Feeling Overwhelmed by Life’s Hard Seasons?

In this powerful episode of the Collide Podcast, we sit down with Sarah Wallace to talk about building mental toughness in the face of loss, pain, and life’s toughest valleys. Sarah shares her personal story of profound loss and how God is using her pain for purpose, offering insights on resilience, vulnerability, and practical ways to grow inner strength. Whether you’re navigating hardship, seeking hope, or longing for personal growth, this episode will remind you that even in the hardest seasons, you can find strength, resilience, and purpose.

Meet Sarah Wallace

Sarah Wallace is the founder of the Fortitude Project, a community devoted to building mental toughness alongside heart softness. After experiencing the tragic loss of her brother, Sarah transformed her pain into purpose, dedicating herself to helping others navigate life’s valleys with grace and resilience. She is passionate about guiding others to embrace vulnerability, cultivate resilience, and find hope through practical tools and authentic connection. Her story is a powerful example of how personal growth, when rooted in heart and purpose, can create lasting impact.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn

• How to cultivate mental toughness during life’s most challenging seasons
• The importance of embracing vulnerability as a pathway to resilience
• Practical tools to grow inner strength while maintaining heart softness
• How to reframe pain and loss as opportunities to serve and encourage others
• Why personal growth doesn’t have to be serious or unattainable—it can be joyful and practical

How This Episode Will Encourage You

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, defeated, or unsure of how to navigate a difficult season, this episode will give you hope and practical guidance. You’ll be reminded that no matter where life has taken you, you are capable of developing resilience and mental fortitude, and that even your pain can be used for purpose and impact.

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✨ Learn more and grab your ticket on our website.

Connect with Sarah - The Fortitude Project | Instagram | The Fortitude Podcast

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Hey there. This is Willow Weston, and I am so glad to be with you today.

I just got to interview Sarah Wallace, and she is the founder of the Fortitude Project and really is a voice that has chosen to allow God to pray, purpose her pain for the benefit of others. She experienced a great loss in her life, and in this episode she talks a lot about what it looks like to build mental toughness.

So if you need some mental toughness in your life, take a listen to this interview. Sarah, it's so fun to have you. You're hopping on in New York City. City.

And of course, I'm in the Pacific Northwest, so we are very far away from each other. But I love that we can connect in this way.

I know. Absolutely. Coast to coast. So fun. Thank you so much for having me, Willow. I've been really looking forward to coming on, so thanks a lot.

Yeah, for sure. Well, just, just on, you know, the New York City vibes, I. I've actually never been there. Have you lived there your whole life?

No, I grew up in Kansas.

Okay, tell us how you went from Kansas to nyc.

Yeah, I grew up in Kansas.

I pursued a degree in dance in college, and then after college, I moved to New York City right after college to pursue musical theater professionally. So that's what took me to New York. And I did that for a number of years.

I met my husband through performing and then although we don't do that in the same way that we once did, we still, still New York City still feels like home. We've found a great community of people here, which is really kind of what keeps us. So I don't know if we'll be here forever. Forever.

We have a seven month old baby and our apartment's already feeling pretty tight just with one tiny baby. So we'll see what, what God does.

I still feel pretty anchored to New York City, but yeah, I've been here for, gosh, it's going on 13 years, which is crazy. The time goes by so fast.

Yeah. I always think of New York as just so big and so many people. And how do you feel? Not like a number, like how do you feel known?

How do you experience community in such a large place?

Yeah, I think it's. I mean, coming here with the.

When I first moved here, I moved here with a bunch of friends because we were all like, we went to college together, we were pursuing the same kind of path, and so we all moved here at the same time. And then just through life and how God crosses paths, I don't know.

I've continued to meet people and meet the people that have made me feel anchored and the people that can. That I just know are. Are in my corner. And I've met a lot of friends through meeting my husband, his friends, then like our friends intermingling.

And so it's just kind of been. I don't know, it's all kind of happened a little organically. I feel a little silly saying that because it can be so hard to.

To build community here, even though there's so many people. It can be a very lonely feel.

But we've been blessed the way God has intertwined our paths with others and the friendships that we've been able to build here.

Yeah, that's incredible. You started the Fortitude Project, and it sounds like this didn't start out of, you know, it didn't start on a mountaintop.

