23 min read ⭑

The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

Brittany: I’m actually from Waterford, Michigan, and we have a whole lot of different restaurants in the area that are owned locally. There aren’t a whole lot of chain restaurants there, but there’s one right down the street called Highland House Cafe, and it’s a ride-or-die favorite in our home. I tend to gravitate toward sweet and spicy things, which is kind of funny to my husband because he has a little bit more of a bland palate.

At Highland House, they have an incredible salad on their menu. You may be thinking, How is your favorite dish a salad? I’m a salad girl! I love salad. I love putting as many ingredients as I possibly can in one bowl with lettuce and dressing. It is my go-to favorite. The salad I love at Highland House is the apple orchard salad, and I like to ask my waiter or waitress to throw some jalapeños on it. I always get funny looks when I ask to add jalapeños to a salad. But as I said, I love the sweet-and-spicy mixture, so that salad would probably be my favorite dish at one of our local restaurants here.

My husband and I take our daughter there as well as friends when they visit from out of state. I take one of my best friends, Rachel, when she comes to visit from Indiana. It’s our tradition to go to Highland House because they also have really good breadsticks. Everybody in the Midwest likes their breadsticks with ranch dressing. So if a restaurant has bad ranch, then it’s probably not going to be on par with what we expect here in Michigan.

Cassandra: I grew up in a small town off of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin called Kenosha. I spent most of my childhood there, but I spent many of my formative years as a teen and adolescent in a city called Texarkana, Texas, which is half Texas, half Arkansas. So I consider Texarkana my hometown. It’s where I graduated high school. It’s where I met Jesus. I went from living in a town where bars were on every corner to living in the Bible Belt where churches are on every corner and sometimes across the street from each other.

Texarkana has a restaurant called Ironwood Grill. My husband and I live in Oklahoma City now, but we actually met in Texarkana, and we go to Ironwood Grill every time we’re in town. It’s kind of like a fixture in that area. There’s really nowhere like it that I’ve experienced. The food and the community are really good. The same people owned it for a really long time until just recently, and even then, they still keep the same menu.

I get the blackened chicken, which is no longer on the menu. It drives the waitress — usually a college student — crazy because I ask for something that was on the original menu that isn’t there anymore. But I’m a creature of habit, so I get the blackened chicken breast with stir fry green beans and mac and cheese, and it’s the best thing ever.

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?

Brittany: I really love my Peloton. My husband and I got it in 2019. I’m not great with consistency, but I feel better after I do any kind of workout, especially a bike ride on the Peloton. I just feel better about myself and my life when I’m physically active. After a workout — and sometimes even during — I’ll tune out the class instructor and put some worship music on. It’s that motivation to go to the finish line, metaphorically speaking. To be able to do that on the bike or in a workout is very invigorating for me, and I find a lot of solace in being able to have that from my workouts.

Cassandra: For me, it’s my evening walks. I started about two years ago before our first book launch on the journey to walk it out. It was a part of something that I was doing with my prolonged exposure therapy. I had a very small goal of doing just five miles a week, which sounds small, but at the time, I was barely getting out and being active. Slowly but surely over the last two years, I’ve gotten to the point where I do about 20 miles a week. It started as a physical thing, but it became very much an emotional and spiritual experience for me because I would sweat and cry. When you’re walking in the neighborhood, you really can’t tell the difference between sweat and tears. And if you’re looking, you’re looking too hard. But there’s something so cathartic about it. I think we release oxytocin when we cry and we experience dopamine when we’re physically active. It’s not a coincidence that I feel like I experience a lot more nearness to God in those times of processing. You’re genuinely walking step by step. It’s just me, God, and nature, and it’s been so good for my soul and my mental and physical health.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?

Brittany: I want to share about one thing I’m currently walking through in hopes that, if anybody reading this interview is also struggling with this, they find Jesus in it. After a long and vigorous battle with postpartum depression that nearly took my life, I sought therapy to understand what was going on in me and why, after having my daughter, my brain seemed to change. And through therapy, I was diagnosed with PMDD, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. This disorder affects roughly 1 in 12 women in the U.S. and 1 in 20 women worldwide. It’s a disorder that people are just now starting to talk about, and women are being diagnosed with it more and more.

