Dear Little Girl, You Don’t Have to Perform for God

There are mornings when the chair feels sacred.

Coffee gets cold beside you. Your Bible is open. The house is quiet. You write and pray and somehow an hour disappears because you have so much to say to God—and somehow, in the saying, you begin to hear Him too.

And then there are mornings like today.

The alarm has already gone off too many times. Your body is tired. The calendar is full. There are people who need you, work that isn't finished, texts waiting for answers, and approximately seventeen things running through your head before your feet even hit the floor.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, you can accidentally turn time with God into one more thing you're failing at.

I didn't pray long enough.

I barely read my Bible.

I didn't journal enough.

I didn't have some profound revelation.

I was distracted the entire time.

And suddenly, even quiet time has become a performance metric.

Dear Little Girl, I don't think that's what He wants.

I don't think God is sitting across from you with a stopwatch.

I don't think He's counting pages.

I don't think He's measuring the length of your prayers or grading the depth of what you wrote in your journal.

The Journal that changed my life….

I think He wants you.

That's it.

The you who sometimes has hours.

And the you who sometimes has five minutes.

The you who arrives peaceful and expectant.

And the you who drops into the chair already overwhelmed and says,

“Hi God. Crazy day. Love you. Come with me.”

Maybe that's the whole prayer.

And maybe that's enough.

Because relationship isn't measured by the length of the conversation.

Think about the people you love most. Some days you sit across the table and talk for hours. You tell stories. You cry. You laugh. You work through the hard things.

Other days it's a kiss on the cheek as someone runs out the door.

Love you. Be safe. Call me.

The brevity doesn't make the relationship less real.

Love was already there.

I think sometimes we forget that with God.

We can turn prayer into something we accomplish instead of Someone we walk with.

Jesus certainly withdrew to quiet places to pray. He showed us the importance of getting away, becoming still, and being with the Father.

But He didn't leave the Father behind when He left the quiet place.

He carried that relationship into the crowds.

Into meals.

Into interruptions.

Into long walks.

Into healing.

Into work.

Into exhaustion.

Maybe that's what I'm learning in these chairs.

The chair isn't the relationship.

The chair is where I remember the relationship.

And then I get up.

I teach the class.

These precious Girl Scouts earned their dance and friendship badge!

I answer the phone.

I drive the kid.

I make the dinner.

I tend to the body God gave me.

I do the next thing in front of me.

And God comes too.

There will be mornings when I have pages and pages to give Him.

There will be mornings when I have tears.

There will be mornings when I have questions.

And there will apparently be mornings when all I've got is:

Hi. I'm here. I love You. Help.

Maybe spiritual maturity isn't becoming better at performing quiet time.

Maybe it's becoming better at returning.

Returning when you're distracted.

Returning when you're tired.

Returning when you don't have anything profound to say.

Returning when yesterday wasn't your finest.

Returning even when all you have is a few minutes and a cup of coffee.

Because He was never asking for a performance.

He was asking for your presence.

And Dear Little Girl, you don't have to earn the presence of a God who has already promised you His.

So if today is one of those days, close the Bible when you need to.

Finish the coffee.

Get up from the chair.

And say:

“Come with me.”

Because He will.

And sometimes, that may be the most honest prayer you pray all day.

Love,
Worthy

Dear Little Girl, The Chair Was Never Empty

Three years ago, I sat on a stage with a simple chair beside me.

Just one empty chair.

The Chair Was Never Empty

That was the visual.

One chair for me.

One chair for God.

That's it.

Show up.

Sit down.

Talk to the One who never leaves.

What I didn't tell everyone that night was that I was living through one of the hardest seasons of my life.

Trey and I were separated.

Our marriage was ending.

And as I stood on that stage, I cried because I didn't want it to.

Speaking Through Tears….Held By Grace

My marriage felt like it was slipping through my fingers, and I honestly didn't know how the story would end.

I had originally planned to speak about my Good Life Journal—how it was born out of grief after losing my mom.

Instead...

I threw my notes away.

I spoke from my heart.

Months later, someone saw a picture from that night.

They quietly said,

"That picture always broke my heart.

It looked like someone was missing."

For a long time...

I thought they were right.

I thought that chair represented the person who wasn't there.

The husband I missed.

The future I couldn't see.

The life I thought I had lost.

But today...

I see that picture completely differently.

The chair was never empty.

Because God never left.

Even when Trey walked away...

God stayed.

Even when I cried more tears than I thought one person could cry...

God stayed.

Even when I questioned everything I believed about marriage, trust, and the future...

God stayed.

Day after day...one chair at a time.

Long before my marriage was restored...

My heart began to heal.

That was the first miracle.

Somewhere in those daily conversations, something inside me slowly changed.

I stopped trying to control every outcome.

I stopped believing my safety depended on another human being.

I stopped waiting for my circumstances to change before I allowed myself to breathe.

I discovered that I was never sitting in that second chair alone.

God had been there the entire time.

By His grace, Trey and I found our way back to one another.

Our marriage has been restored in ways I once thought were impossible.

Grace Wrote A Different Ending

But if I'm honest...

The greatest miracle wasn't that Trey came home.

The greatest miracle was discovering that even if he hadn't...God had never left.

Everything else grew from there.

So if you're sitting in a season that feels painfully quiet...

If someone you love is distant...

If you're waiting for healing...

If you're wondering whether hope is foolish...

Pull up a chair.

Not because every story ends the way mine did.

But because every story can be met by the same faithful God.

You don't have to have the right words.

You don't have to know how the story ends.

You don't have to fix a thing.

Just show up.

Sit down.

Be still.

Because healing doesn't begin when life gets easier.

It begins when you discover...

The chair beside you was never empty.

The One you've been longing for...

has been sitting there all along.

Love,

The girl who discovered God's presence was enough before His answers ever came.

💭 A Question to Journal On

Have you ever felt like you were waiting for someone—or something—to return before you could finally breathe?

What if the presence you've needed most has been with you all along?

🙏 A Prayer

Dear God,

Thank You for never walking away.

Thank You for staying when everything else felt uncertain.

Thank You for meeting me in the silence, in the waiting, and in the questions I didn't know how to ask.

Teach me to trust that Your presence is enough for today.

Help me believe that even when life feels unfinished, You are still writing a beautiful story.

And remind me, again and again, that the chair beside me has never been empty.

Amen.

With hope and healing,

Amy