Can you invite us back to how this whole thing came about and what God's doing through it?

Yeah, absolutely. So, like I mentioned my husband, I met my husband doing a. A national tour of a musical.

And after we met, after, we like, went through some ups and downs of our own, which I have written kind of about a handful of that on, on the Fortitude Project. But we went on a journey to really be in a healthy relationship.

And so, so once we kind of decided that we didn't know if we wanted musical theater to be the end all. Be all for us in our life.

And so we were sort of starting to explore other options, praying about it being like God, you know, open any doors that might help us be able to do something that could have a bigger impact, that could, I don't know, expand our territory, expand like our ability to share our stories, to just whatever his will was for us to be able to grow his kingdom, really. We were praying a lot about that, and long story really condensed. We kind of put pursuing musical theater on the back burner.

During the pandemic, my husband was just at home all the time. I was still working outside the home during the pandemic, but he was at home a lot.

Um, and that ended up one of those VIN videos, ended up kind of going pretty viral. And then that just kind of snowballed and then cut to, here we are four years later doing social media as our full time job.

So in the midst of all that, we have that's never something that we planned on doing ever, ever, ever. So that was a thing that God opened up that we didn't know would be part of our story. And then as our.

As our platform kind of continued to grow, I was like, love doing the content that is fun, that is funny, that brings joy, but I also want to be able to share. Like, I think I have other things to share that could be helpful for people just based on things I've gone through in my life. And so I had.

It was my husband, Micah was the one who was like, well, why don't you. Why don't you. Like, you're. You have a way with words. Why don't you start writing it down? Like, why don't you do a blog or something?

So he was the one that planted that seed in me to start sharing bits of my story through writing. And so I started doing that. And it has. I really. It's something that I really enjoy. And it's been.

It's been cool to see how just being able to share kind of a more serious side of myself. I love fun. I love being goofy. I love having a good time and laughing with people. But I also think there's so much that can be.

I don't know, social media can be very easy to just be like, that person's life is so easy and, you know, to not know any. Any of the backstory or any. Anything that led to where they are, any of the different struggles that they've gone through.

And I really felt pulled to want to make people feel and know that they're not alone in whatever it is they're going through, even if they're. They're going through something different than what I've gone through. Any, you know, emotional lows that you're experiencing?

You're not the only one experiencing it. And I'm a big.

I really think that one of the biggest weapons of the enemy is making us feel like we are alone in what we're going through, and we're never alone in what we're going through. So that was kind of the. What inspired me starting the Fortitude Project. And I. When I had. When I had my son, who he's seven months old, I sort of.

I haven't. I hadn't been as diligent with writing on it as I. As I once was.

And now that we're kind of settling back into a routine, I'm able to start writing again to post on there.

But it's been really cool to have people, you know, just Send me amazing emails and say this helped me in this way, or I asked me a question about my faith journey or someone being like, I kind of fell away from my face. And then I read this and it inspired me to kind of dive back in.

You know, just any, any even one, even one person, if I got one message like that to me, that that would be worth it because it's just, I don't know, you never know who you're going to touch or how you're going to change their lives. So it's kind of a. The quick ish version of how it came to be.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. It's funny how you can accidentally start a thing and then it becomes something entirely different than what it first was.

And that just seems like how God works. That's how it's worked around here at Collide too. You know, just a thing that started out of my pain that became something so much more.

But I wasn't even looking to start a thing. So that's a, that's a funny experience. You experienced the incredible loss of your little brother.

And that has been something that you've used your voice and your writing to talk about and something that it seems like God is using to using your story to help other people in their loss. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the first major hard thing I ever went through in my life. And I learned so much going through it.

And I apologize already if I'm like, if I become emotional because it's like, it's just so wild how something's so difficult. It's coming up on this September will be 10 years since my brother passed away and which is just wild and.

Mm, it's just so wild to see how God uses such a painful thing to bring out a lot of, a lot of good. Like, I've experienced so much good since I went through that and I don't know it's. Until you have experienced a deep loss, I don't know.

Grief is just such a weird thing and it's so different for everybody. And I'm a big believer and that there's not like one right way to grieve or one right process. But it really, I think, number one, I, I, I pray.

I pray. Thank you to God. Every day that I, I'm wired to be pretty positive. I, I, I tend to look at the silver linings.

