One of my favorite things to create is nature-inspired handmade journals for people walking through their own healing journeys.
I hope each journal becomes more than a place to write. I hope it becomes an invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, and notice the quiet beauty of God’s creation.
There was a season in my life when I delivered newspapers. Each weekend, I followed the same winding roads through the valley, focused on getting to the next stop and finishing my route.
One autumn morning, something caught my attention.
The hillsides were glowing with brilliant shades of orange, gold, deep green, and rich brown. The mid-morning sunlight illuminated the valley in a way that took my breath away.
I had driven those same roads countless times.
Yet somehow, I had never really seen them.
For so many years, my thoughts had been consumed by survival, fear, pain, and uncertainty that I rarely noticed the beauty God had placed around me.
That morning became a quiet reminder that healing was changing the way I looked at the world. I ran back home to grab a camera to capture the moment.
In The Secret Darkness: Overcoming Abuse and Finding Freedom, I reflect on how survival, pain, fear, and uncertainty can consume our attention, leaving little room to notice the simple gifts surrounding us each day.
The flowers blooming quietly.
Butterflies drifting through the garden.
Birds singing from the treetops.
Sunlight stretching across the mountains.
The gentle rhythm of changing seasons.
Healing has taught me that beauty and darkness often exist side by side.
The pain of the past does not erase the beauty of the present. Sometimes, simply slowing down and sitting quietly with God’s creation reminds us that hope, grace, and peace are still there, waiting to be noticed.
Sometimes healing begins the moment we lift our eyes and see what has been there all along.
Is a reflective life writer and author of the upcoming memoir The Secret Darkness: Overcoming Abuse and Finding Freedom. Her writing explores healing, faith, creativity, and the journey of restoring scattered remnants into something beautiful again.
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