When I first began studying identity in Christ, I wasn’t trying to build anything.
I wasn’t thinking about articles.
I wasn’t thinking about Restoring Her Strength.
I wasn’t thinking about what the study might eventually become.
I was trying to solve a problem.
I needed answers. I wanted to understand how years of hurt could stop shaping the way I thought, reacted, and related to the people I loved. I wanted to know how we become who God intended us to be instead of simply becoming the product of what happened to us.
Identity in Christ had actually crossed my path months earlier. When I considered rebuilding Restoring Her Strength in February, I had written it down among several possible Bible study topics.
But it wasn’t near the top of the list.
I hadn’t stopped to consider how important identity might be for someone rebuilding after trauma. I certainly hadn’t recognized it as something that could become central to the work I wanted to do.
Then, a few months later, when this journey began, I came back to the subject for an entirely different reason.
This time it wasn’t a potential topic.
It was personal.
I thought I was looking for an answer to something happening in my own life.
I had no idea where that search would lead.
It Started Small
Nothing about this began with some enormous vision.
There wasn’t a moment when I sat down and mapped out everything Restoring Her Strength could eventually become.
There was a Bible.
A notebook.
Some journal entries.
Word studies.
Commentaries.
Printed pages.
Then there were more printed pages.
Eventually, there were binders.
Then there were enough binders that I had to start seriously thinking about how to organize them.
At some point, I stopped asking whether I needed another binder and started accepting that apparently this was just part of my life now.
But none of those individual moments felt particularly significant while they were happening.
I was simply dealing with whatever was in front of me.
Study the next word.
Read the next commentary.
Answer the next question.
Write the next synthesis.
Then do it again.
No single step looked big enough to become what I was beginning to see around me.
It was only when I looked backward that I realized how far all those little steps had carried me.
The Sticky Note and the Binders
One of the strangest reminders of how gradually all of this developed is an old sticky note.
It had been sitting beside my desk for more than a year.
Four passages of Scripture were written on it.
At first, when I found it again, I couldn’t even remember exactly why I had written them down.
Four passages.
One little sticky note.
At the time, that was enough space to hold the idea.
It definitely isn’t anymore.
Because eventually I wasn’t looking at a notebook or a sticky note.
I was looking at shelves of material.
Research.
Commentaries.
Word studies.
Reflections.
Journal entries.
Syntheses.
Indexes.
Documents created simply because the amount of material had grown large enough that I needed a way to find everything again.
The interesting thing is that I never sat down and decided to create all of that.
Each new piece existed because the step before it created a need for the next one.
The research needed somewhere to go.
The growing study needed organization.
The organization needed indexes.
The reflections needed their own place.
The process kept expanding because the work itself kept expanding.
Somewhere between that sticky note and those binders, something had changed.
What began as a personal search for answers was becoming something I had never planned.
When It Started Feeling Real
I remember one particular day when I had been organizing everything.
I wasn’t doing anything that seemed especially important.
I was making binder covers.
Printing labels.
Updating tabs.
Putting papers where they belonged.
But when I stepped back and looked at everything together, it affected me more than I expected.
It felt real.
Not finished.
Definitely not finished.
But real.
Until then, I think I had still been looking at each piece individually.
That day, I could see the pieces together.
They weren’t random anymore.
They belonged to something.
There was a process.
There was structure.
There was enough material sitting in front of me that I could physically see evidence of how much the study had grown.
And that was both exciting and a little overwhelming.
For the first time, I could see what all those ordinary steps had built together.
And I had absolutely no idea how much bigger it might become.
Then One Verse Became More Than I Expected
And then there was 2 Corinthians 5:17.
One verse.
I certainly didn’t expect one verse to become what it has.
I didn’t expect months of research.
I didn’t expect the number of reflection questions.
I didn’t expect all the themes that would emerge from studying the surrounding passage.
I didn’t expect the journal entries that would grow out of it.
I didn’t expect to spend so much time with one verse that I would begin recognizing its themes in my everyday life.
And I definitely didn’t expect to eventually sit down and read a twenty-six-page synthesis of that one verse.
But I did.
Reading that synthesis straight through was another one of those moments when I had to stop and look at what had happened.
This wasn’t the little Bible study I had imagined anymore.
I had started because I was looking for an answer.
Now I was sitting there with twenty-six pages representing months of research, reflection, questions, study, and synthesis.
And then came the realization that probably surprised me more than almost anything else.
I needed someone else to look at it.
I Never Expected to Need Someone Else to Review It
That wasn’t part of the plan.
Actually, there really hadn’t been much of a plan.
I certainly hadn’t started this study thinking that eventually I would hand my work to pastors and trusted Bible teachers and ask them to examine what I had done.
But suddenly, I realized I needed to.
