What Is This Costing Me?
Lately, I have been thinking about consumption.
Not only in the monetary sense, though budgeting certainly comes to mind. I have been thinking about how I spend my time, calories, energy, attention, dollars, relationships, work, and even my thoughts.
As I have begun tracking my heart health more closely, I am paying closer attention to what I eat. It is not about restriction. It is about awareness. A meal may fit within my calorie goal yet still leave me hungry an hour later. Another choice may provide protein, energy, and nutrients my body can actually use.
That same awareness has begun to show up everywhere else.
What am I giving my time to?
What am I allowing to take up space in my mind?
What leaves me depleted?
What actually nourishes me?
And perhaps the question underneath all of it is this:
What is this costing me?
The other day, I drove through a nearby neighborhood in search of a house I had visited more than ten years ago. I remembered it as uniquely beautiful. The backyard had been a true oasis, with ponds, lighted paths, beautiful foliage, and multiple seating areas. My friends moved several years ago, but I found myself wondering what had become of the house. Was it still lovely? Was it for sale? Would I want to live there?
As I drove through the neighborhood, I felt something sink in me.
Cars filled driveways and lined the streets. Yards were unkempt. There was clutter, junk, and a sense that what had once been cared for had simply been left behind. It hurt my heart more than I expected.
Maybe it was not only the neighborhood itself that bothered me. Maybe it was what it seemed to represent.
We live in a culture of excess.
More things. More tools. More upgrades. More noise. More messages telling us that whatever we have is not enough and that the answer is always one more purchase, one more move, one more distraction, one more thing to consume.
And I am not immune to it.
I can be influenced by the next best thing too. The supplement, the program, the device, the expert, the promise that something else might help lower my blood pressure, give me more energy, quiet my mind, or help me feel more in control of my body.
Sometimes those things are helpful. Sometimes information and tools truly do support us.
But I have to be careful not to hand over my own wisdom in the process. Not to believe that my well-being is always one purchase, or one new promise away.
Because the more I chase what is outside of me, the easier it is to forget what is already asking for my attention: rest, nourishment, movement, quiet, boundaries, connection, and care.
And somewhere in that endless reaching, we have forgotten how to care for what is already in our hands.
We do not repair what is broken because replacement is easier. We do not sit with discomfort because there is always something available to numb it. We do not protect our attention because everyone wants a piece of it.
We are overstimulated, overmarketed to, and often living so far outside ourselves that we no longer know what we actually need.
I feel this most sharply on social media. Thoughtful words can disappear without a trace while nonsense, outrage, and performance are rewarded. It can make a person wonder why they bother sharing anything meaningful at all.
But I don’t believe the answer is to become louder.
It is to be still and notice.
To notice what is costing me my peace.
To notice what is costing me my attention.
To notice what is costing me my health, my creativity, my joy, and my ability to be present in my own life.
Not everything that drains us is wrong. Some things are worth the cost. Loving people is worth it. Creating something meaningful is worth it. Building a life that reflects who we are is worth it.
But there is a difference between being spent on what matters and being slowly drained by what does not.
I want to live with more intention than consumption.
I want to care for what I have.
I want to be present in my home, my body, and my life.
I want to invest my energy where it can grow something.
Before I say yes, before I scroll, before I buy, before I give another piece of myself away, I want to pause long enough to ask:
What is this costing me?
And perhaps even more importantly:
Is it worth it?
 

This past week, I was led back to my journal entries from August of 2025.
I rarely read old journal entries. Once I've written something, I tend to leave it on the page and keep moving forward. But after a conversation with a friend that invited reflection on where I was ten months ago, I found myself turning the pages and revisiting a season that followed my Camino.
What I discovered wasn't what I expected.
The journals weren't filled with grand plans or specific prayers for what would come next. Instead, they were filled with gratitude. Gratitude for waking up. Gratitude for the sunrise. Gratitude for being on the journey.
I wrote that God was calling me toward something more, though I had no idea what that “more” would look like. At the time, I had begun shifting from writing Tuck the Fringe to writing Untucked. The stories and reflections seemed to flow from a deeper place. I sensed that the healing journey I had been writing for myself was becoming something I might eventually share with others.
As I reflected on that season, another realization surfaced.
I still find places where I am tucked.
In the quiet whispers.
The ones that tell me I am not enough.
How quickly the voices of the past can feel more powerful than the truth we have spent years uncovering.
As I sat with those thoughts, one of my devotionals guided me to the story of Hagar in Genesis. I had never really read it before, just a few short verses with an amazing impact.
Hagar finds herself alone in the wilderness, caught in circumstances she did not create and carrying wounds she did not deserve. And yet God meets her there.
And after the encounter, Hagar gives God a name:
“You are the God who sees me.”
That phrase has stayed with me all week.
Because the deepest longing of the human heart is not to be admired, validated, or even understood.
It is simply to be seen.
Not for what we accomplish or how we appear to others.
But for who we really are.
As I sat with that story, another thought emerged.
For years, I have carried the voices of people who told me, directly or indirectly, that I was not enough. I have spent much of my life trying to prove those voices wrong.
But what if that was never my job?
What if I do not need to prove they were wrong?
What if they were never qualified to judge me in the first place?
That feels like a threshold worth crossing.
Because I no longer need to build my life around overturning someone else’s verdict of me.
Maybe that is what this season is teaching me.
The God who sees me is not asking me to earn my worth.
The God who sees me is inviting me to trust what He already sees in me.
And that truly is enough.

