Can I tell you about a conversation I’ve had with myself more times than I can count?

Me: Rach, I know you love God. But why can’t you stay consistent with spending time with Him? C’mon, get it together 😐.

Also Me: Gurl, I know, right? I do great for, like, a week, okay maybe a few days, but then life gets to life-in’ and takes over 😩.

I miss a day that becomes a week that becomes a month.

Enter guilt. Ugh, God must be so disappointed in me.

I know, stinkin’ thinkin’, right?

🎶Hold up, wait a minute 🎶

Let’s replace that lie with Truth.

You’re not inconsistent because something is wrong with you. You’re not lazy or being a bad Christian.

And God is not standing over you with His arms crossed, counting your missed days.

You’re just unanchored. And that’s a different problem with a different solution.

The lie behind guilt

Okay, so you miss a day, and you hear a quiet voice: See? You can’t even do this. Other women manage it way better than you. You always start things and NE-VER finish them.

So you try to come back with more effort. A better plan. A thicker devotional book, a prettier newer journal, a concise reading schedule. Even some Bible journaling pens.

And it works, for a little while, until life happens again.

Because life always happens.

Then the voice comes back louder, and this time it’s got evidence.

If you read my last letter, you know that my past had some very hard years. My life felt like a constant emergency, and some days opening my Bible felt like lifting a car. Every day I missed spending time with God added another layer of shame, until the shame itself became the thing standing between me and my time with Him.

The enemy’s favorite trick is not getting us to skip a day. It’s using yesterday’s missed day to steal today’s.

It’s using guilt to believe the lie that you’re inconsistent, therefore incompetent, to maintain a healthy relationship with God.

Don’t believe the lie!

Missing a day is not failure. It’s just…a missed day 💁🏻‍♀️.

Scripture says God’s mercies “are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:23 ESV). Not new every morning for women with streaks. New every morning, period.

Besides, your consistency was never the condition of His nearness in the first place.

He was, is, and always will be, there.

What willpower doesn’t fix

Here’s a shift that changed things for me: consistency doesn’t come from sheer willpower. It comes from being anchored.

Think about the seasons when you were consistent with God. It wasn’t because your willpower was stronger that month. It was more likely due to something holding you in place. A rhythm. A time. A reason that ran deeper than “I should do this.”

The writer of Hebrews describes our hope through Christ as “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:19 ESV).

An anchor doesn’t work by effort. A boat doesn’t strain to stay in place. The anchor holds, and the boat simply stays attached to it.

That’s the difference between the woman who struggles through her quiet time and the woman who has a lifeline. The first is relying on herself. The second has dropped an anchor. And even when the waves come, and they will come, she drifts less far and returns faster.

So the question is not, “How do I try harder?”

The question is, “Where is my anchor?”

An anchor that helps me

I want to give you a simple practice to help anchor your spirit to His so you can show up consistently in your moments with God.

Tomorrow, before the day gets loud and busy, grab your Bible and find a spot. A chair, a corner, the edge of your bed. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb. Take one slow breath.

And say: “God, I’m here.”

That’s your anchor point.

Not “God, I’m sorry it’s been so long.” Not “God, I promise I’ll do better this time,” or “Hi, remember me 🫣?”

Just: I’m here.

Because His promise is not “perform for me and I might show up.” His promise is “Draw near to Me, and I will draw near to you.” Every time you say, “God, I’m here,” He keeps that promise.

Even if it’s been three days. Even if it’s been three years.

From there, bring your number one greatest concern to Him. And try not to say it the way you think He should hear it. Don’t mask your concern with “faith-speak.”

Say it as your real, raw self because He already knows how you feel about it and wants the real you to show up.

Then ask three things:

Lord, what is the lie that I’m believing? What truth do you want me to know? What do you want me to do in response to this truth?

Sit for a minute or two. Listen. Open your Bible and read a verse or two. Could be your favorite verse, one from Sunday’s sermon, or just open up and read.

Eventually, this practice can grow into much more. But the size of the practice is not the point. The nearness is.

Start smaller than you think you should

If you take one thing from this letter, take this: the woman who shows up imperfectly every day will be transformed more deeply than the woman waiting for the perfect season to start.

So don’t build a monument this week. Drop an anchor.

Pick your spot. Pick your time. Start with three words.

