What I Didn't Teach This Month (and Why)

May 2025

Reader.

Two weeks ago, I did something I’ve never done in five years of teaching Illuminate: I canceled our July session.

I felt like I was in a real-time lesson of what wisdom looks like—praying for wisdom about whether or not to lead a session focused on Lady Wisdom.

My 82-year-old dad was in ICU on life support, heading into his third surgery in three days. I was with my mom, who had just celebrated her 78th birthday — it’s embarrassing now to admit I even considered teaching.

Over the past two weeks, Dad has been in and out of ICU and spent a solid 10 days on life support. A fourth surgery. Another DNR conversation, even though we’d had one the week before with a different surgical team. By Saturday morning, it felt like he had only days left.

And yet—he rallied. With an ileostomy in place, he is still with us and as optimistic as ever. So I packed my bags again and headed home.

As I was driving back home from North Vancouver, BC to Tacoma, WA on I-5, my #sheprays group text (a group of women who’ve been praying together in my living room every Friday morning for over 8 years) blew up with urgent request and the women responding.

A young mom in our community — three kids, ages 7 to 12 — had undergone brain surgery to remove a tumor on July 22nd. But her brain was swelling, and she was not responding. By yesterday morning, she had gone through the veil to be with Jesus.

All the questions you may be asking? I’ve been asking too.
How can it be that my dad — who has lived a full 82 years and is still believing for more — made it, and she didn’t? She was only 37.

That weekend in Vancouver, I had grabbed my Kindle and cracked open a book I’d downloaded a while ago by Carolyn Custis James—an author I first discovered in 2017 through her book Lost Women of the Bible: The Women We Thought We Knew while studying the women in Genesis.

When Life and Beliefs Collide was exactly what I needed. I’ve highlighted so many paragraphs — it’s like the book has walked alongside me these past two weeks. I started reading it in the ICU waiting room while we waited to see him.

I’ve taught on Mary in Women Around the Cross, how she was close enough to Jesus to weep — and how He wept with her.

But I had never thought about Carolyn's perspective with Mary here.
Really knowing God doesn’t just come from spending time with Him just to learn about him in our heads (like teaching on a Monday night). It comes from knowing him in our hearts because we need to know Him.

Be still and know.

“Be still” in Hebrew means to desist.
And “know” (ya’da) is the same word used when Adam knew Eve — intimately, fully, holding on and not letting go. It’s not passive.

“Moments like this teach us why theology is so important for women.
Suddenly it makes a lot of sense why Jesus defended Mary’s right to sit at his feet and what he meant when he said,
‘Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’ (Luke 10:42)

He didn’t say this merely to enable women to keep up with men in learning and studying deep truth.
It wasn’t even simply to prevent the tragic waste of a woman’s intellect, much as these objectives mattered to Jesus.

No, Jesus wanted Mary to learn because he knew how desperately she and other women would need it — not just for the terrible shock of first grief but for the long road ahead.”
—Carolyn Custis James, When Life and Beliefs Collide (Kindle Edition)

It’s okay to wrestle with God.
He wants to wrestle with you.

I told someone recently: life has cut me down to my knees again and again these past few years — and that’s kept me low to the ground, close to His presence.

And then God reminded me: wrestling happens on the ground.
He’s low with us.

This week, my phone is filled with screenshots of Lectio 365 prayers that have also been exactly what I needed.

Here is a portion of the prayer from Saturday’s Lectio 365 by Peter Greig.

“Lord, I surrender my life to you afresh in this very moment.
Help me to be still.
I confess that I am already counting the minutes, anticipating the next thing I must do as this quiet time draws to a close.
I am constantly distracted, relentlessly impatient, rarely content.
Plant eternity again in my beating heart.
Slow me down and wake me up to be less absent, more present to your presence in each person I meet,
each plan that I go,
and each moment that I am granted today.”

P.S. If you’d like to jump in and join the Women of Wisdom series, we’d love to have you. Once you’re registered, you’ll have access to all the unedited, fully raw recordings—including the Eve episodes from last year’s First Ladies series. Our next session is Monday, August 11th where we will be hitting Lady Wisdom... LORD WILLING.