Instead, we create conditions where we never have to confront reality.

We keep our commitments vague.

We rely on how we feel instead of objective feedback.

We quietly stop following through because nobody knows what we’re actually committed to.

We mistake evidence of effort for evidence of progress.

In th…

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A rare gift, and I had one just the other day.

My friend’s words challenged me enough that I actually went to bed early that night just so I could take some time to pray about it.

I was able to see more clearly a bit of a parenting rut I’d stepped into…

It seems that somewhere in the mix of timeouts, refereeing and providing endless snacks, I was parenting as though the goal is for my kids to listen to me.

That’s not the goal. At least it’s not my goal.

The goal is for me to disciple them.

I’ve been parenting with discipline that sometimes includes discipleship instead of discipleship that sometimes includes discipline.

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If you had asked me a week ago what my job as a parent is, I would’ve said all the right things.

Raise kids who love Jesus, who love others and show it in their daily actions. Model that same love to my kids, consistently.

Unfortunately, our real priorities aren’t revealed by the answers we’d give when asked. 😬

They’re revealed on a random Thursday morning when one of your kids throws another’s favorite toy out the car window. 🫣

I’m been sharing my flaws on the internet since 2014 so I’m fairly comfortable admitting that if you were a fly on my wall at that moment, you wouldn’t be able to tell that I’m trying to model the love of Christ to my kids.

You might not even be able to tell I know Him. 😂

Enter: the tension we talk about all the time.

That night in my bedroom, I felt such a strong desire to do better. To change my approach and be a better mentor to my kiddos.

And yet…there will be more moments than I care to admit when I just don’t feel like doing the hard work of changing a pattern.

Moments when I just don’t want to slow down and show up in a healthier, holier way.

The problem isn’t that I don’t want to disciple my children.

I genuinely do.

The problem is that I don’t always want what discipleship requires from me.

• Discipleship is slower.

• It requires more presence.

• More patience.

• More intention.

• More conversations.

• More curiosity.

• Fewer distractions.

It asks me to stop what I’m doing.

To ask another question.

To explain instead of simply demanding.

To think beyond the next thirty seconds and toward the next thirty years.

Sometimes I just want them to shut their mouths and do what I said because I said so.

That’s the very tension that shows up in our food choices, our financial choices, our word choices, our time management choices and just about everywhere else.

The goal isn’t to eliminate the tension. It’s not to somehow make yourself want it so bad that the work feels easy. The goal is to manage the tension well.

Here’s what I’ve learned about moments like that.

They’re fleeting.

They can feel transformational at the time and be less than a memory in 12 hours.

Nothing about your circumstances pauses to honor your moment of clarity.

Fortunately, consistency isn’t built by having more breakthroughs.

It’s built by doing something with the ones you already have.

If you want to turn a moment into a movement, you have to anchor it.

You have to bring other people into it.

• I told my husband. I asked him to help me.

• I shared with my girlfriends and asked them to pray for me and ask me how it’s going.

• I asked God to show me the moments where I can practice today. Instead of praying, "Help me become a better mom," I've been praying, "Help me recognize the opportunities You give me to practice becoming one."

I’ve been feeling super grateful that I didn’t miss this breakthrough.

My friend could have decided not to share. She could have opted for the appearance of knowing it all and doing it all well to the risk of being open and vulnerable.

I could have opted into, “I’m doing pretty well. I’m doing better than a lot of people I know!”

It would’ve been so easy to reassure myself.

• I spend a lot of time with my kids.

• We eat dinner together almost every night.

• I’m home more than most parents get to be.

• They know I love them.

All of that is true.

None of it would’ve helped me grow. None of it would have shown me where I have a costly weakness.

One of the easiest ways to avoid a breakthrough is to defend yourself from needing one.

“I’m doing better than I used to.”

“I’m doing better than most people.”

“I’m not that bad.”

That all might be true.

But those thoughts can become incredibly expensive if they keep us from asking a better question.

Where do I still need to grow? What needs to change?

I would’ve missed this entire realization if I had been more interested in feeling better about myself than telling myself the truth.

And honestly...

I’m so grateful my friend was willing to tell the truth about where she was struggling.

Because her honesty created an opportunity for mine.

I wonder how many breakthroughs we’re missing because we’re all trying so hard to look like we’re doing fine.

I don’t know what area of your life this applies to.

Maybe it’s parenting.

Maybe it’s your marriage.

Maybe it’s your faith.

Maybe it’s your health.

Maybe, like me, you’ve quietly realized that somewhere along the way, your immediate objective has replaced your deeper purpose.

If that’s true, don’t waste the moment.

Tell yourself the truth.

Tell someone else the truth.

Pray over it.

Then tomorrow...

Practice it.

Because moments of clarity don’t change our lives.

The choices we make after them do.

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Take this for what it’s worth as I don’t watch much TV, but it’s the best show I’ve watched in years.