PMDD is a severe — sometimes disabling — extension of premenstrual symptoms, and it includes physical and behavioral symptoms that typically resolve with the onset of menstruation. It’s kind of an embarrassing topic to talk about, but where I found Christ in it for me is that, unfortunately, my PMDD symptoms feel almost like bipolar episodes. That happens in the luteal phase of my cycle when I tend to struggle with exasperated anxiety, depression, feelings of hopelessness, worry, anger, obsession over my relationships and thoughts that catastrophize all of that to a very debilitating point. I’ve had to pull back from even being overly present in my relationships with other people during this phase because of my mood swings and tendencies. It sometimes feels like a cloud that rests over me. What I’ve learned through the diagnosis is that, although I know the Lord can fully heal me, right now, this diagnosis is flashing a light on the issues that already existed in my heart. And I now have the opportunity to take these issues and this pain to the feet of Jesus and rely on him to sustain, hold and protect me.

I know that he’s sovereign over any diagnosis or symptom. So in this phase of my cycle, I’ve had to really pursue intimacy with him like never before. Honestly, in a way, it has been somewhat of a blessing to be able to lean on him in this way and develop a closer relationship with him as I go to him with these issues that I’ve perhaps stuffed down in the past. I suspect — and my therapist and gynecologist have suspected — that this disorder is something I probably always had. It just was exasperated after pregnancy.

The Scripture passage I feel very anchored to during this diagnosis is Proverbs 18:10, which says, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.” Every single month during my cycle, it’s as though I can see myself in my mind and in my heart running to the Lord, to the strong tower, and finding safety in him. I think I hid this issue for a while because it’s so personal — because it literally has to do with menstruation, which is something that not a lot of people want to discuss — but I don’t really hide it anymore and I’m very open and candid about it. I’ve talked to Cassandra about it.

My husband has helped me find natural supplements. You can medicate it, but people who don’t want to medicate can find more holistic supplements. I did try the medication route for a while, and I didn’t feel like it was really helping me. So I don’t really try to hide it anymore because if I cross paths with anyone who’s potentially suffering from it, we can talk about it. I think knowledge is so important, and it’s important to talk about these things so that people can hopefully get the care they need.

Cassandra: My kryptonite would definitely be confrontation. Brittany knows that from experience! The people who are closest to me can see that’s my kryptonite. But if you’re not in close proximity to me, you would never get that. Brittany jokes that there’s no way I’m an Enneagram 9 (Peacemaker) wing 8 (Challenger) — that 8 is my core personality, not my wing — because she sees the wing 8 come out all the time in our work environment. That is true, but at my core, I seek peace. Sometimes I seek to keep the peace instead of making peace, which is dangerous ground to be in because there’s a difference between keeping peace at all costs and making peace despite the discomfort that comes with it.

As somebody who has endured complex childhood trauma, I was diagnosed with CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) in 2021. With that diagnosis, I’ve become aware of how confrontation looks like disconnection and rejection to me because of the abuse and abandonment I went through as a child. So as an adult, a mother and a wife, I now try to navigate all of these landmines I’ve spent my whole life avoiding — at least, that’s what it looks like. I just avoided conflict at all costs.

I don’t do that anymore, though. It’s costly. I know this for sure because it’s played out in a dramatic way in my life. Over two years ago, I don’t think I could’ve been able to confront it. I would have numbed it or avoided it, which is, again, very clearly a trauma response. But now I understand the idea of speaking the truth in love as Ephesians 4:11-16 talks about. I’m learning that speaking the hard truth in love sometimes is the most loving thing you can do and that conflict does not always mean that you’re going to have a disconnection. Sometimes it’s an opportunity to connect on a deeper and more authentic level.

This struggle has also given me the ability to realize who’s safe and who’s not, and that not everyone is able to carry the hard and the heavy. Knowing when and with whom to share is really important to me. Is this confrontation necessary? And if it’s necessary, can I do it in a way that honors God and honors the person I’m talking to? Even though I’m afraid of it, I can’t allow the fact that I’m afraid to stop me from doing the hard stuff because they’re necessary.

