asks God to let this call on His life pass from Him, he says something profound, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Can you imagine being in a moment where you are about to freely give yourself up to death, in so much pain that you are pleading for another way, and yet still finding it in your heart to say, “Lord, your will be done”? It’s the ultimate act of obedience. It’s the ultimate relinquishment of selfish desires and the ultimate act of love for God and love for people. Wow.

I also want to point out that in this moment, the bible highlights that:

Jesus “fell facedown and prayed.”

So, His posture as He is praying and crying out to God is both completely overwhelmed with emotion and somehow in complete submission at the same time. I will tell you that in this season I have had a lot of “falling facedown” moments in prayer, and now it has just become a habit to assume that posture.

What I love most about this story and this idea of what it takes to produce oil, is that once the oil is flowing there is healing. But it did come at a cost; a cost of comfort and a cost of selfish desire, and for Jesus, the cost of His earthly life. Yet, in Philippians 2:7-9, it says that instead of acting on His selfish desires and refusing to pick up His cross, Jesus  “...emptied Himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when He had come as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even to death on a cross. For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name.”

So as for why being in the place of pressing has to be so painful, I'm not 100% sure. I just know that we live in a broken world, and Jesus said in John 16:23, "You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world." Many healing processes, both physical and emotional, can be painful. I've seen it get worse before it gets better. But now, having been through a season of enduring and getting to see what God has produced in me through the pressing, I am grateful I didn't give up or walk away in the midst of the pain, even though I really wanted to at some points. I'm more grateful that He held onto me and didn't let me go.

“Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when He had come as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even to death on a cross. For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow — in heaven and on earth and under the earth — and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

Philippians 2:5-11

The oil and the blood that flowed through Jesus’s act of obedience carried anointing and healing. And this is where we come to understand that the production of spiritual oil is often produced by pressure and ultimately submission to God in the season of pressing — because in every season of pressing, there is something divine He is trying to get out of us. When Jesus allowed Himself to be pressed, it set us free from the captivity of sin and restored our relationship with our heavenly Father. It broke chains off of our life and loosed the enemy's grip on us. And the best part is that He rose again and broke the power of death!

We all have our own burdens and crosses to bear and in that there will be moments that will require deep obedience to the Lord, so that we can fulfill His purpose and advance His kingdom. The bible says to present ourselves as a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12:1), meaning to live our lives in obedience and submission to Him, dedicated to carrying out His will. And I am thankful that Jesus was the one who took on the costly burden of dying on the cross so that we could have the opportunity to be such a living sacrifice. Many times, obedience may come at a cost, but in my experience, the things God asked me to be obedient in, especially the things He asked me to walk away from or give up, He either replaced it with something better, restored it to me in a better condition than it was in the first time I had it, or did a deep healing in me through the process. He has never let any act of obedience go unhonored. That’s not to say that the point of obedience is to seek out honor or exaltation — it’s not. I believe that the point of obedience is to render the love to the Lord that He is deserving of because of who He is and all that He has done for us. But, what I am saying is that when it feels scary to act in obedience, you can trust Him. He will use that act of obedience for His kingdom and for your good because He works all things together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose for them (Romans 8:28). 

The latest act of obedience I had to walk through, aside from the career pivot, was in relationships. God wrote Philippians 2:3 on my heart for the entire month of June, which reads, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.” As someone who considers themselves to be compassionate, giving, and loving, I found it odd that this was actually extremely difficult. I came to realize that I am also someone who has experienced deep emotional pain in romantic, platonic, and familial relationships, which caused me to have a lot of deep-rooted defense mechanisms that I called “boundaries” but were really just manifested anxiety and a mix of walls I built myself without asking the Lord how I should build them. So, the Lord challenged me this month to pour more, stretch more, and live out Philippians 2:3. On top of what already felt like a difficult task, I had the added stress of being rejected from multiple job applications without receiving even a single call back, with only two months left of financial stability. It's safe to say that all of this created in me a feeling heavier than pressed, but more like CRUSHED. And yet, I knew what He told me my instruction was in this weighty season. So, in each opportunity the Lord brought me to consider others as more important than myself, I obeyed — even if it brought me to tears.  And now I know I was only able to pour out more because He filled my jar with oil the more I leaned into Him.