I tend to kind of just lean that way in, in the way that I think I've always been that way. But I think what a really big thing that that experience taught me is.

It's like after the day I lost my brother and even, Even the day after I lost him, like there were moments in my day where I felt happy. And that to me at first felt almost wrong.

But it started to make me really think about the resilience of the human spirit and how God has designed us so intentionally to be able to get through things that are extremely painful and how. Especially if we lean on Him. Because that's a.

That was another big thing for me is I don't know that I have an answer to why, but I wasn't ever angry at God. Did I wonder why I was going through what I was going through? Of course. Did I wonder why my prayers of healing for my brother didn't get answered?

And instead it, it, you know, it went. I mean, he, He. He did get healed. He. He went. Got healed when he went to heaven, but it didn't get answered in the way I wanted it to get answered.

Um, and so it really. But I wasn't angry at God. Instead of going that way, I moved towards leaning into him, trying to learn more about his character.

Because it's just so easy to be like, why would a. If a. God loves me, why would he let something like this happen to me?

You know, so it really, that experience really pointed me towards wanting to learn more about the character of God and how he wasn't. He wasn't leaving me, he wasn't abandoning me, he wasn't doing this to me. It's. It's just, it's what happens when we're on this.

On this side of eternity is we're gonna go through pain and we're gonna go through suffering. And it's very clear in the Bible that that's the truth. And so it. I think it really.

The first thing that I, That I learned from that whole experience was just God's character is so good and he is just. He really does work everything out for our good if into him and allow. Allow him to guide us to what could be good from something so painful.

And then just how resilient we are as humans. We can really. We can handle so much more than we think that we can, especially if we lean on our Creator. So that's a. That's. I don't. That's.

That's some of the, Some of the ways that.

That he has kind of just taken that experience and really worked it out for his good and for me to be able to share that that with people, because again, if you've never. It's. When you're in that valley, it's so hard to be like, am I ever going to be on the other side of this?

And so seeing other people who have gone to the other side, I think for me was always. Was always. Is always so helpful. And whether it's grief or whether it's.

You're working towards a goal, whether it's in business, whether it's in whatever it may be, it's always nice to have examples of like, okay, this is. This is part, like, I'm going to go through my own process, but I will. I will get to the other side if I allow him to work through me.

Let's start kind of breaking this down a little bit because you. You've said a couple times you're amazed by the resilience of the human spirit. That's really interesting to me.

I wonder if you can almost give us examples of things that you've seen or. Because I think there are some people. I mean, I sat with a woman in the week who.

She got a breast cancer diagnosis on top of, like, five other things that were already extremely difficult going on in her life.

So she's getting this news when she just feels so weak and so exhausted and tired anyways, and she was crying and said, I don't know if I can do this. So definitely we have these moments in our lives where we don't feel like we have endurance, strength, resilience.

And yet you're here saying, but we are so resilient. How do we believe that when we don't feel it?

Oh, my gosh. I mean, that's. That's a hard question. I think almost is something. It's almost like a cycle of. You experience it because you. You have no other choice.

Where it's like, okay, well, I. What, I'm. I'm just going to give up here in the darkest part of the valley. No, I'm not going to. I'm not going to make that choice.

So I'm going to push through. And then it's like, then you have the evidence that you were able to get through that, even if it was hard.

And then the next time something comes, it's like, well, now I have that thing to lean, to lean back on, to know that I'm able to. I'm able to push through, to push through these things. And I think it's also.

I think prayer is a big part of that, or was a big part of that for me as well. Of being like asking God to make me feel, help me to experience a strength that I didn't think was there.

Can he please share some of his strength with me? Because when your strength runs out, where else can you go? And so asking, asking really intentionally for his help.

And even if, even if I'm not saying I had that prayer answered on a daily basis or like I would suddenly get this, you know, wave of feeling better, that's not always how it goes, but I think just those.

I wasn't able to learn that until I experienced something where I was like, oh, I got through that so I can get through the next thing I can, the next time something else happens.

I had that evidence to lean on, which is kind of, I don't know, it's kind of, it's kind of difficult because there' always going to be that first time where you have to kind of almost decide to, to learn it and decide to lean into him so that he can help you learn it. But that's a hard one.

Talk to me a little bit about that decision to decide to have a mental toughness in a time or a valley where you feel like you don't have it. What, what, what does that look like?