I can’t control whatever happens afterward. I spent my whole childhood trying to avoid harm, and that bled into my adulthood. I would be afraid of perpetuating harm by having a really rough and difficult confrontation or of being hurt myself since I wasn’t sure how they would receive my words. What if they don’t like what I have to say? What’s going to happen next? I really had to surrender that to God and know that I’m simply responsible for my role in these communications. I have to trust the Holy Spirit to cover it, give me wisdom as I go, and guard my mouth so that I know when to speak and when not to speak — choosing to do so in wisdom and not in fear.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?

Brittany: Lately, I’ve been spending my professional time on our second book launch. And then coming out of the book launch, we’re going to be in the thick of writing our third book. During times of heavy content creation — like for the ministry page, our newsletter and the things we put out every day — I typically use the program GoDaddy Studio. It’s just the app on your phone and you can use it to edit pictures, videos, reels, promotional images, stories or whatever it is you’re wanting to create. I find that app to be very user-friendly. It also has search engines for different videos and pictures. (I think they use Pixabay.)

Cassandra and I also use Trello. It’s a productivity type of app that helps organize tasks, and it helps us with our writing process so that we can organize our notes, research and sermons and keep everything in one space as opposed to using your traditional Google doc. It’s more of a visual thing, which really helps us both. Another tool for making reels I just discovered — an app called Pexels. It’s really awesome for finding aesthetic videos if you don’t have time to record them yourself.

Cassandra: Yes, all of those things are things we do in heavy, heavy content creation periods. I’ll kind of lean into the book-writing part of things. To Brittany’s point, we’ve been spending the last two years launching and promoting books back to back. So when we’re not working on writing a manuscript, we’re usually editing a manuscript, promoting it or doing both at the same time — promoting one book while writing another.

Something that has really driven us and my personal obsession in this whole process is the part that no one sees — for example, all of those different tools Brittany mentioned. For me, it’s the research process and laying out the blueprint for the books. It took us several months to get the concept for our third book approved, and that whole process is something I genuinely am in love with. I love sifting through all of the pain points and all of the problems that the readers in our community are confronting, looking for that commonality, looking for the promises in Scripture, and fine-tuning the message so that we can not only point them to the promise but also share our own brokenness in the midst of it all. Then there’s the research piece where you can tell people how the Word and its stories fit in a historical and cultural context. I love using a holistic and practical approach to the Bible to help people get a full understanding of it and help make it a reality for them. For example, “This isn’t just true for the Israelites. This isn’t just true in the New Testament. This is true for you today and every day from this day forward.” I really do enjoy using Enduring Word for commentary. That’s been very helpful for me. I’m pretty limited in what I understand regarding theology, so it helps to have those resources available as we write.

Our book launched on July 11, 2023. It’s called “There’s Beauty in Your Brokenness: 90 Devotions to Surrender Striving, Live Unburdened, and Find Your Worth in Christ.”

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

Brittany: Cassandra and I have seen so many times in different interviews or even just in conversations with people in our community how each of our posts, devotionals or whatever we’re putting out there showed up at the right time for them. They share how they needed that content at that moment. It’s so encouraging to hear that because Cassandra and I both find we need to partner with the Holy Spirit when we’re ministering to people online. We always want to show up prayerfully because we don’t know where that woman or man on the other side of the screen is, but God does. So as 1 Corinthians 3:9 says, we have this tremendous opportunity to be co-laborers with Christ, and in doing that, we invite the Holy Spirit to communicate to us what needs to be said as well as how and why. This helps us to almost conceptualize the pain point of the woman on the other screen. We take that very seriously. We are very careful about everything we put out. We’re very prayerful in yielding to the Holy Spirit, even in how we write our book.

To answer your question regarding how I know it’s God when that happens, I know I feel peace when I feel the Holy Spirit confirm that something is a word from him. I feel almost excited that, yes, this is something that someone needs to see today or these words are something that someone in a state of brokenness needs to see. The mission is always to nudge them toward the Father’s arms and to read the Word for themselves. Really, we’re bridging that gap. It’s awesome to see how helpful it is when you’re able to partner with the Holy Spirit and see the outcome. And like I said earlier, when we hear testimonies of people saying, “This is something I needed today,” it’s very encouraging.