The other night, we were watching the episode where they brought a new bull onto the farm. The bull’s name is Endgame and he is an absolute force.

Image: Prime Video

My husband Chris and I had what felt like a random exchange about the ring in the bull’s nose and how it helps them control such a big animal.

I never imagined that a conversation about a bull’s nose ring would lead to one of the most unsettling realizations I’ve had in years.

Or that it would change the way I think about something I interact with every single day.

In fact, hold me to this:

It will change how I live.

I have so much to say…

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Not a conversation with another person.

The one happening in my own head.

This episode is about the mental loop I found myself in, why I think almost all of us experience it whenever we try to make a meaningful change, and the shift that’s …

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As I read it, nodding along thinking, “I’ve felt that…”, I suddenly realized something that made me incredibly uncomfortable…

I could build a compelling case for blowing up my own life.

Easily. 🫣😬

I’m not saying I want to (I don’t), but I was startled by how little it would take for me to convince myself that I should.

And it didn’t take much much for me to see that very pattern in many other areas of my life.

There’s a perspective from which I can talk myself into blowing up my marriage. I could lead myself down that path and convince myself it was a good choice. (In fact, I did that in my first marriage.)

There’s a perspective from which I can talk myself into blowing up my goals. (I’ve done that too. Probably thousands of times, if not more.)

There’s even a perspective from which blowing up at my kids feels completely understandable (I intentionally bolded “at” because I know there’s a risk of someone walking away thinking I said I was going to blow up my kids. False. That didn’t happen.) 😂

Every one of those arguments can feel right.

Every one of them can be built from things that are genuinely true.

It made me question how quickly I trust a convincing argument built from carefully selected truths.

I wasn’t scared of my ability to lie to myself. I was startled by how persuasive the truth could be, even (especially?) when it was incomplete.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear about something: this has nothing to do with whether she’s making the right decision. I have absolutely no opinion about that. I don’t know her marriage, her circumstances, or what brought her here. This isn’t about the woman who wrote the article, so let’s all make a mental note of that.

It’s about a pattern I recognized in myself while reading her words.

It’s not that I’m lying to myself.

It’s that it’s incredibly easy to let only selected truths become disproportionately influential.

There’s one shift that has changed my marriage, my health, my parenting, and my business more than almost anything else I’ve learned.

It has made better decisions easier.

It has changed what happens in the space between a thought feeling true and my deciding to trust it.

I want to show you exactly what that shift is.

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It wasn’t that I thought it was physically impossible. I realized that if I did the work consistently, it would likely be effective.

I just came to believe that it was impossible for me to do the work consistently.

Maybe I loved food too much. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I do love ice cream…

Maybe I wasn’t disciplined enough.

Looking back, I think almost all of that came down to one fundamental misunderstanding. It’s one I still see every single day in almost every client I work with.

I believed that if I wanted the outcome badly enough, I would consistently want to do what creating that outcome required. Or least I’d consistently be willing to do what it required.

I thought if I wanted the goal enough, it should be enough for me to want to do the work consistently.

That wasn’t true for me.

There are plenty of people online who will tell you, “If your why is strong enough, you’ll endure any how.”

🤮 (that’s how I feel about that)

But I mean, it does sound nice. Logical, even. Very shareable social media content.

However, real life is complicated and nuanced than cute, clean quotes. The pursuit of goals and change in real life often includes many complex variables and influences.

It’s just not that straightforward, for most of us. And that’s okay!

I really wanted to lose the weight. I still didn’t feel like eating meat and veggies instead of chips and queso a lot of the time.

I really wanted to get stronger and more fit, and I didn’t want to workout consistently.

I really wanted a peaceful, organized home and I still didn’t feel like folding laundry or cleaning the kitchen at the end of a long day.

You can genuinely want the outcome and genuinely not want to do what creating that outcome requires.

I actually don’t think that’s unusual or even problematic!

In fact, I think that’s the tension nearly all of us are navigating every day, to varying degrees and intensities.

It shows up in our health.

Also in our finances. You can want financial freedom and still not want to stick to your budget.

Our marriages. You can want a more connected marriage and still not want to carve out the time for daily connection.

Our faith. You can want to live a life of faith and obedience and still not want to say “no” to the things keeping you from that.

Our parenting. You can want to invest in close bonds with your kids and still not want to put your phone down to play cars.

Our work.

Our businesses.

Our homes.

For years, I thought the goal was to eliminate that tension.

Spoiler: that’s not the goal.

The goal is to manage that tension well.

Not everything is a problem to solve. Some things are simply tensions to be managed.

Managing this one poorly looks like letting your feelings make your decisions.

• “I don’t feel like it, so I won’t.”

• It looks like waiting until Monday.

• Or after vacation.

• Or until work slows down.

• Or until the kids go back to school.

It looks like assuming that because you don’t have time to do everything you planned, you shouldn’t do anything at all.

