Fearless Forward: Letting Go of the Need to Keep Up

Why Slowing Down Might Be the Bravest Thing You Do This Year

Lately, I’ve been wrestling with the noise. Not just the external noise, the endless scroll, the productivity pressures, the silent competition of who’s doing more, but the internal one too. The kind that pushes you to keep creating, keep moving, keep proving your worth with every post, every pivot, every polished caption. And then I came across a simple post. A woman mentioned that she had removed Facebook and Instagram from her phone. No fanfare, no dramatic declarations. Just a quiet decision to stop scrolling and start living again by focusing on her Substack, her YouTube, and the Word. Something in that simplicity stopped me.

It reminded me of something I didn’t realize I had forgotten: I was never called to live this fast.

We Were Never Called to Live This Fast

Not just fast-paced, but fast-passing. Like life was a blur. Like I was sprinting through a garden and never stopping to see a single flower bloom. That post triggered something deeper in me, a longing I think many of us carry but don’t slow down long enough to name. A longing for slow mornings. For the joy of doing one thing well. For meaningful eye contact with the people we love. For days not measured by how many things we did, but by whether we were present enough to notice what God was already doing.

This week, I’ve been thinking about the quiet beauty of asking God, “What do You have for me today?” Not, What can I produce? What can I prove? What will grow my numbers? But honestly, What do You want my eyes to see and my heart to respond to today?

That’s where simplicity starts. It doesn’t begin with a minimalist aesthetic or a neatly edited home. It starts when we lay our striving down. It begins when we stop measuring our lives by metrics that God never asked us to chase.

I think for me, simplicity looks like this: being able to lie my head down at night and whisper, Thank You, Lord, for this day. Not because I crushed a to-do list, but because I paid attention. I slowed down enough to savor a conversation. I was obedient to that nudge. I made room for a quiet yes.

Where Simplicity Begins

Simplicity is not laziness. It’s alignment. It’s asking God to reset our pace to match His.

But here’s the thing no one tells you, sometimes simplicity isn’t something you choose, it’s something you’re pruned into.

Before we can embrace simplicity, we often have to pass through a season of painful surrender. A season where God gently or not so gently strips away our dependencies. He takes what we clung to and holds it up to the light. And then He invites us to trust Him with the loss, with the slowness, with the unknown. I’ve been in that season. I am in that season. It feels like being reshaped on the potter’s wheel. Like being hollowed out and made new all at once.

But maybe that’s what growth really looks like, less like climbing higher and more like becoming softer. More surrendered. More still.

Practicing Presence Instead Of Busy

So how do we live simply in a world that celebrates being busy?

We take one small step. And then another.
We delete the apps.
We plant something, anything, that reminds us that life takes time to grow.
We call the friend we’ve been meaning to reconnect with.
We write the email, not because it will go viral, but because it matters.
We obey the quiet instructions that have been on our hearts for too long.

Simplicity isn’t passive. It’s powerful. It’s a declaration that our value doesn’t come from how visible we are, but how present we are.

The Takeaway

And if you, like me, are learning how to return to that place, I want to offer you this:

You don’t need to do more to be more.
You just need to be still enough to hear what God’s already saying.

Where is God asking you to slow down so you can see again?

Quote to Hold Onto:

The greatest enemy of a spiritual life is not sin. It’s hurry. - John Ortberg

Let’s choose slower. Let’s choose simpler.

Let’s take fearless, forward steps, one quiet, obedient step at a time.

Michelle

What I’m Reading & Loving This Week

📖 Reading: The Fight for Us by Gabe & Rebekah Lyons

🎧 Listening to: Fearless Forward with Michelle Sarabia (I’m proud of this one!)

💇‍♀️ Obsessed With: Nizoral Anti-Dandruff Shampoo The best suggestion I had for helping with hair loss was from my dermatologist

🙏🏻 My Go-To: New Morning Mercies Devotional by Paul David Tripp