As we prepare for where God is taking us next year, we have to ask ourselves an important question: Who is helping you get to where God is leading you? Do you know who that is at this exact moment?

This week, a heaviness seemed to settle over my spirit. There were moments when, despite my best efforts to navigate critical decisions at home, in my work as a strategist, and in ministry, I found myself weeping without pause. If you are an empath, you know this weight intimately —the quiet tendency to absorb the emotions, pain, and unspoken burdens of those around you.

Yet as I sat in that quiet grief, asking God why my spirit felt so overwhelmed, a deeper revelation surfaced. It was not just the weight of others I was carrying; it was an unacknowledged passenger on my own journey.

Many of us traverse through shifting seasons of life. From childhood to adolescence and our teen years, early adulthood, sometimes into marriage, motherhood, then career demands, perimenopause, menopause, and into all sorts of new horizons of freedom. Along the way, we’ve learned how to adapt to each. But in moments of unexpected trials, challenges, grief, or pressure, a sudden shift can happen in the driver's seat of our lives.
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I, myself, had responded to that hard moment and wondered,
​“Why did I react that way?”. Have you?
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• Did your 7-year-old past self take the wheel, pulling over to cry because she felt unsafe or overwhelmed?
• Did an angry, hurt version of yourself from a past season step up to drive for the weekend, leaving you on Monday morning to clean up the emotional fallout? Or a decision made that changed the complete trajectory of your life?

I am an empath, and if you are too, you know that we often move past difficult seasons, extend true forgiveness, and grow in faith. Yet, we forget that the heart of an empath can hold onto ghost-pains of past hurts. Forgiving a circumstance does not automatically mean your body and spirit have released the trauma, shame, or heartbreak of who you were when it happened.

Sometimes, a past version of you is still riding along, silently still steering your reactions today.

A Prayer for the Journey

Lord, thank You for every season that has shaped us,
​and we surrender the desire to let past pain dictate our present peace.

Father God, in the mighty name of Jesus, we come into Your presence declaring Your absolute authority over our minds, our emotions, and our spirits.

We cast down every lingering thought, false argument, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity and to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Father, we ask You to expose and remove anything that attempts to take residence in our hearts or dictate our reactions... any past trauma, heavy spirit, or unspoken pain that rises up against Your peace.

We decree and declare that no weapon formed against us shall prosper, and every tongue that rises against us in judgment, we shall condemn (Isaiah 54:17).

The emotional baggage of past seasons and the weight of spiritual battles that do not belong to us have no legal right or power over our present life.

For You, Lord, have not given us a spirit of fear or confusion, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). We stand firmly on Your Word, knowing that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17).

By the authority of Jesus Christ, we loose every spirit of heaviness and put on the garment of praise (Isaiah 61:3). We take back the wheel in faith, declaring that our minds are guarded by Your peace, our hearts are anchored in Your grace, and our path is directed by Your Holy Spirit.

Anchor our hearts in Your truth, teach us to set boundaries, and lead us gently into the full freedom You have prepared for us.

In Jesus’ powerful and victorious name,

Amen.

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