Managing it well looks different.

It means accepting that the tension is here today and asking a better question.

Not, “How do I make myself want to do this?”

But, “Given the time, energy and circumstances I have today, what’s the next thing I can do?”

One thing that’s helped me is thinking about action as a dial instead of a switch.

Most of us treat it like it’s either on or off.

Either I do the whole workout or I skip it.

Either I clean the entire kitchen or I don’t bother.

Either I write for an hour or I don’t open the document.

But action isn’t a switch.

It’s a dial.

Some days you can turn it all the way up.

Some days you can only turn it a little.

It’s still on.

And here’s where I think we get stuck.

The thing we think we should do doesn’t fit the time, energy, or circumstances we actually have.

The thing we could do, we dismiss as too small to matter.

So we do neither.

Maybe managing the tension well simply means refusing to make either of those an excuse.

Keep turning the dial.

Whatever that looks like today.

Managing the tension well isn’t about pretending you have different feelings or different circumstances.

It’s about staying in pursuit of the life you want with the feelings and circumstances you actually have.

That’s the work.

Not eliminating the tension.

Learning to move forward anyway.

Are you with me? I’d love to hear what managing the tension well looks like for you!

I was just scrolling innocently, as one does, and saw a post from a random that suggested we should not pursue consistency, but instead should pursue devotion.

I paused, because I’ve had a program called The Consistency Course for years and I’ve been helping people get more consistent for going on 13 years.

As I started thinking about the difference between consistency and devotion, I realized he’s absolutely onto something!

Consistency has an easy exit where devotion doesn’t.

If you break your streak of consistency, you start on Monday. You can be consistent with nutrition one month and not the next month.

But there’s no checkbox for devotion. You can’t dip in and out of devotion. If you did, you wouldn’t be devoted.

Consistency is a metric. Devotion is a posture.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the word consistency, nor do I think that it’s a futile pursuit.

However, the problem for many people is that often what they think is a pursuit of consistency is really just a shame response to their own inconsistency.

This transforms consistency from a delightful pursuit to a punishment. If you’ve broken enough streaks, it starts to feel personal. When consistency is fueled by should, by shame, it becomes something truly unsustainable.

Punishment does not produce consistency. It produces avoidance. It produces resentment. It produces a very specific kind of exhaustion that ends in I don’t even care anymore. I’m done trying. What’s the point?

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My devotion as a mother is not powered by discipline and willpower.

My devotion as a mother is powered by love.

I don’t dip in and out of devotion because I don’t dip in and out of love.

But I can dip in and out of consistency when it’s fueled by shame, should or even by willpower.

Being a devoted mom certainly doesn’t mean being a perfect mom, but it also means I’m never “off”. I’ve never stopped. There’s no sense of “starting fresh on Monday”.

Which brings me to the rub. The part that might make you feel like devotion isn’t something you can tap into for your goal. (I think you’re wrong, but I totally see and understand the initial barrier…)

You can be consistent about something you don’t love. You cannot be devoted to it.

Consistency needs enforcement precisely because love isn’t there to fuel it.

So we substitute. We substitute discipline. We substitute rules. We substitute shame. We substitute “should”.

People are trying to enforce behaviors on top of a relationship they don’t have.

They want their body to look different. They want their doctor off their back. They want to see a different number or fit into the jeans they used to fit into. And so the whole thing becomes negotiation and enforcement on repeat.

Fear is the fuel, or shame is the fuel, or aspiration is the fuel. But there’s no love.

Now, I know what some of you just did with that.

You just decided you’re disqualified. Well, I don’t love my body, so devotion isn’t available to me.

Wrong.

Don’t tap out because of a lack of creativity or intellectual endurance.

That sentiment is purely an indicator of where the attention needs to go.

You don’t have to love your cellulite to love yourself. You can hate your job and still love your life. There are parts of motherhood I don’t like at all at all and it takes nothing from the devotion.

(I wrote about how I’m making my life more interesting here…turns out, unexpectedly, it’s making me love myself more!)

I’ve never needed willpower to be a good mom to my kids.

I’ve never needed a checklist.

There’s a devotion there, and it’s fueled by love and loyalty.

I feel the same way about my marriage. There is a devotion there that is fueled by love and loyalty. Not by willpower. Not by a checklist.

So is it possible that the number one thing missing isn’t your willpower, and isn’t even a plan, but a fundamental lack of love?

I’d love to be a partner in exploring that for you.

And ironically, maybe the best place to do that is inside The Consistency Course.

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I’m afraid of bees.

And I’m a beekeeper. 😂

Every week, usually on Tuesday, I inspect my hives. Every Tuesday, I have the same thought:

These bees could kill me.

I know they probably won’t.

Every Tuesday, I say to my bee-buddy, “WTF are we even doing?!”

