Recently, a woman from across the country reached out to me after hearing one of my messages online. She said it had touched her life forever, and then she trusted me with something she had been carrying for more than 20 years.
She was stuck loving someone she knew she shouldn’t.
Years earlier, she had been involved in an affair that lasted nearly a decade, wreaking havoc on her life. And all these years later, the emotional attachment was still messing with her. She said she was agonizing over her mistakes, desires, and the painful reality that she couldn’t seem to make her heart let go.
She felt very stuck.
“Please guide me on this journey,” she wrote.
This is what I love about what we get to do at Collide: the ministry doesn’t end when the message does.
I got to meet her right there in the complicated intersection of faith, shame, longing, and surrender. I reminded her, “Jesus is with you. He loves you. And He doesn’t want you to stay stuck.”
I felt led to talk to her about surrender because sometimes getting unstuck requires us to physically open our hands and give God what we have been gripping for far too long.
And sometimes our hearts need a physical act to go along with the prayer we have prayed a thousand times. So I suggested she find a big rock. Write his name on it. Take it to the water. Pray and surrender this man to God. And then throw that thing as far as she could into the water.
She responded, “I have prayed so often about letting go…but never took an action such as you suggest. I think that is my next step… I’m looking for a rock.”
I continue to be amazed by the stories women carry and the ways we all can get stuck. We agonize. We condemn ourselves. We return to things we know aren’t healthy. We carry things for years because we simply don’t know how to put them down.
And yet, Jesus. He meets us right there and reminds us: You don’t have to stay here.
I picture this woman standing at the edge of the water, rock in hand, carrying far more than the weight of that stone. And then opening her hand…
That is the work we want to keep doing at Collide. Creating spaces where women can bring what they’ve been carrying and take their next step toward Jesus and freedom. Whether that means tossing a boulder they’ve carried for decades, walking into therapy for the first time, stepping back into community after isolation, surrendering something they desperately want, or bravely saying yes to the life God is calling them into.
We want to keep showing up in these moments and seeing women transformed. And we need your help to do it. Will you consider partnering with us financially so we can continue impacting lives? Your generosity allows us to keep creating spaces where women can encounter Jesus, find freedom, and discover that they don’t have to stay stuck.