Yeah, I think, you know, I don't want to diminish.

I don't want to diminish other people's experiences because like I mentioned before, I've always trended very positive in my thought life and I certainly had to after I lost my brother.

I definitely had to put a lot more work into making sure, into taking my thoughts captive, grabbing hold of them and making sure that the thoughts I was having were actually true and I wasn't. Rabbit Hol. And, and honestly it was really because three, three months after my brother passed away, I was married before my, my current husband.

And three months after my brother passed away, that husband came to me and told me that he was gay.

So that was another big thing that rocked my world and sort of made me really have to go through a journey of forgiveness and self image examination and grief. And those things happened three months apart. So that was a, that was a low time for me in my life.

And I think I just, I wrote down my prayers a lot and I don't know that I have an answer for how or why I decided, but I was just like, I just made the choice that God was eventually going to answer my prayers for forgiveness and feeling whole again and that I would try my best to walk a path where I could be healed from what I felt like were really big holes in my heart and my self image.

And so I think not having an expectation for a timeline in which I would feel healed or in which I would be able to forgive the way I wanted to, or in which I would, I mean, I'm never gonna not miss my brother.

But for a way where it wouldn't feel quite as difficult as it did at the time, I just decided that I was gonna pray and I wasn't gonna put a timeline on it.

And I think not having a timeline, I think that was really helpful for me because I was just like, you can maybe it will take you six months to help me with this. Maybe it's gonna be five years, maybe it's gonna be 10, who knows?

But I think I didn't have expectations surrounding the timeline of my healing, which I think allowed me to persist in my prayer and my belief that if it wasn't in my timing, he was going to answer my prayer. And even if it wasn't answered in the way I wanted it to be, he was gonna, he was gonna answer it in some way.

And it's crazy to look back on the prayers I wrote, wrote down at that time and how he has since answered just about all of them in many different timelines and in many different ways. One

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But I think I didn't have expectations surrounding the timeline of my healing, which I think allowed me to persist in my prayer and my belief that if it wasn't in my timing, he was going to answer my prayer. And even if it wasn't answered in the way I wanted it to be, he was going to answer it in some way.

And it's crazy to look back on the prayers I wrote down at that time and how he has since answered just about all of them in many different timelines and in many different ways.

It kind of reminds me of Mary and Martha when they, I'm sure you're familiar and actually when I started to think about it, your story is very parallel because their, you know, brother had passed and they had asked for Jesus to show up before he passed and he didn't. And what's interesting to me so about that story is that they were very honest with Jesus and how disappointed they were.

They, they ran out to him and they actually were like, if you had been here, our brother, you know, would have been alive. And they, they were very real in their grief.

Yeah, but one of the things, I think it was Martha, she said, she said, if you had been here, she was very upset, my brother would still be alive.

But even if this kind of statement of I will still, like, it's like this statement of faith, like, I will still choose to believe that you are here and you are good and you can do something. And that sometimes has to be a choice, I think, where you just wake up and you go, I don't even know if you're real today.

But I'm going to choose to look for evidence of your reality or I don't like your will, but I'm going to choose to trust that you know what's best. Even though I'm questioning it all over the place. Like, yes, there's sort of like, I don't know if you do this, but I.

In the times in my life that have been really hard, I almost have to claim these things out loud. Like, I almost have to preach to myself and be like, even if this is happening, I. I need you. I can't do it alone.

I'm going to choose to look for you in it, or I'm going to hope you do something good with what totally sucks. Or like, I have to actually make the choice and say it aloud for myself to, to hear that I'm. I'm deciding something in the moment.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Speaking out loud is so powerful. You can feel so silly doing it, but it makes a huge difference.

And I think for me it was also always like, well, what's the, what's the alternative? I'm going to decide that God is abandoning me or I don't, I don't believe who he is anymore. Where is that going to leave me?

That's not going to leave me anywhere good. So I'd rather believe. I'd rather believe that he is working something out that I can't see.

And maybe it's in a timeline I don't prefer in a way that I don't prefer, but I much rather believe that that's what's going on versus I had just have to sit here and rely on my own, my own will and my own strength. So for me, it just always felt like the better, the better alternative, even if it was hard.

You talk about the fact that there's a lot of practical tools that can help grow our mental toughness and our heart softness. Can you talk to us about what some of those are and why it's important to have both mental toughness and heart softness?