I’ve been stung enough times that I now wear two bee suits because more than once, a bee has found its way up my pant leg. Once it’s trapped against my inner thigh, it runs out of escape options and inner thigh bee stings are unpleasant.

I’m still afraid of bees.

I’m also really glad I said yes to becoming a beekeeper.

One of the things that’s become more important to me over the last several years is having a life that feels interesting.

Not dramatic. Not glamorous.

Just...interesting. Enjoyable. More than the mundane, though I fully accept there will be a lot of the mundane.

I don’t want to move from one obligation to the next, one week to the next, one season to the next, feeling like every day is basically a variation of the day before it.

I have three young kids. I run a business. I run a nonprofit. We have chickens, goats, guinea hens, bees, and a garden. I volunteer at church.

My life is full.

But I don’t think “full” and “interesting” are the same thing. Life can be full but also boring, monotonous and uninteresting.

It’s probably why most people answer, “How are you?” with “Busy”. Ugh. No thanks.

Beekeeping has made my life more interesting in ways I never expected.

I notice things I never noticed before.

I pay attention to what’s blooming.

I wonder how several days of rain will affect the hive.

I wonder if it’s too hot for them. Too cold. What the brood pattern means. If there’s enough larva.

I genuinely look forward to inspections because I never know what I’m going to find when I open the lid.

Some weeks I leave feeling relieved.

Some weeks I leave with three new problems to solve.

Either way, I leave thinking about something interesting.

I think a lot of people would say they want their lives to feel more interesting.

More enjoyable.

More than just work and errands and obligations and the same conversations on repeat.

But I also think a lot of people stop that conversation almost as soon as it starts.

When they imagine an interesting life, their minds go to the biggest, most obvious versions of it.

• Quit the job.

• Travel the world.

• Buy land.

• Move somewhere new.

• Start the business.

• Write the book.

And once they’ve decided those things aren’t realistic right now, they stop looking.

They don’t keep asking, “Well then what else?”

The search just...ends.

There’s a quote by the poet Rumi that I love and often reference when I’m coaching clients:

“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?”

We build those prisons ourselves.

We dismiss the things that feel too big.

I can’t.

Then we dismiss the things that feel too small.

Why bother?

Somewhere between those two stories are hundreds of possibilities that never even get considered.

Why? Why is that the pattern?

I think we’re looking for a level of certainty that life rarely offers.

• We want to know we’ll enjoy it.

• We want to know we’ll be good at it.

• We want to know it’ll fit into our schedule.

• We want to know it’ll be worth the money.

• We want to know it won’t be a waste of time.

• We want to know we won’t be scared. 🐝

And when we can’t find something that checks every one of those boxes, we often decide there isn’t anything.

I don’t think that’s because there aren’t good options. I think it’s because our standards eliminate them before they ever become possibilities.

Beekeeping certainly didn’t check all those boxes for me.

• I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it (I do, and I also don’t)

• I knew I’d be scared.

• I wasn’t convinced I had the time (sometimes it’s a challenge to fit it in, and that’s okay!)

• I definitely didn’t know if it would be worth it (I don’t even know what that means, really).

None of those are reasons to not begin.

Gardening didn’t check all those boxes either.

This spring I spent about fifty dollars on seeds.

Tomatoes. Carrots. Cucumbers. Spaghetti squash. Beets. I even planted potatoes.

It’s not expensive.

It doesn’t take much space.

It doesn’t take hours every day.

But it has made my life more interesting.

Now I walk outside wondering what’s ready.

I pay attention to the weather differently.

I notice what’s growing and what’s struggling.

Last year my carrots didn’t do well in grow bags, so this year I tried a raised bed instead.

A few days ago my kids and I harvested them without knowing what we’d find. Some were tiny. Some were perfect. Some looked completely ridiculous. Then we stood there trying to figure out whether carrot greens are actually edible.

The garden has given us things to anticipate.

Things to wonder about.

Things to learn about.

Things to talk about.

That’s a remarkable return on fifty dollars.

The bees have done the same thing.

I’m still afraid of them.

I still don’t always know what I’m looking at when I inspect a hive.

I still wonder if I’m making mistakes.

If I’d waited until I wasn’t afraid, I wouldn’t have bees.

If I’d waited until I knew enough, I wouldn’t have bees.

If I’d waited until life got less busy, I wouldn’t have bees.

Instead, I have something that has changed what I notice.

It has changed what I think about. It has changed what I talk about.

It has given me something to anticipate every single week.

That’s a remarkable return on two hours.

I don’t think everyone should become a beekeeper. Or plant a garden.

I do think almost everyone has something they’ve dismissed because it felt too big.

Or too small.

Or too uncertain.

Or too inconvenient.

Maybe it’s bread.

Maybe it’s watercolor.

Maybe it’s restoring old furniture.

Maybe it’s taking a pottery class.

Whatever it is, I think it’s worth giving more things a fair hearing.

Not because they’ll all become lifelong passions, but because one of them might quietly change the texture of your days.

