Day 21 – Still, She Remains – Jan 21, 2026

I thought this was going to be a seven-day rhythm. Study, journal, reflect, repeat. Instead, life showed up loud, emotional, hormonal, messy, and unpredictable. I didn’t stop believing. I didn’t walk away from God. I just got knocked sideways for a bit.

Some days it wasn’t theology pulling me off track, it was anxiety. Other days it was relationships that drain instead of build. Some nights it was my body reminding me that pregnancy is not poetic, it’s physical. And still, somehow, I kept coming back to the text. Not consistently. Not cleanly. But honestly.

That’s what this time has taught me. Scripture doesn’t demand perfection, it invites return.

I’ve been studying how the Hebrew Bible is designed, not rushed, not flattened, not broken into sound bites. It’s meant to be lived with overtime. Read slowly. Returned to often. The story moves forward, but it does so through waiting, tension, failure, reflection, and long obedience. Which feels uncomfortably familiar.

And here’s where it gets personal. Women are often taught to approach faith like a task list. Apply quickly. Stay agreeable. Don’t linger too long in questions. Don’t get emotional unless it’s tidy. But Scripture doesn’t model that. It honors the ones who remain. The ones who meditate. The ones who don’t turn right or left chasing urgency. The ones who stay rooted even when answers don’t come fast.

That hit me hard, because when I drift, it’s rarely because I stop caring. It’s because I stop reflecting. I let noise replace study. I let urgency replace steadiness. And I pay for it in my body, my peace, my clarity. The Bible never rewards that kind of hurry. It keeps pointing back to contentment, to rootedness, to fruit grown in quiet soil.

This is where my dissertation lens keeps pressing in: women in Scripture are not silent, but they are often managed. Present, but constrained. Necessary, but not trusted as interpreters. And yet, again and again, they are the ones who remain faithful in the long middle, who carry life through pain, who hold tension without collapsing. That’s not weakness. That’s theological agency.

So if you’re tired, distracted, overwhelmed, or feel like you’ve fallen behind, sit with me here. You’re not failing. You’re living in the same rhythm Scripture was written in. Return is not defeat. It’s practice.

Still, she reads.

Still, she returns.

Still, she remains.

And somehow, that’s where authority grows.