Yeah, I think. Honestly, I think a lot of it comes from scripture. And I'm not. I'm not a scripture expert and I'm not preacher. I'm not.

I don't even have the most scripture memorized. I do my best to memorize scripture, but there's so much.

If we can have, if we have a grasp on truth, I think that allows us to increase our mental toughness. Because for me, anytime I felt mentally weak, it's when I'm starting to believe something that is a lie or I'm not believing something that is true.

So I think there's. And I did. I did a lot of this work with. With a counselor where I had to, like, I. I did a lot of journaling.

I wrote down things I needed to like people. I. Things I needed to forgive. I wrote down ways I needed to forgive myself. I. I did all kinds of, like, homework through. Through counseling.

And I'm a big advocate for counseling because it has been so beneficial for me as an individual, for my husband and I as a couple, it's just been huge.

So doing work with a trusted counselor for me was a big part of how I learned how to have mental toughness because I learned tools to kind of cut off the thoughts that were lies. And even now, it's one of those things. It's a skill that has to be built. In my opinion, I think that it's not natural.

As humans, we kind of tend to think negatively. We tend to think like, woe is me. The victim mentality is much easier. Easier. So it's a skill that we have to build, and it almost requires something.

Us to be going through something difficult for us to be able to work on it. So I still go through times in my life where I'm like. I'm having a pretty. Like I'm having a good. I'm on a good upswing right now in my life.

So I feel like I haven't been able to practice my mental toughness as much. And so some. It's almost like.

Like working out in the gym, where it's like finding those scriptures to meditate on that I can have for when one of those thoughts that are lies come start to start to kind of rabbit hole me. And. And for me this is like a, I like to like before I, if I'm praying, sitting, sitting quietly with God like I used to.

I don't know if I've ever written about this on my blog, but I think I have maybe.

But there's like an exercise I, I read in a book I've reading Personal Development also, like, another thing that I really enjoy, particularly from Christian authors, because I love the kind of, like, science of our brain mixed with faith. I think it's just so interesting and it goes so hand in hand.

So like an ex thinking about, like, this is kind of a silly visual, but almost like if a cake is on a pan and it has that like, glass thing on top of it, like a little cake stand.

I almost think of one of those, like, dropping down from the sky and like, encapsulating me in it and so that none of the, anything that is like a lie or negative, I'm covered in this, in this, in this thing and it bounce, it bounces right off. So silly.

Visuals like that for me have always been really helpful or even thinking of, like, if I'm trying to clear my mind, literally imagining like a big butterfly net just sweeping through my mind, catching all the kind of negative, anxious thoughts and sweeping them away.

So things, silly things that are kind of like, I don't know, sound kind of corny, but for me, that the visualization helps me get to a place where then God's truth can really penetrate.

And I feel like, okay, now, now I feel like my mind has been primed for me to download whatever God wants to say to me today or download something from scripture or anything like that. So I do all kinds of little, like, silly visualizations like that that are really helpful for me, even though they sound kind of cheesy.

Yeah. Do you? Because you mentioned it's been 10 years since your brother passed. And I wonder if sometimes some of the sort of lies sneak up still.

Like, do you have experiences where you feel like, oh man, I should be done with this feeling or this thing I'm believing or whatever, but it's sneaking back in. And then you have to like, revisualize yourself in the glass case.

And I mean, what does that look like for you, 10 years down the road from such an extreme loss?

I think for that one, I think I, I, I don't so much feel it creep in for that, but I feel it creep in for other things in my life. Like, am I, I should be further along in this area? I should be. Why? Why?

Like, you know, just the the comparison thing, why does this person have this in their life? And I, I want that in my life. So why don't I have that in my life?

Things, things like that, where it's like I want to make progress like this, or am I, am I doing, am I truly walking in, in the purpose God has for me? Am I doing all I can to have a positive impact on the world around me?

I think more, more often thoughts and lies creep in surrounding that kind of stuff.

Now at, at this point in, in my life, which takes the same kind of thing where I have to butterfly net those anxious thoughts and, and, and get rid of them and replace them with what I, what I know to be true based on. And it's, it can be so amorphous to talk about like, what's your purpose? What has God told you that your purpose is?