And you don’t have to quit your job, move across the world, or reinvent your life for that to happen.

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I didn’t cry. But I wanted to. And I made more than a few panicked phone calls.

Here is what the letter said, roughly, once I calmed down enough to actually read it.

Notice of encroachment and noncompliance.

Which sounds bureaucratic and dry until you understand what it actually means, which is that we now have a legal cloud on the title of our home. A defect. Meaning we cannot sell this house until it is resolved. Meaning if the trust decided to sue us for noncompliance, they would win, and we would pay their legal fees on top of our own. Meaning the fantasy version where we shrug and say this is our property, come at us, is not a real option. (But if it was, it’s def the one my husband would choose.)

So. Let me back up and tell you how we got here.

When we bought this house in 2019, we knew part of the property was in a conservation restriction. Not the wetlands, don’t-cut-the-trees kind. The previous owners had restricted a portion of it for agricultural use only, meaning it couldn’t be subdivided or developed. We wanted the land for agriculture. We are using it for agriculture. We have guinea hens and chickens and goats, and are hoping to add cows soon. We have a greenhouse and bees and apple trees and a blueberry enclosure. No problem.

😅

Oh, the foreshadowing.

In 2021, we put in a pool. We pulled the permits. We paid the town. We paid the contractor. We did every single thing you are supposed to do. This is not a story about a couple who sneaked in an illegal pool in the middle of the night. This is a story about a couple who did it by the book and still ended up on the wrong side of the line. Literally.

A couple of years after we put the pool in, we came across a map. And the map showed us something we did not know when we bought the property, and did not know when we permitted the pool, and did not know when we paid the contractor real money to install it: our pool is slightly over the restricted line. Of all the acreage restricted for agricultural use, we are misusing about three percent of it.

Not exactly nothing. Not exactly a crime either.

We weren’t planning to sell so it didn’t take up too much mental real estate.

Then, a month ago, we got a phone call from the trust. They wanted to inspect the property. They came out. They saw what they saw.

And this week, the letter.

Our options, as spelled out in the letter, are: petition the state to amend the restricted line, physically move the pool, or fill in the pool.

Honestly, I don’t like any of those options.

Filling in the pool. We love the pool. The kids love the pool. Our friends come over for the pool. We put it in right after our daughter Dagny died, when I was pregnant with Roman. I have an emotional attachment to all it represents for us and our family. Filling it in feels like a small tragedy.

Moving the pool. This is essentially paying for a whole new pool somewhere else on the property, plus demoing the existing one, plus tearing out the fence, plus tearing out the decking, plus restoring the ground back to agricultural condition. Rough estimate somewhere between $60K and $100K, depending on how much of it we do ourselves and how bad the demo is. It’s not just paying for a new pool. It’s paying to erase the old one and then paying for a new one.

Amending the line. This sounds like the clean option. It is not. It could cost $30K, $40K, $70K in legal and consulting and surveying fees, and at the end of that process, the state can simply say no. There is no guarantee of approval. It is a genuine gamble. And I don’t gamble. Also, and this is the part that made my blood pressure do something interesting, the trust wants us to open an escrow account to cover their expenses through the amendment process. Fully funded by us. Refilled as they invoice. For expenses they will define, on a timeline they will set, for as long as they think the process needs.

Which is, and I want to be really clear here, a blank check. A blank check written to an organization I do not know. For a process I do not control. With no cap. No definition. No timeline.

Even if I wanted to do that (and I don’t), I’m not writing anyone a blank check. That’s financial irresponsibility at the max.

I called a contractor friend of ours the morning after we got the letter, and I said, please, please tell me I am missing some obvious cheap fix. Please tell me you have seen this before and it turns out there is a $2,000 solution nobody talks about. He listened. He asked a couple of questions. And then he said, no. There isn’t one.

Cool. Great. Awesome.

So there I was this week. In it. Three bad options, all expensive, all uncertain, all with real downsides. And a hard truth that we did everything right on our end and are still on the hook for it.

The obvious solutions are real money. That money could be a barn. Cows. Multiple irrigation systems. Braces for my kids and also your kids. It is a hundred things we actually want to do on this property. And instead it is going to fix a problem that exists because a line on a map is three percent off from a legal pool.

But this isn’t just be venting or hoping you have an idea I haven’t thought of…

I want to walk you through the four questions I keep asking myself this week, in the order they came online, because these are the only reason I have functioned like a normal human this week instead of spiraling.

They are also the questions I ask myself when small annoying things happen, which I’ll explain in a minute. This week they got their real workout.

One. Would I put this problem in the bag?

The first question I ask when something has knocked me sideways is this. Imagine every problem in the world is in a giant brown bag. Every single one. Every diagnosis. Every custody battle. Every financial ruin. Every dying parent. Every terrified midnight. Every genuinely terrifying thing that human beings deal with on any given day.