Brittany: One particular experience stands out that was just undeniable. It was a behind-the-scenes experience that very few people are aware of. Toward the end of writing our first book, we had to turn in our manuscript. But I procrastinate on the hard things, so I was pushing off the things that I didn’t feel ready to touch. I remember praying in the Holy Spirit about it because there was one particular person in my life who had done great harm to me. I didn’t need their permission to write about what happened, so it was odd that I kept tossing and turning and couldn’t rest. Meanwhile, the deadline was quickly approaching. (This has happened in different ways throughout my writing, but this particular time really stood out to me.) I was wrestling internally because I felt like I couldn’t write about what this person did.

Then I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me to call that person, talk to them, tell them how I felt and see what happens. And I did. I called while in the middle of a coffee shop two weeks before the manuscript was due and I remember telling this person, “Hey, I’m writing some things that you may or may not be aware took place, and I’m going to be talking about it publicly in a way that honors everyone who’s involved. But I’m scared to do this because I’m afraid of how this may affect you and your walk with God.”

This person is a recovering addict, and I was really aware of how this could possibly have repercussions for them. I didn’t want to misrepresent Christ. And although I know and realize that it’s not my responsibility how someone takes something, I wanted to share while being aware of other people’s feelings. It was a complete Holy Spirit experience for me because that person said exactly what I didn’t expect them to say. I thought they were going to shut me down. I thought they were going to tell me, “Don’t you dare talk about that,” but they said the direct opposite.

I thought, Wow, only God could do that, because that person said, “You need to write whatever you feel led by God to write. Those pains that I may or may not be aware of could help someone who is hurting, and I don’t want to stand in the way of that.” Only God could do something that profound in my own personal life. No one else may ever know it reading that first book, but there are so many times throughout my writing experiences when I know the Holy Spirit is woven in and within every word that we write.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin’ best for you right now?

Brittany: Cassandra and I probably have very similar answers to this question because we’re both moms. My daughter is 2 years old now, and to be honest with you, spending hours in the presence of the Lord isn’t something I can make happen every day. Cassandra and I often talk about how five minutes with the Lord are better than none, especially if you can’t make 50 minutes happen. Lately, during interview season and then the book launch, my daughter has been at daycare, but when I have her with me, I try to keep my mind fixed on the things of God. I remember 1 Thessalonians 5:16 and try to be in a state of praying continually and in constant communion with God during the day. I find that when I do that, I get to spend time with him when I’m pouring my cup of coffee or playing in the sand with my 2-year-old at the playground. It’s that state of mind where you’re always trying to keep your mind fixed on the things above and fixed on him.

It’s also an opportunity for me not to struggle with loneliness. Sometimes when we have toddlers, we miss adult conversations, and it’s nice to know that the Lord is with me in every aspect of my day and what I do. And when I position my mind to be aware of that and aware of his presence — because he is always there — that spiritual practice of being yielded to him throughout the day has carried me through this season of motherhood. Instead of putting pressure on myself to have 50 minutes or two hours in my room alone with him — which I would love to have every single day — I’m grateful to have 10 minutes or to listen to the audio Bible. Spending time with God throughout my day and being constantly aware of his presence near me gives me a lot of peace.

Cassandra: I like to call quiet time the not-so-quiet times. I’m a mother of three and I work from home, so it’s rowdy here. So quiet time comes at not-so-quiet moments, but it does quiet my heart and my mind. I’ve been discipling women one on one here in Oklahoma City for the last several years, but in January, I started inviting the women that I normally mentor one on one into my home as a whole group, and that has been a spiritual experience for me.

I just serve something very simple, like nachos or charcuterie, but having Mentor Monday meals has been really refining me. I’m learning so much from the women, and I’m also being challenged to lean on them, which feels really funky, personally. I have a hard time with that, but I think that it’s such a good challenge because it creates community. It creates space for honesty, safety, and fellowship. Breaking bread is so underrated. It’s the best.