I had developed a study process that I intended to repeat.
There were more verses waiting.
More passages.
More sections.
And before I carried the same process into the next verse, I wanted another set of eyes on what I had already done.
That realization hit me differently from most of the others.
The rest had happened gradually.
A notebook became more papers.
More papers required a binder.
One binder became several.
More material required better organization.
The synthesis grew one page at a time.
I adjusted as each new thing appeared.
But realizing I needed someone else to review the work made me stop.
Because suddenly I could see the distance between where I had started and where I was standing.
A couple of months earlier, I had opened my Bible because I needed help.
Now I had a twenty-six-page synthesis of one verse sitting in front of me, and I was thinking about who I trusted enough to review the study process before I repeated it.
I never saw that coming.
And I think that was one of the moments when the size of what this had become really hit me.
I’m Glad I Didn’t Know
Sometimes I wonder what I would have done if I had seen all of this at the beginning.
What if I had opened my Bible that first day and somehow seen everything that was coming?
The word studies.
The commentaries.
The hours of research.
The binders.
The indexes.
The journal entries.
The reflection questions.
The twenty-six-page synthesis.
The outside review.
The articles.
The realization that I was reaching a point where I could begin teaching what I had learned.
I think I would have been overwhelmed.
I might have looked at all of it and decided I wasn’t capable of doing it.
But I never had to carry all of it at once.
I only had to deal with what was in front of me.
One verse.
One question.
One commentary.
One reflection.
One problem that needed solving.
One next step.
And by the time another piece appeared, I had already learned how to carry the one before it.
What would have overwhelmed me as a complete picture became manageable one step at a time.
I’m glad I didn’t know.
The Vision Keeps Expanding
Restoring Her Strength existed before this study.
I already knew I wanted it to help women who had been hurt rebuild their lives.
But knowing that I cared about something wasn’t the same as understanding exactly what it needed to become.
I’m still learning that.
The website has grown.
The study has grown.
The writing has grown.
Even the way I organize everything has had to grow because systems that worked when there were only a few notes and ideas can’t necessarily carry what exists now.
And every time I think I understand the shape of what I’m doing, another piece seems to emerge naturally from the work already in front of me.
Not because I’m constantly trying to make it bigger.
Quite the opposite.
Most of the time, I’m simply trying to figure out how to faithfully manage what is already there.
The writing is probably one of the clearest examples.
I didn’t begin this study intending to turn it into articles.
Now I can see articles growing naturally from what I have learned.
I’m beginning to reach the point where I can teach some of what I’ve spent these months studying.
The personal study and Restoring Her Strength, which began separately, have somehow started meeting each other.
I didn’t plan that connection when I began.
I simply kept following the work in front of me until I could finally see it.
Built in Ordinary Life
Maybe that’s another reason this surprises me so much.
None of this was built during some perfect season when I had endless time.
It grew in ordinary life.
Early mornings before work.
Lunch breaks.
Evenings when I still had enough energy to do a little more.
Weekends.
Kids.
Responsibilities.
Interruptions.
Days when I could spend hours studying and days when I could barely do anything at all.
There was never a moment when life cleared the schedule and said:
Okay. Now you can build this.
I just kept coming back.
And apparently, small pieces of faithfulness accumulate.
Pages accumulate.
Notes accumulate.
Understanding accumulates.
One ordinary day gets added to another.
Eventually, you look around and realize those ordinary days have built something you couldn’t see while you were living them.
Maybe that is why it seemed to become so much bigger almost without me noticing.
I Still Don’t Know How Big It Is
That’s probably the strangest part.
I can see much more than I could when I began.
But I still can’t see the whole thing.
I know there are articles coming from this study.
I know I’m reaching the point where I can begin teaching what I’ve learned from this first verse.
I know there are possibilities beyond what exists today.
But I don’t know exactly what Restoring Her Strength will look like years from now.
And I’m becoming increasingly okay with that.
Because I don’t need to know yet.
The lesson hasn’t really changed.
Do what is in front of me.
Study the verse I’m studying.
Write what is ready to be written.
Build the system needed for the work I actually have.
Then take the next step.
I started this study because I was looking for answers in my own life.
I had no idea it would become connected to a ministry I had been trying to rebuild.
I had no idea one verse would become twenty-six pages.
I had no idea a personal study would become something I could teach.
And I certainly had no idea I would eventually reach the point where I would stop and say:
I think someone else needs to look at this before I keep going.
One step became another.
One notebook became several.
One verse became months of work.
And somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t simply completing the small study I thought I had started.
I was watching something grow beyond anything I had expected.
I still don’t know how big it will become.
Maybe I don’t need to.
For now, I just need to keep taking the next faithful step.
With hope,
Raven