Kitchen Sink

February 23, 2026 No Comments

I may be strong.

I may still carry beauty

born of pain.

But there are chambers of my story

only God has entered—

because words do not always land,

and not every heart

knows how to hold them.

I have worn names

laid on me like verdicts—

small, sharp charges

against my soul.

I have felt shame

others could not bear to face,

their unease slipping out

in whispers,

in mockery,

in silences,

in eyes that rolled

and granted no grace.

What is one soul worth

if she will not fall in line?

If she will not fit the frame?

Did she ask too much—

or only ask

to be seen?

Still—

there will come a knowing.

Not loud.

Not announced.

But in the way

I keep honoring

where there were only stares.

In the way I speak gently

of roads that cut my feet.

In the way I stayed tender

where I was handled roughly.

In the way my story

keeps breathing—

unbidden,

unpermitted,

alive.

They may never know the nights,

the loosening seams,

the prayers spoken

after language failed.

But they will see

what endured.

And it is enough.

The woman who now

makes the evening meal,

washes the last of the dishes,

tends the house in silence—

still bows in thanks

before her God,

even when her knees

CANNOT kneel or stand no more.

Physical pains throb

where emotional wounds left off.

She has become the light in the valley.

The sun for the shadow.

The rock, for the clay.

She is not God,

but He has allowed her

to bear witness,

yet another day.

Ten Years Later: What Galileo Church Gave Me When I Was Falling Apart

February 22, 2026 No Comments

The Church Who Held Space

In 2016, I walked into Galileo Church at one of the lowest points of my life.

I was broken in ways that didn’t show on the surface. I carried questions, grief, identity shifts, spiritual wrestling, and a life that felt like it was quietly slipping through my fingers. Some pieces were already gone; others hung by threads.

I had long cared about LGBTQ+ issues. Even while living mostly on the heterosexual side of my own bisexuality, I had always felt protective of spaces that were safe for others. Galileo’s openness in that area first drew me in.

But what I found there was far deeper than a single stance.

I found a kind of love that was just love—without hidden agendas or attempts to fit me into a box I wasn’t meant to fill.

I found creativity and intentionality woven into worship in ways I had never experienced before. Services weren’t thrown together—they were curated, crafted, thoughtful. Week after week, there was beauty, consistency, and substance.

It felt like someone wrapping a warmed blanket around you after standing out in the cold for far too long.

Comfort—yes.

But also challenge.

Galileo didn’t just soothe me. It ignited something in me. It called me into purpose, identity, courage, and a deeper understanding of who I was—and who God might still be inviting me to become.

Sometimes their social justice stance leaned more liberal than my moderate instincts. I won’t pretend that every position fit neatly into my personal framework. But the heart behind their message—the unmistakable love, integrity, and refusal to perform—made those differences feel secondary.

Because love and integrity that is real disarms critique.

Over time, their five missional priorities stopped feeling like slogans and started feeling like something written into my own spiritual DNA:

OUR MISSIONAL PRIORITIES:

  1. We do justice for LGBTQ+ people, and support the people who love them.
  2. We do kindness around mental illness and mental health and celebrate neurodiversity.
  3. We do beauty for our God-Who-Is-Beautiful.
  4. We do real relationship, no bullshit, ever.
  5. We do whatever it takes to share this good news with the world God still loves.

These priorities shaped me. They expanded my compassion. They sharpened my discernment. They reminded me that faith and honesty are not enemies.

For some Christians, Galileo’s differences from traditional structures are hard to reconcile. I understand that tension—I’ve wrestled with it myself.

But when I think about the love I encountered there—the very real, embodied, inconvenient love—any critique feels superficial, even hollow.

Let me be clear: no church can save a person. No community can be everything to everyone. I am not holding Galileo up as a gold standard for all believers. That would be unfair—and hypocritical.

But I am saying this:

God knew these were the Christians I needed.

When my life was unraveling—and at times nearly gone—this community helped anchor me. Not by fixing me or rescuing me, but by loving me into wholeness.

This blog, in many ways, exists because of the courage and permission I absorbed in that space. Because of the beauty I witnessed. Because of the honesty modeled from the pulpit. Because faith and justice were allowed to live in the same room without apology.

