Catching Up, Coming Clean, and Coming Back

Hey, friend. It's been a while.

Like, a real while. No blog posts all summer. A whole month off social media. No announcements, no "I'll be back soon," no explanation. I just went quiet. And honestly? It was one of the best decisions I have made in a long time.

But I owe you an update. So grab a snack, your favorite something to drink, and let's catch up.

Going into 2026, I had a vision for this year that felt so clear. So intentional. I wanted a slow summer. A calm one. Day trips with my grandkids. Family time that wasn't being squeezed in between everything else on the calendar. I wanted to be actually present for my people in a way that the pace of my life had not always allowed me to be. I wrote it down. I prayed over it. I was ready.

And then God laughed.

You know that saying, tell God your plans and watch Him laugh? I always thought that was kind of funny and kind of cute. I don't think it's as cute anymore.

Can I ask you something though? How many of you went into this year with a plan? A real one.

Something you had thought through, prayed over, maybe even written down somewhere. And how many of you are sitting here right now looking at the gap between what you planned and what actually happened? Because I need you to hold that question while you read this. I need you to really sit with it.

In February, we took in an emergency placement. A sixteen year old boy who needed somewhere safe while the system figured out its next move. They asked us for three months. Three months turned into seven. He celebrated his seventeenth birthday with us. Josh gave up his man cave so our foster son would have his own space. And just like that, the quiet intentional year I had mapped out got loud. Not bad loud. Just loud.

And I thought, okay. That's the curveball. We're adjusting. We got it.

But God wasn't finished.

One afternoon in May I was sitting on my porch swing. Just enjoying myself. Minding my business. At peace. And a car pulls into my driveway that I don't recognize. Someone gets out. I'm squinting, trying to place the face. She gets a little closer and I realize, it's the daughter of one of our church members. A young woman whose mom had been incarcerated since last October.

I said, hey, what are you doing here?

She said some stuff had happened and she didn't have anywhere to go. Her mom told her to get in an Uber and come to our house.

So she did.

What I thought was going to be a couple of days turned into four months. I gave up my home office so she would have her own space. We just folded her in. Because that's what you do.

But folding her in wasn't just about giving her a room. It was about making sure she was actually ready for what came next. We got her a bank account set up. Made sure her medical appointments were current. Got her glasses and contacts sorted out, got her physical done. We made sure she had what she needed for school. It was the kind of preparation that doesn't happen on its own, the kind that somebody has to care enough to walk you through. And we were glad to do it.

Then in August, we moved her into college. And I won't lie, there was something about that day that got to me in a way I did not expect. Neither of my own kids went to college, so I had never experienced that. The chaos of hauling boxes up stairs, the running back and forth, the trying-not-to-cry when you pull away from campus. It was one of those moments I didn't know I needed until God handed it to me without asking if I wanted it. She is there now. She is good. And we are so proud of her.

That's the thing about the life God designs for you versus the life you design for yourself. His tends to cost you more. And give you more. Sometimes in the same breath.

And then, in the middle of all of this, God started dealing with me about our Unashamed office space.

I want to be clear because I know some of you will have questions, Unashamed is not closing. The work is not stopping. But the physical space that we have been operating out of is in the process of closing over the next couple of months. That decision came with a lot of feelings attached to it and I am going to give it its own post because it deserves a full and honest conversation. But I wanted you to hear it from me, in plain language, so you're not left wondering.

I kept thinking August was going to be my reset. The month I finally got those slow days I had been waiting on all year.

August was a full month.

I started in Washington D.C., where I was supposed to stay two and a half days and ended up stuck for four because flights were canceled and delayed and grounded and the airport simply had other plans for my life.

And then my covenant sister Latoya's husband passed.

I want to say that right because it deserves to be said right. I didn't just get a phone call that he was gone. I walked with her through the entire week leading up to his passing. I was present for that. And then when he went home, I got on a plane to Georgia to be with her physically, to sit in the room with her, to show up the way she would show up for me. There is something about showing up for someone in their grief that doesn't require you to have the right words. You just have to be a body in the room that loves them. That's it. And I am so glad I was able to be that for her.

Then my daughter Janai and I flew to Houston for a girls trip to spend time with my other covenant sister, Camille. That trip gave me so much that it is getting its own blog post because it deserves more than a paragraph.

And somewhere in the middle of August, honestly, I was kicking and screaming about it, my mother-in-law insisted I go on our church's first ever women's retreat. It was held at Mercy by the Sea, and I want to be transparent with you, I did not want to go. I just felt like it was going to be another thing on an already full plate. Another obligation. I was tired. I was tapped out. And I could think of a hundred reasons to skip it.

But I went. And I am so glad I did.