You know, like, I think we all have so many layers of our purpose and we're all significant in, in so many different ways.

But I think when it comes to, excuse me, it comes to work and purpose and contribution, that's where I have a lot of lies creep in these days that I have to exercise that mental toughness and that taking of those thoughts captive and getting rid of them and replacing them with things that are true.

What do you think are some enemies to all of our mental toughness?

I think comparison is a huge one.

I think thinking that we, and especially just in the world that we live in now with social media and so many things that are, we just see people's lives in a way that we've never had access to before. And I think as fun as that can be, sometimes it also causes a lot of, it can cause a lot of detriment.

And I'm speaking as someone who, who shares their life on social media for a living. So I've benefited from this the way that our world is right now.

But I do think that the comparison can be just so, so detrimental because we think we should be here, we think we should have this when we don't.

Most of the time we don't even know the backstory or we don't know what's going on behind closed doors of this person's life and we think they have it all together. Or I just think comparison is a really big one in today's world.

Absolutely.

We were out with friends last night for dinner and we all went around and shared honest ways that social media can kind of make us mentally become or feel something that we don't like that we don't feel good about it was really interesting, just as adults.

I mean, you worry about it for kids, but then when you start to hear adults be really honest about, oh yeah, when I scroll past something like this, it just starts to make me get envious or it starts to make me judge, or it starts to make me not like my life or whatever it is. So it's really interesting to evaluate all that. But I do think our mental toughness is being beaten down on a regular basis.

Yes, agreed. It's, it's very hard in our society today to I, I talk about this, I've written about this a lot in my blog.

But to really take our value from where it comes from, to take our value from our Creator and know that, know and operate in the fact that we are intrinsically so valuable simply because we are, we're created by a God who loves us unconditionally.

And in a world where you're not praised for existing, you're praised for accomplishing, you're praised for business wins, for monetary wins, for influence, for power, for whatever the things that in God's eyes don't matter. But it can be so hard because we are humans and our earthly desires can take over so easily.

It's just, it's very hard to really operate and know how valuable we are, no matter what the circumstances in our life are showing us.

We talk a lot around here about colliding with Jesus.

This idea that, you know, I mean, if you look at Jesus in the New Testament, he ran into people, he collided with their life, and every single time he did, there was this life transforming run in and they were left completely different than when before they ran into him, they were more whole than before. And I'm curious what your experience has been.

How do you take cues from your collisions and run ins with Jesus so that you can look at him and go, oh, I know this is true, because I've seen it true in him when he runs into people.

That's, that's a great question.

I think again, it goes back to, and we were talking with someone about this yesterday on, on our podcast, how important it is to write things down, write down prayers, write down, when you like, what promptings from the Holy Spirit. Write down the ways that you collide with Jesus because you'll probably see some kind of pattern if you track it.

But if we don't track it, it's hard to notice those things or remember.

And so I was saying that that's something that I want to get better at, but when I was on I happened to when I was on the Beauty and the Beast tour, which is the job I was doing when my brother passed away. And when my husband came out to me, I had already committed to because I wanted to remember the experience of that tour.

So it just so happened that those two very difficult things happened to me when I was in a season where I was writing everything down. So being able to go back and see, wow. I don't even remember praying this prayer, but I wrote it down and now God has answered it in this way.

I mean, things with, like starting. Starting the Fortitude project with my husband and I, with our, with our social media. Like, things that I was writing, I was like, I want to have.

I need you to help me use my gifts in a way where I can have a bigger impact. Like, things like that, where I was just like, I love to perform and I have a gifting when it comes to being on stage. But I wanted.

Writing down, like, I want to use those gifts, but I want to use them in different ways where I can have a bigger impact.

And so I think writing down those collision moments with Jesus are so important because then we can go back and when we're, when we're wanting, I think we, you know, we. I want to collide with Jesus every day. But do I have the. Do I have, you know, a big clouds opening up moment every single day? No, of course not.

That's not, that's not how it works. But it.

When I could go back and read that evidence of, like I had look at this way that, that he changed my heart in this moment and how I can, I know that it will happen if there's something I'm waiting for, like that it will happen again in, again.

And maybe not in my timeline, maybe not in the way I want, but I think writing those things down is so key to having those collision moments and reflecting on how those have shaped us and then giving us, bolstering our faith when we're in a moment where it's like, I need you and I feel you're not close, but I can look back on this evidence and know that you actually are close and you will come through in your way and your will.