​This is for anyone healing from something difficult.
It comes from a journal entry I wrote after a recent EMDR session. I have shared it with a few people who encouraged me to offer it to others who may feel lost or wonder why healing seems to take longer than expected.
This is an adaptation of what I wrote the next morning.
"I have loved you; now remain in my love."
God, thank you for these words.
Rescue me and all my parts that have grown weary of vigilance over the years. When I begin to drift from my truth, my worthiness, Jesus, show me the Father.
Rather than revisiting old wounds, I found myself moved into the protection of all the women I have been.
Here I am now, the wiser version of myself, able to comfort and mother the younger versions of me. I am the inner mentor to those younger selves, just as my older self will one day be to the woman I am now.
How amazing that is.
That girl was tired.
She had been beaten down by life more than once, and yet she kept getting back up.
I see her standing at different thresholds in her life, carrying burdens never meant for her to bear alone. She held fear. She held uncertainty. She held pain. She learned to stay vigilant, always watching for the next storm.
And now I am here to bring her rest.
One memory comes into focus.
I see her sitting quietly on a couch, wrapped in a terry-cloth robe, stunned by words that cut deeper than anyone could see. Her heart races. Her body freezes. She struggles to understand how love and hurt can coexist in the same space.
For years she carried that moment.
For years she carried many moments.
But in this vision, something changes.
I place her here and now, in my beautiful, peaceful home.
I wrap my arms around her, and she melts into my chest.
I tell her that I love her.
More importantly, God loves her.
I take her by the hand and walk her into the guest room. It is quiet. Safe. Comfortable.
She sits on the bed and studies the photographs displayed around the room. Images of herself from childhood to womanhood. She reaches for the angel music box she received at birth and slowly winds the key.
A familiar melody fills the room.
"Lullaby and Goodnight."
She listens.
She smiles.
And for the first time in a very long time, she rests.
"You are home, sweet girl," I tell her.
"You are safe."
"You are loved."
"And we never have to go back there."
 

The Human Need to Matter
One of the earliest human instincts we have as infants is to reach for connection. A newborn can grasp a parent’s finger immediately after birth. It is involuntary yet an instinctual survival response, ingrained in each of us.
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​Of course, we cannot remember that feeling as infants, but if we are parents or grandparents, we have surely experienced this special moment.

This past week, I attended the Senior Market Sales “Sales Force Conference” in Omaha. While the event primarily focused on Medicare and serving the senior market, one keynote message stood out to me. 
It was about mattering.
The speaker, Zach Mercurio, shared his own story of his newborn son grasping his finger.  In those first moments of life, a baby reaches out, and someone reaches back. Long before we have words, we are learning something about ourselves and the world around us.
If I reach out for connection, will someone reach back?
As I listened, I found myself thinking about the journey I've been writing about in Untucked.
So many of us spend years tucking away pieces of ourselves in order to fit in, avoid criticism, or gain approval. We learn to become who others need us to be, and somewhere along the way, we lose sight of something essential:
We matter just as we are.
Not because of our titles, achievements, or social status.
We matter because we are here.
Unfortunately, according to Zach’s research, we are living in the midst of a "mattering deficit." Loneliness is rising. Engagement is declining. More people feel unseen, unheard, and disconnected. More than ever, we are questioning whether we truly matter.
When I reflect on my own journey and on times when I felt lonely, the deepest ache wasn't the absence of people. It was the feeling that my presence made little difference to the people around me.
Zach defines mattering as the fundamental human need to feel seen, heard, valued, and needed. He suggests that we experience mattering in three ways:
To be noticed.
To be affirmed.
To be needed.
Noticed. Affirmed. Needed.
Simple words. Life-changing experiences.

I began writing this reflection four days ago when I returned from the conference, intending to publish it on Sunday. The subject of mattering felt very Untucked to me, and I resonated deeply with what Zach shared.
And then something unexpected happened.
At church this morning, the reflection expanded.
We had a “fill-in” pastor today and she shared a sweet story about watching her six-year-old granddaughter play soccer. As anyone who has watched a group of young children play sports knows, there is often more enthusiasm than strategy. At one point, her granddaughter became confused about which goal was hers. She stopped, looked toward the stands, and found her father.
He simply nodded in the direction she needed to go.
Earlier, he had told her, "If you ever get confused, just look over at me, and I will guide you."
That stuck me deeply.
A newborn reaches for a parent's finger.
A little girl looks to her father for direction.
Both are seeking the same thing: connection. The comfort of knowing someone is there.
Perhaps that is why being noticed carries such power. It touches something ancient within us. Something that has been asking since our very first day on earth whether our presence matters to another person.
At the end of the service, our lead pastor closed in prayer, reminding us that when we feel confused, lost, or unseen, we can simply look up.
And suddenly, the keynote and the sermon felt connected.
The question is not only, "Who truly sees me?"
The deeper question is:
Who do I need to notice?
Who do I need to check in on?
Who do I need to remind that they matter?
In many ways, the journey of becoming untucked is the journey of remembering this truth. Beneath all the roles we play, the expectations we carry, and the parts of ourselves we have hidden away, there is a person who has always been worthy of being seen.
You matter!
J~