It was two days. Just two days. But every single activity, every moment of that retreat felt like the Lord was speaking directly to me. It wasn't advertised as a prophetic retreat. But that is exactly what it was for me. He was giving me instructions. Reminding me what to focus on. Telling me to leave certain burdens right there at that place and not pick them back up on the way home. And reminding me, in that quiet but unmistakable way He has, that I am chosen. That what He has called me to is still called. That the noise of this season does not cancel the assignment.

I brought every single one of those reminders home with me.

And when I got back, I reclaimed my home office. It was time. I set it back up as my office and my prayer room, and I have been intentional about holding onto what God said to me at that retreat because I have a feeling the rest of this year is going to require me to remember it.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that noise, the unexpected people, the transitions, the travel, the grief, the decisions I did not see coming, I realized I needed to quiet something I actually had control over. Because I couldn't control the flights or the foster care timeline or what God was asking me to release. But I could control what I was feeding my mind and my spirit every single day.

So without any announcement, I came off social media for the entire month of August.

And I want to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with yourself when you answer it. How much of your anxiety, your comparison, your sense of falling behind or not being enough, how much of it is being fed by what you are consuming every single day on your phone? How much noise are you calling normal because you have been living inside of it for so long you forgot what quiet sounds like?

Because I started leaving my phone in random rooms around the house and not caring where it was. Not rushing to find it. Just living. And it took longer than I want to admit to stop feeling that phantom pull toward it. That tells me something. That tells me a lot, actually.

The quiet did something else too. It made some things I had been avoiding looking at directly impossible to ignore. A relationship, a family friendship, came to an end during August. I had known for a while that I was tolerating more than I should have been. That my kindness was being received as unlimited access. I wasn't oblivious. I just kept choosing grace, kept being the bigger person, kept believing the best about people who were showing me something different.

And here is the question that I needed to sit with, and maybe you need to sit with it too: when does grace become self-abandonment? When does keeping the peace start costing you your peace?

Because there is a version of being a good person that slowly teaches the people around you that you don't have limits. And then one day you look up and realize you have been so busy being kind that you forgot to be honest. With them. And with yourself.

I made some choices. Hard ones. Necessary ones. And I am at peace with them.

Here is where I am right now, as honestly as I know how to say it.

My focus is my family. And I mean that in the fullest sense of the word. My husband. My kids. My grandkids, and yes, I know y'all are always asking about them. They are growing and they are glowing and I have been soaking up every single moment. My in-laws, making sure they feel supported and cared for. My close friends, the ones who have shown me over and over that they are safe. My church community. Those are the things that are getting my time and my energy for the rest of this year. Not because I have closed my heart to anyone. But because I have finally gotten honest about what I actually have to give, and who I want to give it to.

We are also coming up on two years in our home in January, and this summer was a big season of finally tackling some of the capital needs repairs the house has needed. Coordinating all of that on top of everything else was its own part-time job. But we are making this house more and more of a home. And there is something grounding about that. About investing in the place where your people gather. About making it somewhere worth coming back to.

I have also been paying close attention to healing my nervous system. I will write more about the specific things I have been doing because I think it could genuinely help some of you. But the short version is this, I had been running at a pace and a stress level for so long that my body forgot what calm felt like. And I have had to reintroduce them to each other on purpose. That is still a work in progress.

And I have to be honest about something else. I slacked on reading my Word this summer. My prayer life stayed consistent. God and I kept talking, that never stopped. But sitting down with my Bible the way I know I need to? I let that slip. I am not going to dress it up or make it sound more spiritual than it was. I just didn't. And I want to finish this year in a different place than where I let myself drift to.

So before you go, I want to leave you with something real.

You had a plan for this year. Maybe it went exactly the way you hoped. Maybe it got completely derailed by something you did not see coming. Maybe you are still in the middle of something unexpected and you are white-knuckling your way through it waiting for it to settle.

But I want you to ask yourself something. Not a surface question. A real one.

What did this summer try to teach you that you have been too busy to actually learn? What have you been tolerating that you know, deep down, you are done tolerating? What are you feeding yourself every single day, on your phone, in your relationships, in your own head, that is keeping you anxious and empty instead of full? And what would it look like to finish this year actually present? Not just surviving the calendar. Not just going through the motions. But really, genuinely present for your own life.

I don't have all of my own answers yet. But I am asking the questions. And I think that counts for something.

I'll be back next week. I'm aiming for one post a week through September, and then we'll settle back into once a month. I have a few things I really want to share with you, he Houston trip, the office space conversation, nervous system healing, and more. There is a lot on the way.

Thank you for hanging in there with me. Thank you for still being here.

I missed this. I missed you.

Sana