Ten years later, I’m still grateful.

Wrestling in the Silence: Witnesses, Not Fixers

There were seasons when I stepped away from Galileo Church because my darkness felt too heavy, my needs too great. I wrestled with God in those times, ashamed to face myself. I craved validation and acceptance in ways that were exhausting and consuming.

I remember a moment with Dr. Rev. Katie Hays that started a shift. I had flip-flopped on a choice, and in her careful explanation, she challenged me to consider: why was I so focused on her approval? It wasn’t comforting at first, but it was prophetic—a nudge back to God and my own wholeness.

Galileo Church has never been the puzzle I needed to solve my life. They weren’t the ones to put every broken piece together. But they were part of the bigger picture. They sat alongside me, witnessing, holding space, letting me wrestle, stumble, and learn what God was showing me.

They never chased me—they held space. They allowed me the solitude to “figure out” God, face myself, and understand that God’s silence wasn’t absence. It was listening. It was God letting me discover that the wholeness I sought had already been given—only obscured by doubt, shame, and external voices.

They weren’t my saviors or the puzzle. They were witnesses, companions, and custodians of a sacred space where I could be made whole—piece by piece—on my own.

Sometimes, that is the greatest gift anyone can offer: to hold space, bear witness, and trust that the work is God’s, not theirs.

About Galileo Church and Dr. Rev. Katie Hays

They can be found online at galileochurch.org. They have a vibrant in-person and online community, but first…

Origins

Galileo Church is a non-traditional Christian congregation in Fort Worth, Texas. It launched in 2013, led by Rev. Dr. Katie Hays, who previously served nearly two decades in traditional ministry before starting Galileo with younger adults seeking a different faith community.

Mission and Identity

Galileo describes itself as a “next-church community of belonging in Jesus’ name.” It is welcoming and affirming to those excluded or hurt by traditional churches—especially LGBTQ+ people, neurodiverse individuals, and “spiritual refugees.”

Worship & Community

Galileo holds Sunday worship at 5 pm (Central) on the I-20 service road in southeast Fort Worth and offers a livestream. Community outreach includes initiatives like Finn’s Place, a center for transgender and gender-diverse youth. Though structured as its own nonprofit, it grew from Galileo’s mission and Dr. Hays’s leadership.

Leadership & Perspective

Dr. Rev. Katie Hays writes sermons, blogs, and pastoral letters on inclusive theology, justice, and spirituality. She has been featured in Christian publications and recognized as a voice for inclusive ministry. Many of her books are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.

If this sounds like a place you’d like to experience—online or in-person—check them out!

I Joined the We Don’t Care Anymore Club (and My Nervous System Approved)

February 21, 2026 No Comments

A Shout-Out to the Woman Who Said It Out Loud

There’s a moment in cultural time when someone says the quiet part out loud — and suddenly millions of people recognize themselves.

For midlife women, that moment arrived courtesy of Melani Sanders, the accidental founder of the We Do Not Care Club — a viral, hilarious, deeply validating declaration of the things women in their 40s and beyond are quietly done performing for:

  • Bras

  • Chin hair

  • Perfect outfits

  • Other people’s opinions

  • Pretending we’re comfortable when we’re not

That whole glorious genre traces back to Melani Sanders, who basically sat in her car one day and said the quiet part out loud.

And the collective went:
“Oh, thank God, it’s not just me.”

Her new book, The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook, leans into that exact relief — humor, permission, and the shared realization that midlife isn’t making us difficult or apathetic.

It’s making us honest.

Because somewhere in our 40s, a lot of us hit a very specific shift:

We don’t actually want to keep abandoning ourselves just to keep things smooth.

And that is exactly where my 40s landed.

How I Quietly (or NOT So Quietly) Joined

There were some… hints.

No definitive announcement quite like Melani’s.
Maybe a few “oh.”
Maybe a few “oh, no.”

No bra-burning — at this stage bras are less patriarchy and more social engineering. I will neither confirm nor deny temptation.

It was subtler than that.

More like my nervous system finally escalated a long-ignored ticket.