Your problem goes in the bag with the rest.

Then you have to reach in and pull one out at random. That is your new problem.

Would you make the trade?

For me, hell no. I will keep the pool problem. I will keep it every single day of the week. Because the honest answer is that I do not want any of the other options in that bag. My problem is a very expensive administrative annoyance about a permitted pool on a piece of land I love. It is not war. It’s not death. It is very expensive and very annoying and it is still the one I would choose over almost anything else that could be in there.

That single question does something to me instantly. It ends the pity party. It stops the are you kidding me, this is ridiculous, why is this happening, this is so unfair spiral. Because when I honestly ask myself if I would trade, the answer is no. And you cannot maintain full-blown outrage about a problem you would choose over the alternatives.

That question is a fire extinguisher for panic. Use it accordingly.

Two. How can I move more slowly?

Once the panic is down enough to think, the next question I ask is: how can I move through this more slowly?

A huge percentage of the dumb decisions I have made in my life came from making them too fast. Panic makes you rush. Rushing makes you pick from the options you can already see. And the options you can already see are almost always the three most obvious ones, often not the best ones.

So instead of asking what do I do, I ask what does it look like to move through this thoughtfully, prayerfully, deliberately? What is the version of me who is not panicking going to do next?

Usually the answer is: sleep on it. Talk to Chris about it. Pray about it. Ask three smart people. Don’t respond to anything for at least a few days. Maybe buy a couple of lottery tickets while I’m at it, because you can’t win if you don’t play! 😂

None of those are decisions. They are just space. And space is almost always the right first move.

For this specific problem, moving slowly means we are not deciding anything this month. We are gathering information. We are talking to people. We are getting quotes. We are learning what the amendment process actually looks like. We are learning what a pool move actually costs. We are not walking into a $30K legal engagement in a state of panic. We are moving at the pace of thinking, not at the pace of the letter.

The letter has a deadline, technically. But the deadline is not for making a decision. It is for responding to say we received it and we are working on it. Which we did. And now we get to think.

Three. What are the less obvious options?

Once the panic is down and we’re moving slowly, we get to the fun part.

I am going to tell you about one of my favorite games to play, and I promise you it is genuinely one of the most valuable tools I have.

It is called stupid idea time.

The way it works is this. You sit down and you brainstorm every single possible option you can think of. Not the three obvious ones. All of them. Good ones, bad ones, expensive ones, cheap ones, responsible ones, irresponsible ones. Include ones that are outright ridiculous. Include ones that are borderline illegal. Include the ones that would embarrass you if you said them in a meeting.

Here is a partial list from our stupid idea session this week.

• Sell the house.

• Sue the town for approving the permit in the first place.

• Ignore the letter and see what happens (I know, I know, but it belongs on the list).

• Move to Vermont.

• Convert the pool into a large fish farm for agricultural use.

• Declare that my children now identify as ducks and it’s their home now.

• Argue in a hearing that a pool full of humans is technically also a habitat.

• Rent our current house and buy a different one with a legal pool.

• Pay a person somewhere to make this go away. (Bribe. I mean bribe. I have never bribed anyone. Is there a Substack for this? Is it more of a Discord thing? How does this work? Do you approach it like a home renovation budget? Do you ask for a quote? I have questions.)

The point of stupid idea time is not that any one of these is the answer. The point is that once you let yourself brainstorm without filtering, real actual options that were not on your original list of three start showing up. Nine times out of ten, the answer I end up landing on is one I only found because I let myself say something ridiculous first.

Stupid idea time cracks the problem open. The clean thinking follows.

Four. Is it possible this is the best thing that could have happened?

The fourth question is the biggest one. And I want to be really clear about something before I ask it, because there is a version of this question that is toxic-positivity garbage and I actually hate that stuff.

I am not asking is everything happening for a reason. I am not asking is the universe protecting me. I am not asking you to slap a blessed sticker on a financial disaster and call it growth. Please. Because I just can’t with that. Bless your heart if that’s your vibe. It’s not mine.

I am asking honestly: is there any version of this where I look back in a year, or five years, and think, that was actually good for us?

Is it possible this is happening for us and not to us?

What would that have to look like? What would we have to do with it to make that true?

Even asking the question shifts something. Because the answer is almost always yes. There is a version. And once you can see the version, you know what direction to work in.

This week, this question is the one that actually cracked something open.

Here is what I said to Chris this weekend, after the panic had settled and we had been running through stupid ideas for a day. I said: imagine we spend $40K to amend the line. And then imagine two months later, we want to build the barn we have been talking about for two years. Now we have to go beg the trust for permission, hat in hand, on the very land we just paid $40K to be less restricted on. Or imagine we spend $60K to move the pool, and it is in a slightly worse location, and we still can’t build the barn on any of the good spots because they are all in the restricted area.

Either way, we are still living inside their restriction. We just paid tens of thousands of dollars to be slightly less inconvenienced by it.

