Like so many of my sisters, my words are useless to describe my IF:Gathering/IF:Local experience. I won’t really try other than to say that it was powerfully unexpected and joyfully received. Within 20 minutes many of us had tears streaming down our cheeks. 


Can. Not. Process.

I do believe my best friend, Jennie Allen, {no she isn’t aware that we’re BFFs} and her team unleashed a generation of women, ready to serve with reckless obedience and undaunted faith.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my experience was about mercy

The “mercy of confirmation”. 



As I read through one of my current books, that passage struck me. Breathless.

How is confirmation mercy? What forgiveness is there in confirmation? What is happening? I don’t understand my life.

Can. Not. Process.

My definition of God’s mercy always centered around forgiveness, forbearance, and withholding from me what I deserve in response to how I’ve acted, failed to act, or thought.  But there, forty eight pages into this latest journey of words – there was a shift.

IF: mercy is “an act performed out of a desire to relieve suffering; motivated by compassion” THEN: confirmation God gives me out of His desire to relieve my suffering and angst as I labor over decisions, wrestle with taking the steps – in the right direction – His direction, struggle with discerning whether these audacious thoughts are my thoughts or HIS thoughts, out of His deep love and compassion for me can be nothing other than – mercy.


Those if I tell you, you won’t believe me series of events.

Mercy.

Those that song on that radio station that I just switched to because I don’t know why moments.

Mercy.

That thing she, who I have never met, said during a group chat that she let me crash during IF:Local, with other ladies who I have never met in a place they don’t even know I have a pull to move, that you still wouldn’t believe if I told you moment.

Mercy.

That verse that people keep pointing me to and that keeps popping up in random places.

Mercy. 

Overwhelming yet soul-relieving mercy. I just hope that I have the audacity to summon my mustard seed of faith and recklessly obey.  

Lord, have mercy.