It’s important that we understand that longing for belonging is not selfish. It’s part of God’s design. I spent so much time longing to be seen and I wasn’t allowing God to use me to see others. So when I was faced with the absence of the acceptance I was wanting, I was presented with the opportunity to create belonging for others. That’s been very refining, but it’s also been really healing. With this new group, I’m sharpened by these women. One of the best things I’ve done in my spiritual walk is doing fellowship and community in my home.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Our email subscribers get free e-books featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are some resources that have impacted you?

Brittany: About five years ago, before we started to write these books, I started listening to a lot of instrumental worship music during my quiet times. It’s seriously a huge game-changer for me in my time with the Lord. Some people might find instrumental music distracting. My husband, for example, needs to sit in silence so he can clear his head. I can’t clear my head while sitting in silence. I can only ever hear and focus on what’s in my head. So what helps me is listening to something that tunes out everything else and positions my heart to focus on the Lord and not focus on the things that might be stressing me out or things in my head.

I tend to struggle a bit with anxiety, especially during the rougher times of the month, so it helps to listen to worship music, instrumental worship music and soaking music. One artist I discovered, William Augusto, will do three-hour piano ballads. It’s beautiful instrumental worship music that really helps me unplug and meet with the Lord and get my mind focused on him. That’s been huge. So this has been something that I’ve used to quiet my mind, especially during the rough patch that I went through postpartum.

Cassandra: One of the game-changers for me is a book called “Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode — and Into a Life of Connection and Joy” by Aundi Kolber. I discovered it during the first lockdown and it was incredible for me. It was a game-changer because, in a world that tells us to try harder, this book helped me to understand that we don’t have to pretend that everything is okay and we don’t have to live a life of exhaustion, striving, overwhelm and numbness. God actually is calling us to a much more abundant life, to align our minds, bodies and souls to the life God actually intends for us. This book was the first time I ever said — and this is something I’ve told Aundi privately — “I now have language that I didn’t have then.” Reading her book was the first moment I was able to put words to what I was feeling. I had experienced abuse and trauma, and I didn’t have the language to describe my experience until I read this book. So that was a huge piece of healing for me. It helped me see God in the hard but also pointed me to healing.

The second is a video I received from my Christian therapist. It’s a TED Talk by Nadine Burke Harris called “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime.” It’s about your ACE scores, which is not a common conversation. The TED Talk is very brief but so transformative because she discusses adverse childhood experiences and high ACE scores. I had no idea that a lot of the things I thought were simply character flaws — the behaviors or issues that I was dealing with — were actually signs and symptoms of an adverse childhood experience and not actually something wrong with me. Something wrong happened to me. That was really transformative for me. I was able to do some healing with God in that.

The third resource is a book I started reading back in 2018 or 2019 thanks to a recommendation from my friend Jess Connelly, and I’ve read it every year since. It’s called “Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life” by Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend. Boundaries laid such an important foundation for me because I was able to understand that confrontation doesn’t always mean disconnection and that honesty doesn’t mean harm. So I was able to understand what boundaries are and aren’t and learned that Jesus, God incarnate, actually models assertive communication as opposed to passive, passive-aggressive or aggressive communication. That was just a chef’s-kiss tool that I continue to return to.

We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season — and tell us what it’s done for you.

Brittany: One resource that’s been really helpful for me is therapy. It allowed me to get diagnosed, understand what was going on with me, and realize that it wasn’t my fault. I think that’s the hardest part about anybody who suffers from postpartum depression or any other kind of diagnosis — there’s a feeling of How did this happen to me? What did I do for this to happen to me? So therapy has been really helpful for me to talk it out. I’ve found a lot of power in speaking out loud whatever I’m worried about and whatever I’m hearing internally. It’s been really invigorating and powerful for me to be able to talk to someone and get that out. Cassandra and I are both huge advocates for therapy.

Another thing I’ve found really helpful in my quiet times or when I feel stressed out because we’re in the thick of book launch season is the Calm app. It’s a meditation app with a lot of different audio breathing exercises. The simplicity of breathing helps me release a lot of that stress. Through therapy and while I was in the hospital, I learned about box breathing, which is where you breathe in for five seconds, hold for five and exhale for five. Then you imagine yourself going through a box of breathing to help you focus on your breathing and nothing else. That’s been very helpful for me to de-stress and get through those tougher times.