But then I said: What if we spend a much larger amount of money and demo the pool AND my office AND build the barn we actually want, on the unrestricted portion of the property, with an ADU above it that generates income to offset the loan? And we put in a new pool in an even better spot. A bigger pool, maybe. With the diving board the kids want. Then we have the barn of our dreams, a nicer pool, on land nobody can tell us what to do with, and a rental income stream that helps pay for the whole thing. And the pool being filled in is no longer a tragedy. It is the thing that made room for a much bigger plan.

That’s a big project. Rough number, somewhere between $450K and $650K, depending on the barn size and how fancy the ADU gets and what construction costs actually look like when we run real quotes.

Which is, and I want to be honest with you, a wildly expensive answer to a pool problem.

But here is the thing. If we take one of the three options in the letter, we are spending $40K to $100K to stay exactly where we are, with the same restrictions, and the same trust looking over our shoulder, and the same limitations on what we can build. If we take the bigger swing, we are spending five to ten times as much money, but we are getting a barn we actually want, on land we can actually use, plus income we do not currently have.

Is it worth it? I do not know yet. We are running the numbers. It could turn out to be insane and we could not do it. It could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to this property. It is genuinely TBD.

But I would not be looking at this option at all if I had not asked the fourth question.

If I had panicked and picked one of the three, I would have spent tens of thousands of dollars to stay stuck. Instead, I might spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to actually build something.

That is what the fourth question does. It does not solve the problem. It reframes the problem so a much better solution can enter the chat.

Now let me tell you the honest twist, which I think is the most useful part of this whole essay.

By running my $60K problem through the four questions, I ended up with a $500K problem.

And I am now running that one through the same four questions.

Would I put the $500K problem in the bag? No. Because it is not a burden. It is an opportunity that terrifies me a little. I will keep it.

Can I move slowly? Yes. Nothing about this decision has to be made this month. We can spend the summer running numbers and getting quotes and thinking honestly about whether the ADU rental income is real or fantasy.

What are the stupid ideas? All of them. Build the barn in phases. Live in the ADU and rent our house. Find a grant for the barn.

Is it possible this is the best thing that could have happened?

Yes. Genuinely yes. There is a version of the next five years where the certified letter that made me want to cry in June is the thing that made us finally build the barn and put in the ADU and set up the farm the way we always talked about but never had the forcing function to actually do. There is also a version where we run the numbers and it doesn’t pencil and we end up filling in the pool and moving on with our lives. Both are still on the table.

The point is not that we already know the answer. The point is that we are asking a completely different set of questions than we were asking a week ago. And a completely different set of questions is going to produce a completely different life.

And listen. I use these tools on small stuff too, not just the big letters.

I took my three year old twins to their first dentist appointment recently. It cost me a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars. For a first dentist visit for two toddlers. They didn’t even have cavities. I wasn’t happy.

Then I ran it through the brown bag. Would I trade my perfectly healthy twins had an expensive first dentist appointment for someone else’s problem at random? Hell no. I’ll keep it. And just like that, I was not fuming anymore. I was writing a check for a thousand dollars and getting on with my day.

Same tool. Whole different scale. Works either way.

So here is what I want to leave you with.

The four questions do not solve your problem. They never will. What they do is keep you sane long enough to see a fourth option, or a fifth, or an eleventh, that you never would have found if you had picked from the three you can already see in your panic.

The next time you are in it, in the sh*t, in the weeds, underwater, staring at a problem where every option looks bad, I want you to try any or all of these.

Would you put this in the bag?

How can you move more slowly?

What are the stupid ideas nobody is saying out loud?

Is there any version of this where it turns out to be the best thing that could have happened?

That is it. That is the whole thing.

I do not yet know how the pool ends. I do not yet know how the barn ends. I do not yet know if the ADU pencils. I do not know what the trust is going to say, or the lender, or the builder, or the state.

What I know is that we are asking bigger questions than we were asking a week ago. And bigger questions produce bigger answers.

Sometimes the best thing that ever happens to you is a certified letter that ruins your Tuesday.

We’ll see.

When the kids went to spend a few days at my sister’s house, they wanted updates. And because I had to report back to them, I was paying closer attention to those flowers than I normally would have.

That’s when I noticed the problem.

The zinnias had pushed through the dirt and grown a couple of inches, and then they stopped. Day after day, nothing. Not dying. Not growing. But nothing was happening.

So I did what I think most of us do when something we care about stops making progress. I started trying to fix it.

My first move was to make a big change. I found my husband in the yard and asked him to bring up his chainsaw. 😂

Maybe they need more sun, so we should take down these 3 huge tree limbs.

But why stop there? I had more ideas…

They need more water.

The soil needs compost.

I should thin them out.

Is it too early to pinch them off?

I ran through every intervention I could think of, ready to take action on all of them, ready to cut down part of a tree over a flower bed that had been in the ground for two weeks.