It was in this same season that the Lord made a very special distinction for me — I was not being crushed, I was being pressed.

As I prepare for my transition out of the Army in less than two months now, I am certain that God told me to make this move for a reason, even though it isn’t entirely clear yet. Throughout this whole season, He has provided. He opened the door to an amazing internship and gave me a way to get additional certifications while I wait out my transition time. He continues to provide opportunities that set me up for success and consistently puts me in the path of people who can help me achieve it — all while I do the quiet work of obedience. Even more than that, He has recently provided me with a better understanding of purpose and direction for my role in advancing His kingdom.

Although it may not be the full picture and I have no idea where it will go, He gave me the name and the vision for this blog, and for the overall Working While Wounded concept. This is a way for me to share my testimonies with the world, point people back to Jesus, and encourage walking in obedience to His commands even when it hurts. The truth is, He has so much abundance for us in this life and in heaven, but the key to accessing it is in obedience. 

Through every act of submission and obedience to God, I have experienced breakthroughs of some kind; I’ve seen prayers answered that I waited on for years, I've seen relationships flourish, I’ve seen family members return to Jesus, and now I feel I am getting to branch out in a new way to reach people I’ve never even met. At the core of this, I am starting to learn that your obedience isn’t just about you; it can also impact people attached to you and the people you are assigned to reach.

I believe that God gave me a vision for this project, because He wanted to let the oil that was produced from what felt like was crushing me, flow into the wounds of others through testimony, community, and relatability, all to bring forth more healing in this world! I believe in the pressing process, not only was He producing oil, but He was producing the version of me that looked a little more like Jesus; the version that could carry the blessings and the burdens.

The oil painting that you might have seen at the beginning of this entry is titled “Overflow.” I painted it in June of this year, while I was on a solo prayer retreat with the Lord. I was still going through my pressing season before I really knew that that's what it was. He began revealing it slowly, and it all came together to form Working While Wounded. I truly think the concept of that painting is a beautiful reflection of this message.

I believe that we all have a call on our lives, and I can only imagine what it would look like if we all walked in it. I want to see us all get to the place with God where we can finally just say "yes." So here I am, trying to take the first step.

I'm absolutely not perfect and am barely even qualified. I’m not a preacher, I’m not a writer (clearly), I’m not a public speaker, I don’t have all the tools to make a full-on fancy production. Even as I write this, I am asking myself, “wait, did I just word vomit the past few years of my life onto 10 pages full of run-on sentences that anyone on the internet can see? Can a blog post even be 10 pages!?” but, oh well! This is me starting somewhere. All I know is I’ve got some life experiences and the testimonies of what God has brought me through to offer. Truth is, I’m just a sinner trying to do life a second time with Jesus at the forefront, and the funny thing is, I have no idea what I’m doing. I just gave the Lord my “yes,” and He is working with me to do the rest.  

I hope this message encourages anyone who is in their own Gethsemane, that painful place of pressing, to allow the process of what God is doing in you and through you to be completed. If you know what He has spoken to you, but the space you're in doesn’t look anything like a sweet promise, I urge you to take it into prayer and not prematurely back out of the process just because it’s painful. A great pastor, Lisa Kai, recently shared a word on this topic and reminded me that if you quit too soon, you might not get to see the oil flow. And if you’re in a season where you aren’t sure what God is saying, I urge you to “fall facedown” in prayer and seek the Lord. Even if you don’t hear anything right away, keep seeking and He will reveal Himself to you. 

I understand that we aren’t all in the same season, so every message may not apply to us in the same way. My personal practice when I hear a message is to take every word back to the Lord, test it by the Spirit and the Scripture to make sure it’s coming from Him and ask if it's truly for me in the particular season that I am in. But for those of us who do happen to be in the same season, I believe the Lord sets us there together to have that comfort in community and comfort in knowing that you aren't alone in what you're going through. So, I hope this comforts someone.

I encourage everyone to ask the Lord if a word you received is from Him, how it may apply to your life right now, and/or if it might just be one of those words you keep in your back pocket for a rainy day or maybe for a friend.  

If you came across this entry, I pray something meaningful was learned and that the words God wants to be transferred, would be planted on good soil in the hearts of those who find it!

"once the oil is flowing there is healing."