My 40s have been the years my body started staging small protest moves:

  • My back locks up if I stay in one position too long

  • My legs go numb over nothing, even after weight loss

  • My sleep has become emotionally unavailable

  • My muscles carry tension like they have inside information

So naturally, I tried to manage it better:

  • Stretch more

  • Magnesium more

  • Be calmer, nicer, more flexible, more accommodating, more regulated, more everything

Which, in hindsight, was its own kind of shit show.

Because I’m no longer interested in self-improvement for its own sake.

I’m interested in accuracy and integrity.

I started noticing:

  • How often I automatically tried to override discomfort — physical, emotional, social

  • How many tiny adjustments I made in rooms where I was painfully aware I just didn’t fit

  • How quickly I softened my words so others could feel more at ease

  • How reflexively I carried other people’s tension like a community service project

And here’s the thing:

I didn’t decide to stop.

I just… couldn’t keep doing it the way I always had.

My tolerance had edges now.
Often quite jagged ones.
And I could feel them.

So no — my 40s weren’t the years I stopped caring.

They were the years my caring got curated. Precise.

I cared about:

  • Whether my body felt supported

  • Whether I actually wanted to be somewhere

  • Whether my yes was real

  • Whether my nervous system was bracing

I cared a lot less about:

  • Seeming easygoing

  • Explaining my needs or choices convincingly

  • Smoothing awkwardness

  • Pushing through “just this once”

  • Putting one more person ahead of me who wasn’t part of my support circle

Opinions started sliding off me that used to stick.

Sometimes dramatically. Sometimes quietly.

More and more days, my surface feels so smooth that not much sticks at all.

Like my psyche switched to non-stick.

And I finally understood what women mean when they say midlife feels liberating.

It’s not that life gets easier.
My spine and sleep are not participating in that narrative.

It’s that self-abandonment starts to feel:

  • Physically expensive

  • Loud

  • Irritating

  • Inefficient

So yes — I think I joined the club.

Not loudly.
Not rebelliously.

Just in small, daily choices:

  • The no I didn’t pad

  • The rest I didn’t justify

  • The boundary I didn’t explain twice

  • The discomfort I didn’t override

If this is what “not caring” looks like, it feels a lot like self-respect.

And honestly, my nervous system seems deeply relieved about it.

I’m curious — for women over 40 reading this:

What became noticeably harder to tolerate in your 40s… and what did that reveal about what you actually need now?

What is Intelligence Really?

February 19, 2026 No Comments

What Is Intelligence, Really?

Is it something we are born with?
Is it shaped by our environment?
Or is it also, in some ways, a choice?

Intelligence can be knowledge, problem-solving, and the ability to handle practical parts of life—yes, even money.

It can also be self-awareness, creativity, empathy, understanding people, sensing solutions, healthy instinct, and the ability to take something overwhelming and gently break it into doable steps.

There are many kinds of intelligence:
thinking, emotional, creative, social, sensory, practical.

Some people are very logical but cannot read a room to save their lives.
Some feel and understand deeply but struggle to put it into words.
Some notice patterns or shifts long before anyone else realizes something has changed.

And some people who are labeled “intellectually disabled” may learn, process language, or communicate more slowly or differently—yet still carry strong perception, emotional depth, creativity, or problem-solving in other areas.

The ability to speak quickly, clearly, or in ways society finds polished has never truly been the same thing as intelligence.
It is only one form of expression.
But we humans often mix those up.

Intelligence as a Choice

Sometimes, I believe, intelligence is also a choice.

A choice to:

  • Listen

  • Observe

  • Stay humble

  • Keep learning

  • Gently correct how we see things when needed — and then keep learning some more

A choice to be present.
To really see others and ourselves, even when that seeing feels uncomfortable, tender, or confusing.

Recognizing Hidden Intelligence

This matters—deeply—because there are people all around us whose intelligence is far greater than what they are often given credit for:

  • People with cerebral palsy whose bodies or speech do not cooperate with the speed of their thoughts.

  • Nonverbal autistic individuals who understand far more than others assume.