Then in a very 2026 move, I asked AI and here’s what I learned:

There is a stretch early in a plant’s life where it looks like nothing at all is happening above the ground. But underneath the soil, out of sight, the plant is pouring all of its energy into building its root system. It can last weeks. And then, once the roots are established, the plant shoots up. Fast.

Nothing was wrong with our zinnias. They were doing the work they needed to do, I just couldn’t couldn’t see it…yet.

It’s possible that my interventions could do more harm than good. What they needed was patience.

The gap we can’t stand

We want our results to show up in tandem with our effort. We want them to arrive at the same time, on the same day, in a clean and satisfying line. And they almost never do.

There is a gap between when you put the work in and when you get to see it. Sometimes the gap is often longer than we want it to be. Many of us quit before we get there, again and again.

It’s the debt that barely moves for the first several months. It’s the scale that won’t budge even though your choices are consistently improving. It’s the training you keep showing up for before the mirror has any idea what you’ve been doing. It’s the business that isn’t producing yet while the foundation is being laid.

And that gap, the stretch where the effort is going in and the fruit is not showing yet, is exactly where most of us quit. Not because the plan was broken.

Because we could not tolerate the part where we couldn’t see it working.

Right?!

I’ve heard it said more elegantly than I ever could:

You can’t have a fruit system without a root system.

We want the fruit while we are still in the root stage. Though we understand we have to put the work in, we actually think: if I don’t start seeing fruit soon, I’m out. It’s not working. Why bother.

So we walk away, over and over, right before the part where it shoots up.

This is how impatience works.

The question I want you to sit with

When I talk to people who feel stuck, who are certain their plan isn’t working and it’s time to try something new, I ask them one question.

Have you been consistent long enough to endure the painful waiting without jumping ship?

Not “did you try?” Not “did you have a strong couple of weeks?” Not “sometimes” or “sorta”. Consistent. Over time. Through the stretch where you weren’t seeing results.

Often the answer I get back is “kinda.”

Kinda is a no. If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no. If you have to soften it and qualify it and build a little case for it, then you weren’t consistent through the root stage. You were consistent right up until it got uncomfortable, until the fruit didn’t show on your timeline, and then you started troubleshooting and adjusting and reaching for the chainsaw.

Most of us are grading our own roots on a curve. We give ourselves credit for the effort we intended, not the effort we actually put in. And then, when the fruit doesn’t come, we blame the plan instead of the patience.

Why I’m removing the fruit on purpose

There’s a second part to this, and it goes beyond simply waiting.

I have apple trees, and this year I have to go out and pick the blossoms off of them. On purpose. I have to remove the very thing I planted them to produce.

Why? Because a young tree only has so much energy. If I let it spend that energy making apples this season, it spends it on fruit instead of on itself. So I take the blossoms off and force the energy back into the tree. Into the trunk, the branches, the roots, the actual structure and capacity of the thing. So that next year, and every year after, it can fruit, and fruit well.

I am choosing no fruit now so I can have a stronger tree for a long time.

And I think there is something in that we don’t want to hear. You have a finite amount of energy. You genuinely do. You cannot fruit in every area of your life in the same season. You can’t go hard on the debt and dial in your nutrition and build muscle and renovate the house and launch the new thing all at once and expect every one of them to bloom.

We spread ourselves thin across everything we want, split the energy six ways, and then panic when none of it produces. We decide we’re failing or that nothing works or we can’t do it.

You’re not failing. You’re trying to fruit everywhere at once, and that’s why nothing is rooting anywhere.

Not everything has to fruit this season.

That is a permission and a discipline at the same time. You get to choose where the energy goes. Maybe this is the season your health fruits and your home just stays roots for a while. Maybe this is the season you go all in on the debt and let something else quietly hold.

The part that matters most

Here is what all of this is really about.

The stalling period is predictable. You are going to hit it. Every single time, in every pursuit that actually matters, there will be a stretch where the work is going in and the fruit is not showing yet. It is not a maybe. It is a guarantee.

That stretch is where the negotiation starts. Maybe I should switch. Maybe this isn’t working. Maybe I should quit and try something else. It always comes at the same predictable place.

You can see it coming. And anything you can see coming, you can prepare for before you get there.

The people who make it to the fruit are not the ones with more willpower in the hard moment. They’re the ones who built the structure ahead of time, so that when the root stage gets quiet and boring and uncertain, they don’t go looking for the chainsaw. They stay. They let the roots do their work.

So before you abandon the thing you were about to give up on, go look at it honestly. Ask whether you’ve been consistent over time, hell yes or no. Ask whether you’ve given those roots enough time to do what roots do.

You might not need a new plan.

You might just need to put down the chainsaw.

I went deeper into all of this on the podcast, including the full conversation about the consistency question and the apple trees. Listen to episode 1428 here: