God Is Still My Shelter
There are times when I sit back and look at the world, my life, and my circumstances and wonder what might be coming next. I reflect on the hardships I never knew I would face and imagine how much harder it would have been to make it through without our Heavenly Father by my side.
And yet, even with the clarity of hindsight, I often look ahead with worry and angst, wondering how I’ll handle the next storm—as if God were no longer my shelter.
I’ve wrestled with this especially in my journey as a writer. When I feel unqualified, I find myself asking how to trust God with the gifts and calling He has given me.
The Call to Write
When I first dreamed of becoming a writer and author, I didn’t feel qualified to claim authority. Time and again, I heard people say, “You have to present yourself as an authority in your niche.” But imposter syndrome weighed heavily on me. I heard what they were saying, yet the insecurities in my heart—the ones telling me I wasn’t enough—overpowered any possibility of seeing myself as an authority.
To me, authority meant being qualified, knowledgeable, experienced, and formally trained in whatever topic I wanted to discuss. For so much of my life, I had believed I was “not enough.” Surely, I had no place becoming an authority on anything.
And yet, the tugging at my heart said otherwise.
My desire to write overshadowed my doubt. The need to feel my fingers tapping the keyboard, watching words flow from the inner chambers of my soul, called to me day and night.
So I started. I wrote. And through doubt, I continued.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years.
Almost daily—sometimes weekly—I checked my analytics, only to see no growth. No progress. No sales.
Nothing.
Discouragement set in, and doubt screamed in my mind:
Obviously, I’m not meant to be a writer.
So I quit.
Yet again, the tugging of my heart—the desire to put words on paper—sang from within me.
I’ll give it another try, I told myself.
Then, when progress didn’t come, I’d quit again.
What was I doing wrong? Why weren’t people interested in what I was writing? Was I not good enough? Was I writing for the wrong audience? Maybe I didn’t even know who my audience was.
And somewhere in the middle of all that questioning, I began to realize something:
Somehow, I was my audience.
Maybe that was part of the point. Before I could minister to someone else through my writing, the Holy Spirit was ministering to me.
A Gift That Wasn’t About Me
I often found that as the words flowed from my heart, they weren’t simply my own thoughts and feelings. They were the Holy Spirit reminding me that I am enough, that I am God’s daughter, and that He has a plan and purpose for my life—no matter how things look right now.
As I continued to lean into my passion for writing, I began to understand that it wasn’t something I had created within myself. It was a God-given gift: a way to minister to others walking through similar situations.
Though I didn’t feel like enough, the Lord reminded me that success doesn’t come from my own strength or ability. It comes from Him.
If the gift was from God, perhaps I needed to stop focusing on my qualifications and start looking to the One who had called me.
During my regular Bible study, I was struck by the apostle Paul’s words about how others saw him: “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing” (2 Corinthians 10:10).
I have never been someone who speaks her mind openly. As a young child, I was quiet, shy, and reserved. I bottled up my feelings and rarely spoke my mind.
Yet I wrote.
I kept a diary through every stage of my life—from the time I learned to write, through adulthood, and even now.
When my tongue failed me, my hands never did.
Reading Paul’s words reminded me of Moses and his feelings of inadequacy. When God called him to speak to Pharaoh, Moses questioned his ability: “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent … I am slow of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10).
In that moment, I realized something more profound than ever before:
My writing, my gift, my passion—it was never about me, and it still isn’t.
I was never the source of the message, and it was never simply a matter of my own knowledge or authority. My belief is that the Holy Spirit speaks through me, offering readers the words they need to hear—just as He spoke through Paul, Moses, and so many others who shared the beautiful message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I had to realize that no matter how broken or unqualified I felt, anything I accomplished was not by my own strength, but by His.
Once I understood that, I could see my calling through a different lens.
Rethinking Success
Proverbs 16:9 tells us, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
And Proverbs 3:5–6 reminds us to “trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding. In all our ways acknowledge Him, and He will make our paths straight.”
Whether we’re business owners, aspiring writers, students, or parents, we can submit our plans to the Lord and ask Him for guidance. And when we sense Him leading us forward, we can take the next step with confidence, trusting Him with the outcome.
But what does success look like?
Sometimes the metrics tell us there’s no growth. No progress. No sales. Nothing.
But numbers cannot measure obedience.
Success isn’t measured by how much money we make, how many viewers we have, how many sales we drive, or how much we accumulate. It is measured by our faithfulness to the work God has called us to do—even when the visible results don’t reflect the effort we’ve put in.
Ultimately, success is measured not by the world’s standards, but by our faithfulness to Jesus. One day, we long to hear Him say:
“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
And to be gathered into His arms forever.
The Prize Is Not Here
The world may tell me I’m failing. The numbers may tell me there is no growth.
But if I am faithfully doing the work God has called me to do, then I am not failing.
Because ultimately, the prize is not here.
It is not found in numbers, recognition, money, sales, or any other measure of success the world can see.
It is found in eternity.
And in that moment, I will know that every step, every struggle, every unanswered question, every moment of doubt, and every time I wondered whether I was enough was never about proving myself.
It was about being faithful. It was about being obedient.
So when the world tells me I’m failing, I can remember that God is still my shelter. He is still establishing my steps. He is still completing His good work in me.
And that is enough.
Amen.