  • People with Down syndrome whose emotional insight, relational awareness, or perceptiveness runs deeper than many typically developing adults.

  • Others with intellectual or developmental differences whose abilities are uneven—strong in some areas, challenged in others, like all of us, just more visible.

When we measure intelligence mainly by speech, speed, or conventional academics, we do not just misunderstand people — we underestimate them.

A Quieter Kind of Intelligence

Perhaps real intelligence — the kind that grows humanity instead of ranking it — asks something quieter of us:

  • Slow down

  • Look again

  • Assume depth

  • Allow for minds that move differently than our own

Because intelligence does not always look like fluency, quick answers, or polished words.

Sometimes it looks like:

  • Patience

  • Perception

  • Connection

  • Or a mind working clearly behind a body or voice that cannot easily show it.

The picture of intelligence was never missing pieces—only our understanding of where they belong.

 

Closing Prompt:

What assumptions about intelligence or ability have you noticed in yourself or others — and how have you worked to challenge them?

The Martyr Looks Within

February 18, 2026 No Comments

Call her—she is there.
But she does not have tight circles of friends, or family who check on her daily, or even gently, without her first reaching.
There has been one close beside her, yet even there she has often been the last cup to be touched.

Do not judge her here.
Her cry is not a claim upon you.
She, too, lives somewhere close.
Hear her words, and know your own somewhere near.

She wonders how, though it feels she gives so much—so quickly laying down her own needs to lift another’s—it can feel as though not one soul can return even half the gift she has made so freely available.

She builds others so high that her continuance in their lives becomes almost unnecessary.
And still—where is the gratitude? The thanks?

Does she need it? No.
She only wishes there were even one friend who might see: she gives so much in this one sacred language because it is the very thing she herself lives without.

If she has nothing that answers your need,
she will give you what she does have,
with hope
that it will help you
acquire the rest.

She offers the unsolicited call.
The forgiveness without measure.
The unwavering belief when others have turned away.
The listening ear that may not fully understand, yet trusts your heart, your mind, your soul toward what is right—because that is why she chose you, once and forever, as a friend.
She hushes her desires when they feel like too much.

Everything—everything she strains to pour into the world—is, in truth, what she needs returned.
And it is not much, perhaps.
It does not take much to truly see a person
and place hope, gently, in their hands.

HOPE—
it does not have to remain
just another four-letter word.

She understands
if even that is more than you feel you can spare.
But do not cast your judgment upon her
at a moment she breaks or cannot carry one burden more,
nor fend off one more toxic shard
to bleed through alone.

Perhaps she has given so subtly
her gift—precious and pure—
went unperceived.

She wanted and needed this hope so desperately,
yet the need itself was unseen—
because she taught others
her love did not demand return
or even half reward.

Her earliest wounds were carved
by those who kept score—
credit claimed for every offering,
as if she had done nothing on her own,
as if she had given nothing at all,
only taken, only owed, only ignored.

And now—
has she become their same sad story?
Giving all,
and being forsaken.

So, to break the cycle—

Does she break the love?
Or dare she ask
for boundaries
and more?

Has she truly given all she believes she has—
and more?
Or was it, in all,
a gaslight to draw
a brief audience sigh,
a momentary hush
as others glanced inward
at their own hidden score?

Requiem of My Love

February 18, 2026 No Comments

The burden:
to be torn between heart, reason, and self—
three stones in the hand,
shifted back and forth
to balance a scale that will not steady.

My love—
I cannot lift you from the altar of my chest,
cannot unbind you
from the quiet faithfulness
even when love quivered.

I would sooner have my heart
break into a million bright fragments
than abandon a love
that never let go.

There were hours of questioning—
aches I did not author,
wounds I could not name.
I tried, at times,
to set you free.

But you would not go.

You burrowed into my smallest architecture,
nested in the membrane of every cell;
I waxed and waned
to the tide of your nearness.
Without you, nothing to fear—
without you, everything to want.

An anxious current lived in me,
as if some careless spell
had been cast for ruin—
yet still, I stand—we stand.

For with you or without you,
I do not quake.
My love for you is endless—
and this,
I will not forsake.

No requiem can this love take.

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