My Story:
From Survival to Surrender

I didn't grow up in chaos. I grew up in open fields, in long summer evenings where the light stayed soft and golden way longer than it had any right to, in barns that smelled like hay and leather and horse manure, in a house where my parents loved each other out loud, where you could actually hear it.

My dad taught me what steadiness looks like and my mom taught me what generosity looks like, and neither of them ever once tried to make me smaller than I was.

I was a dreamer. The kind of kid who could disappear into her own imagination for hours, who talked to animals like they understood her, and honestly, maybe they did. I never wanted the white picket fence or the tidy plan. I wanted land. Movement. Something wild and honest and free. Even back then I was hearing a different rhythm than everyone else, and my parents used to say I beat to my own drum, heard a different song. Looking back now, I think I was just listening inward before I ever learned to listen outward.

I was raised Ukrainian Catholic, and it was strict, dude, genuinely strict. But my parents always taught me to go seek Jesus outside the institution of the church itself. I'm grateful to the Catholic church for that, for teaching me who Jesus was in the first place. But religion, the structure of it, always felt wrong to me somehow. Forced. Manmade. And the older I got, the more that instinct kept proving itself right.

The world has a way of getting louder as you get older, though, and it starts gently. This is what you're supposed to do. This is what success looks like. This is what a good life is. College, stability, marriage, safety, all of it whispered so reasonably you don't even notice you're listening. And slowly, without realizing it was happening, I stopped following the quiet rhythm inside me and started following the louder one outside of me. I told myself it was maturity. I told myself it was just what adults do. Underneath all of that, if I'm honest, I was just afraid. Afraid of being the only one who didn't follow the script, afraid of being wrong, afraid of failing where everyone could see it.

So I stepped into a life that looked right on paper. Somewhere in there I drifted from the girl who used to trust her own knowing without needing anyone else's permission for it.

You sit in classrooms learning business and management and part of you genuinely loves it, and another part of you feels the quiet weight of debt and structure and expectation pressing in at the edges. You watch your peers talk about internships and careers and engagement rings and timelines, and you tell yourself you'll figure it out, that you can do both, live wide and still follow the pattern everyone else seems to be following. And somewhere in those years something shifts. You start measuring your life against other people's milestones instead of your own knowing. You start wondering if maybe your longing for land and movement just isn't enough on its own, if maybe you need the rest of it too, the whole package.

And then love shows up. Or something that looked like it.

I've always been a romantic, still am honestly, I believe in deep, all-giving, covenant love. And back then I was so in love with the idea of love that I think it made me easy to convince. This man said the right things. Mirrored my depth. Talked about forever in a way that felt cinematic, like something out of a movie you'd actually want to be in. I didn't feel forced into any of it. I felt chosen. And because I've always believed in big, consuming love, I leaned in, not because I was naive, but because I wanted it to be real so badly.

There were moments, small ones, where my body would tighten up for no clear reason. Moments where something just felt slightly off underneath the surface. And I overrode every single one of them. Everyone gets nervous. No relationship is perfect. You know the lines you tell yourself.

By the time I was walking down the aisle, staring at my cowgirl boots peeking out from under my dress, my arm wrapped around my dad's, it didn't feel like a decision anymore. It felt like momentum. Like I was already in it, too far in to turn around. I couldn't even admit to myself that I felt that way until years later.

The marriage wasn't just a mistake. It was a slow unraveling, and not the kind that shows up in explosions. The kind that shows up in erosion. In confusion. In shrinking. In control. In manipulation you don't have a name for until you're already living inside it.

I remember sitting on the back steps of my house late one night, crying, asking God quietly, how did I get here. Not accusing Him. Just genuinely bewildered. I knew Him. I'd always believed in Him. But my belief had gotten wrapped up in so many rules and rituals and expectations that it had started to feel more like performance than relationship.

Still, even in that dark season, He didn't leave.

On December 31st, 2017, He interrupted everything. He didn't shout. He didn't negotiate with me. He just spoke clearly: you need to leave today. And for the first time in years, I actually listened to the voice that had been steady underneath all the noise the whole time. I obeyed.

The house was quiet the next morning in a way I hadn't felt in years. Not the tense, watchful kind of quiet where you're still scanning the room for what might set someone off. A stillness that felt both terrifying and sacred at the same time. I didn't wake up triumphant. I woke up raw. Exposed. Genuinely unsure what came next. But underneath the fear about money and stability and what people would think, there was something steady rising up too. Relief. For the first time in a long time, my body wasn't negotiating its own safety every second of every day.

The months after weren't dramatic. There was no cinematic breakthrough moment. There were bills to pay and hard conversations to have and long stretches of quiet rebuilding that nobody saw or clapped for. I worked. I moved. I went back to the land in small ways, back to movement and breath and the kind of honest physical labor that strengthens you instead of shrinking you down.

And slowly, almost without me noticing it happening, my relationship with Jesus started to change. I'd always believed in Him, even inside the strictness of how I was raised. But that belief had been wrapped in obligation and ritual and performance for so long. Now I wasn't interested in performing anymore. I was hungry for presence. I didn't need more rules. I needed relationship.

So I started seeking Him, not out of fear this time, but out of dependence. Out of gratitude. Out of this deep knowing that He'd been the one to interrupt my life on the night I didn't have the courage to interrupt it myself. He didn't rush me through any of it. He didn't shame me for how far I'd drifted. He didn't demand I prove anything to Him. He just stayed.

He brought me back, not just physically but somewhere further in, back to work that felt grounded and real, back to early mornings and dirt under my nails, back to the rhythm of animals and open roads and labor that actually means something. When I started hauling horses across the country, it wasn't just a business decision. It was a return. A return to movement, to wide skies that remind you how small you actually are and how faithful He's been the whole time anyway.

He didn't just change my circumstances. He started reordering the inside of me. Untangling the fear of being wrong, the fear of failing publicly, the constant quiet measuring of myself against everyone else's timeline. He started teaching me that obedience is safer than approval ever was, and that peace was never something I had to earn in the first place.

These days my life looks unorthodox to a lot of people. It doesn't follow the script I once tried so hard to squeeze myself into. I haul horses across the country. I'm building the online work He's called me to, slowly, deliberately, without rushing it just to look further along than I am. I structure my days around seeking Him instead of chasing milestones. I move when He says move. I rest when He says rest.

My nervous system is still catching up to what my spirit already knows, if I'm honest. There are still days my body braces out of pure habit, days peace feels almost foreign because chaos used to be the normal setting. There are still moments blessing feels fragile in my hands. But I recognize the pattern now when it shows up, and instead of white-knuckling my way through it alone, I bring it to Him.

I'm not surviving anymore. I'm surrendering, which is a different muscle entirely.

He didn't just get me out of a marriage that was mentally abusive and slowly closing in on me. He restored my inner knowing. He restored my ability to actually listen. He gave me back the little girl who used to trust the quiet rhythm inside her before the world ever got loud enough to drown it out.

He's still restoring, honestly. This isn't a finished story I'm telling you from the other side of it.

And if you're here because something in your own life feels misaligned, because the script you followed left you smaller than you were ever meant to be, I just want you to know this. God doesn't abandon His daughters in their drift.

He calls them back.

There's more than survival waiting on the other side. More than performance. More than fitting the pattern everyone else seems so sure of.

And He's not done with either of us yet.