And when you miss a day, because at some point you will, remember that His mercies are new every morning. You don’t restart from zero. You just come back to the anchor.

And you’ll find He never moved.

God, I’m here.

He is. And He’s so glad you came.

With love and faith,
Rachel ⚓️

Tell me in the comments or hit reply: where’s your spot going to be? Naming it makes it real. Praying for you!

God is not waiting for you to get it together before He draws near to you. He’s not standing at a distance until your faith is tidy, your emotions are managed, and your life is presentable. He already solved the perfection problem, once and for all, when He sent Jesus, the only perfect One, to take our place and redeem us back to Himself.

What God wants from you is your heart.

Not performance. Not hustle. Not striving.

Your honest, bruised, sometimes angry, still showing up, heart.

This is what I learned during the messiest years of my life.

The life I expected

In 1999 I married a preacher. I was so in love and so excited.

I walked into that marriage with my whole heart and a picture in my mind of what our life would be like, expecting to have a flourishing ministry together, sharing the gospel and helping hurting people find the Lord.

I wanted that life desperately, and asked God for it.

However, I may have been more in love with the idea than reality because that was not the life I lived.

Instead, I spent eleven years being made to feel like I was never enough. Not doing enough. Not being enough. Not saying the right things. Whenever something went wrong, I learned to expect that it was something I had done wrong or not well enough.

At the time, I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt that way. As a high-performer, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t good enough. Publicly, I heard words that said I was enough. Privately, it was a completely different story.

We moved ten times in ten years, and with each move I packed up our home, settled our four children during those last several moves, and tried again to be whatever version of me might finally be enough.

Slowly and quietly, I lost sight of the woman God made me to be. I confused the voice of constant criticism and doubt with the voice of truth. When it became obvious that the marriage was ending and I was told, essentially, that the problem had been me all along, I felt like something that was used up and thrown away.

My heart was broken into a million pieces.

I was stuck 1,000 miles away from where my roots were, in a place where I felt like an alien.

The courtroom

The divorce took me somewhere I never imagined I’d be.

Inside a courtroom, listening to a version of myself I did not recognize. Accusations about my mothering, the one thing I had poured every waking day into for the last eight years. I sat there, dumbfounded, with no idea what to do or say. I felt like I was in a movie.

But I knew one thing about myself, and held onto it tightly. I would not lie. I would only tell the truth and trust God with whatever the truth could not immediately fix.

Things were not immediately fixed.

I had been a stay-at-home wife and mother for eleven years. When the marriage ended, I had no job, no house, no bank account, and no money of my own. I had a biology degree from eleven years earlier that I had no idea what to do with.

When that first custody decision was made, I was given every other weekend and one three-hour evening a week with the four children I had raised every single day of their lives.

Devastated was not a big enough word for how I felt.

I remember the shock in my body. I remember thinking, “God, where are You? I told the truth. I did the right thing. How can this be the outcome?”

What came next was a ten-year custody battle, in and out of the courtroom a total of eight times.

What God did in the wilderness

Those first four years could have destroyed me. They nearly did, some days. But looking back, I can see now what I could not see then.

God was not absent in that wilderness. He was building.

With almost nothing to my name and the unwavering support of very close family members, I put myself through graphic design school. I found a good job. I bought my first home, mine, with my name on it, a place where my children had rooms waiting for them.

Piece by piece, God rebuilt what had been dismantled, and He rebuilt me along with it.

My identity shifted from what it was to what it was supposed to be all along. God’s strong and beautiful daughter.

After four years, I was able to go back to court and file for custody. This time, I was awarded sole legal and sole physical custody of all four of my children.

I cannot describe that joy. My children were finally home.

Even then, I made a choice that I believe honors God to this day. I was fair with their father’s time, because my children didn’t need another parent keeping score. They needed to see what grace looks like with skin on.

I’ve spent the last sixteen years doing my best to live the truth in front of them, trusting God with how they see me, one ordinary faithful day at a time. That is a trust I have had to hand back to God every single morning.

Angry at God

Here’s the messy part of my messy story.

I felt angry with God. So confused and misplaced. Bitter and rebellious.

I didn’t understand why He didn’t save my marriage. Why He didn’t intervene sooner. Why the road had to be so very long.

There were moments when my prayers were more question than praise, and my faith felt like it was hanging by a thread.

There were times when I rebelled against all that I stood for and felt so lost.