Another thing would be journaling. Writing down what I’m going through and what I’m learning through Scripture as well as reading previous journal entries helps me see where I was and how far I’ve come. It helps me see God’s hand in all of those tougher times.

Cassandra: One resource is spiritual and the other is more secular, but I use it for a spiritual purpose. First, the her.BIBLE app, which I recently discovered. The YouVersion Bible app uses it as well. It’s basically a narration of the Bible by female and diverse voices. It’s something I really enjoy. I know it’s oddly specific, but having a woman — and different kinds of women — reading Scripture is very calming for me since I’m an audible learner and an audible processor.

Although I’ve had the privilege of pouring into a ton of women locally, all of my mentors and close friends live far away from me. So having Voxer and Marco Polo has genuinely been a lifesaver for me, because it lets me send up like a flare to people who are close to me but aren’t close in proximity and say, “Hey, I’m dealing with something and I need you to pray” or “This is what God did today. Let’s celebrate together.” That has been really important to me and has reminded me of God’s goodness and nearness even when other people can’t physically be near.

QUESTION #8: dream

God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

Brittany: I’ve been feeling the Holy Spirit nudging and stirring my heart to, at some point, create a resource, whether it’s a devotional or something geared toward helping other women cling to the healing and hope of Jesus through postpartum. Looking back on when I was in the thick of my postpartum struggles, I so badly wished that there was a resource I could cling to — a Christian resource. Maybe there was and I just couldn’t find it at the time, but I wanted a resource I could cling to that would help me know I’m not alone, that it’s not my fault, and that Jesus has a heart for me in my suffering. He has a heart for us always, but he’s close to the brokenhearted and in our suffering.

So I’m feeling that desire to create a resource spring in my heart. I don’t even know what that looks like in the near future, but I’ve been kind of praying about it. And being moms, Cassandra and I also have talked about the idea of possibly writing a children’s book at some point.

Cassandra: Recently, leading up to the book launch of There’s Beauty in Your Brokenness, I applied for Denver Seminary to get my master’s in theology and biblical studies, which is a big deal for me. I also had to apply for an undergraduate exemption, because I never finished undergrad. I definitely feel ill-equipped, disqualified and intimidated by it, but I also feel certain that there’s literally nothing that God could bring me to that I can’t Google my way through. If it’s for me, it’s for me. So if I get in, it’s going to be great, and if not, I’m going to be great, too. I’m going to be okay either way, but I’m excited about it. That’s been a huge leap of faith for me.

Also, we’re working on our third book, and I’ve definitely been excited. Plus, I’ve been working on my solo book proposal, and that’s been exciting too. I love seeing all of the beautiful things God is doing, and I get to trust him through it all — even when it doesn’t make sense. I definitely did not have a master’s in theology and biblical studies on my bingo card, but here we are!

We can try our best to avoid pain or protect our families from it, but the truth is, we live in a very broken world. In fact, around 70% of all adults in the U.S. have experienced trauma at some point in their lives — whether childhood abuse or neglect, violence, grief or loss, accidents, natural disasters or even medical interventions.

That’s no surprise, though. Jesus, too, experienced trauma in the form of betrayal, loss of loved ones, and excruciating abuse — not to mention the guilt of the world’s sin while on the cross.

Thankfully, no matter what trauma we go through — or what coping mechanisms we adopt as a result — Jesus wants to meet us in our brokenness. He wants us close. Just as we are. And because of his sacrifice on the cross, we can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16, ESV).

Brittany Maher and Cassandra Speer are leaders of the Her True Worth community and authors of several books, including Her True Worth: Breaking Free from a Culture of Selfies, Side Hustles, and People Pleasing to Embrace Your True Identity in Christ and There’s Beauty in Your Brokenness: 90 Devotions to Surrender Striving, Live Unburdened, and Find Your Worth in Christ. Brittany and her husband, Ryan, spend their time equipping people for digital evangelism across the globe. Cassandra is a popular Christian blogger whose passion is to help women discover the depth of God’s love for them.

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