This morning, I sat at my dining room table with my Bible open and an ache I could feel all the way down to my bones. It was an ache for a young mama we had come to love — a beautiful girl with a beautiful baby, a little one with sparkly brown eyes, silky dark hair, and the kind of innocence that makes you see how God still paints miracles into the world.
They weren’t just guests in our home. They had become part of our family, woven into the SONshine story with threads of laughter, tears, late‑night conversations, and the quiet courage it takes to keep trying when life has been unkind.
As a team, we had walked with her through valleys most people never see — trauma that left deep shadows, addictions that clung like chains, and a heart full of holes carved by rejection, abandonment, and the longing to be truly seen. We tried. We cried. We prayed. And then we prayed again. But in all our humanity, all our effort, all our love — it still wasn’t enough to make her ready.
She wasn’t at the place where surrender becomes the only way forward. She wasn’t ready to look up and let the Lord fill the hollow places with His healing. The wounds were deep, and the ache was real, and only Jesus could reach the places we could not.
After months of guiding, loving, teaching, and holding space for her and her precious daughter, we knew. Deep down, each of us knew. It was time. Time to honor her choices. Time to release her from the structure she wasn’t willing to step into. Time to let natural consequences do the teaching we could not.
Even as the team made the decision, I wrestled with it. I argued with God. I pleaded for another way. And as I laid my head on the open pages of Scripture, tears soaking into the pages, I felt Him whisper — soft, steady, unmistakably kind:
“Let her go. She is My daughter, not yours.”
I hated it. Everything in me wanted to hold on. I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to heal. I wanted her to see herself the way Christ sees her — chosen, cherished, capable of rising.
But God was right. She belongs to Him. She always has, and always will.
So we let her go. And now we trust — not blindly, but boldly — that He has plans for her and her sweet girl. Plans to prosper, not to harm. Plans to give them hope and a future, just as Jeremiah 29:11 promises.
When everything looks bleak, we remember who God is. The One who wipes every tear. The One who binds up the brokenhearted. The One who never stops pursuing His children, no matter how far they run or how long it takes.
This is not the end of her story. It may be the beginning of the chapter where seeds that were planted — seeds of love, grace, truth, boundaries, and belonging — begin to take root in soil we cannot see, and truly begin to grow.
So today, with open hands and trembling hearts, we release her to the One who loves her more than we ever could. We release her to YOU!
Lord, she is Yours.
Guide her. Protect her.
Heal her. Pursue her.
Hold her and her daughter close.
We let her go.
