I never expected clay to teach me how to live.
But these days, as my hands sink into wet mud at the wheel, I can feel God’s hands on me too—pressing, guiding, reshaping. It wasn’t always this way.
For years, I lived in graphics, words, and deadlines. I was a corporate communications lead, relying on metrics and strategies to prove my worth. At the same time I was a discipleship pastor in a local church, believing I was stepping deeper into my calling. Instead, it was awful—crushing in ways I don’t need to name publicly. My heart fractured under it. I got out and sought help. Art drew me into the arms of Jesus. The soft light of hope began to rise.
And then, slowly, God began something new.
Not with a lightning bolt, but with a lump of clay.
I started making pottery—tentative at first, just something tactile to move the grief and pain stored in my body. But at the wheel, as clay wobbled and collapsed and needed reshaping, God whispered:
This is you.
Sometimes the old form cannot hold what I want to pour into you. Sometimes I have to press you down, rework you, and begin again.
It wasn’t punishment. It was mercy.
The reshaping hurt, but He was making something better suited for His purposes and certainly, good for me.
Through clay came further healing. And retreats—spaces where I could breathe, where women encountered Jesus through prayer, art, and adventure. Then discipling others in their own journeys. And now, by His grace, walking alongside people through Biblical counseling.
And there’s more. My husband and I share a love for creativity, and we now–together–run Lake Harvest Pottery, a small business born from this reshaping. Every mug, every bowl feels like a quiet testimony: the Potter makes new vessels.
Alongside that, I lead Community Food Network, a food cooperative for people who deal with chronic food insecurity—because when God reshapes your life, He often widens your table. Feeding others, body and soul, feels like another kind of pottery. Another kind of clay in His hands.
If you’ve felt crushed, discarded, or unusable, hear this:
The Potter is not finished with you.
He is not afraid to press His hands in deep, to reshape what feels broken, to make you into a vessel that carries His love in ways you never imagined.
Even in the spinning and the reshaping, His grace holds.
And somehow, in His timing, beauty rises from the clay.