But this is what I learned in those messy moments. God can handle my anger. He is not offended by my confusion, questions, or even rebellion. And He certainly does not withdraw from my mess.

Psalm 34:18 says, “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (ESV).

Near.

Not near to the beautifully composed or near to the women with all the answers. Near to the broken ones.

I had every human reason to become bitter by what I experienced during those 20+ years. I could have walked away from my faith entirely, and honestly, some people would have understood.

But God kept meeting me in the middle of it, not because I performed well, but because His love for me was never conditioned on my performance in the first place.

“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 ESV).

Christ came while we were all still a hot mess.

So despite everything I still don’t understand, I’ve made my decision, and I remake it every morning:

I will trust God in all things. I will keep seeking Him, and I will keep living for Him according to His Word.

Not because my story got easy, but because He never once left it.

Maybe your mess looks different from mine. A marriage that isn’t what you prayed for. A season of loss. A faith that feels more like questions than certainty. A quiet fear that you’ve been too angry, too inconsistent, too broken for God to want anything to do with you.

Listen. He is not looking for your perfect. He just wants your honestly given heart and desire to spend real time with Him, exactly as you are.

Come messy. Come angry if that’s what’s true for you today. Come with nothing but questions.

He will meet you there.

I am living proof.

With love and faith,
Rachel

If any part of this story is your story too, I’d be honored if you’d reply or leave a comment. I read every one, and I pray for the women who share. Much love.

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Hi, friend. I’m Rachel.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you love God and sometimes feel like something is off. Maybe your quiet time is inconsistent. Maybe your faith feels strong on Sunday and shaky by Tuesday. Maybe you’ve been carrying a quiet hunger for a deeper walk with God for years, and you’re tired of feeling like you’re behind.

I want you to know that you are not behind. And you are not alone.

A little about me

I’ve been walking with God for thirty years, and I’ll be honest with you: those thirty years have not been easy.

I walked through a challenging marriage that ended in divorce, followed by a custody battle that stretched on for a decade while I raised four children. Life felt like a constant emergency. There was always something demanding my attention, pulling at my heart, threatening my peace. Some days I was so exhausted that even opening my Bible felt like too much.

Then in 2024, the unimaginable happened. My youngest son Josiah, eighteen years old and a senior in high school, died in a motorcycle accident.

There are no words for this kind of grief. And I won’t pretend I handle it with perfect faith. I was angry at God. I had questions He hasn’t answered. There were weeks when I couldn’t open my Bible at all.

But here is what I discovered in the darkest valley of my life: you don’t need perfect faith to have a present God. Even when all I could offer Him was tears and questions, He met me there. Every single time.

Through all of it, one thing held my life together. Not willpower. Not positivity. Time with God. Imperfect, inconsistent, sometimes five minutes in a parked car, but real. I learned that my time with Him was never a luxury. It was my lifeline.

That’s what Aligned Faith is built on.

What Aligned Faith is

Aligned Faith exists to help women learn how to deepen their faith and grow closer to God by showing up consistently and renewing their mind.

Not through hustle. Not through guilt. Not through trying harder to be a “good Christian.” Through the simple, daily, grace-filled practices of showing up exactly as they are, and letting His Word do what only His Word can do.

Scripture puts it this way: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” (Romans 12:2 ESV). That verse changed my life, and everything I write here flows from it.

What you can expect from me

When you subscribe, here’s what will land in your inbox:

Honest encouragement for your walk with God, written for real life with real schedules and real struggles. Practical help for building spiritual consistency, because I believe the woman who spends time with God, imperfectly, every day will be transformed more deeply than the one waiting for the perfect season to begin. Stories from my own journey, the beautiful parts and the broken parts, because I’m not writing to you as someone who has it all figured out. I’m writing as your sister who has walked through the fire and found God faithful in it.

What you will never get from me: pressure, hype, guilt, or a version of faith that only works when life is going well.

An invitation

If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to subscribe so we can walk together. And I’d love to hear from you. Hit reply or leave a comment and tell me: where are you in your walk with God right now? What’s the one thing you wish felt different?

I read every response, and I’ll be praying for the women who share.

You were not meant to do this alone.

With love and faith, Rachel

Rachel Aponte is a Christian faith coach and author who helps women overcome fear, renew their minds through biblical truth, and live boldly aligned with God’s purpose. She lives in the hills of North Alabama.

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