Yeah, absolutely. I have to hang my hat on things I've seen him do to trust for what he will do when I'm struggling to believe. Right. It's so good.

I love that you have allowed God to purpose your pain for people listening right now who are in the midst of the chapter where they're hurting and they can't see the good. You mentioned the scripture. God works out all things for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

What's your advice for them? You're in the chapter where you can look back and see how God has purposed your pain.

But what's your advice for the people who are in the chapter called this sucks?

I would say this too shall pass. And when you are. I think what you were talking about at the beginning, actually about community, I think that's a big part of it.

Because when you don't. When it's too painful for you to remember the truth of maybe who you are or your circumstances or the pain that you're experiencing. For me, I needed.

I needed a person who I could say, hey, I need you to remind me of that. I need you to remind me of that truth. I need you to remind me who I am.

So whether it's a friend or a parent or a sibling or a mentor or a counselor or someone who you know is safe, for me, that was a huge thing of getting over being afraid to be like, I need. I need you to remind me what's true. I need you to remind me that I'm going to get through this.

I'm having a really hard day today, and I'm feeling very hopeless. I need a reminder because sometimes simply praying wasn't enough for me. I needed. And I think it. It kind of depends on how we're wired.

And this is potentially a whole other conversation. But, like, my temperament, I love, like, physical. Physical touch. I love hugs. I love, like, I. That is how I, like, connect with my. My close people.

And you, I can't get that with.

And so sometimes I'm like, I need God to use someone else to give me a tight hug so that I can be filled with some of this hopelessness can go away because I'm not able to do that for myself right now. So I do think community, whether it's.

Even if it's just one person who you really trust, like, that can make such a big difference when you're in that. That really dark, dark season. Mm.

Well, yeah. And if you're in the chapter called this sucks. I mean, there. And we all have those chapters, it sucks just slightly, a little bit less.

At least when you're not doing it by yourself. Right. I mean, God uses each other to walk through the valley.

Right.

And so I love that you're reminding us that. And I know there's people who are listening who are going to want to follow you and read your blog and listen to your podcast and all the things.

So how can they do that? Sarah?

Yeah, we, if you, if you want some laughs, my, my husband and I on Instagram are Micah and Sarah. We just do funny, comedic, performative stuff. My personal Instagram is Sarah Shelton Wallace and that's kind of where I do a little bit more.

I don't know, I don't. Serious is not exactly the right word, but sort of like deeper kind of content.

And then my blog is the Fortitude Project, which if it's just fortitude project.com that's where I've shared a lot of my experience, the tools that have been helpful for me. And then our podcast is called the Fortitude Podcast.

So it's kind of a spin off of my blog where we have guests on, we have just a lot of talk about vulnerability and sharing stories where the goal is to help people know that they're not alone in what they're going through.

So yeah, thank you, Sarah, so much for being on the podcast.

Of course. Thanks for having me, Willow. I appreciate it.

Yeah, friend, I don't know about you, but as we were discussing mental toughness, I was just sort of self evaluating and thinking on a scale of 1 to 10, how am I doing right now with feeling mentally strong? And I definitely don't feel like I'm where I want to be.

I don't know about you, and I can think of a few things that I want to do to grow in strength in my mind. And so I'm going to set out to do some of those things and I hope you will too.

If you're in the chapter that is hard and painful and so very difficult and you cannot see your way out. I just want to pause for a minute and tell you that I've been in a chapter.

Maybe the words are not the same, the story's not the same, but I've been in a chapter that's titled that as well.

And sometimes it feels like you're in a fog or there's a shadow over everything, or you keep getting pushed down into the water and it's barely enough just to bob out and take a breath before you get pushed back down. I don't know where you are, but I want to remind you today that God is real and God is good and God destined you to be here.

And God is writing a story in your life and God has purpose even in the pain. So if you need evidence of that, if you need voices in your life to remind you that's true.

Surround yourself with people who can go to a therapist or friends. And honestly, we have a million resources at Collide that we've curated for you.

Go to our website at wecolide.net or come back to this podcast every week, whatever you need to do to be reminded there's evidence that God keeps showing up throughout history with humanity in the hardest chapters. He shows up in the valley of the shadow of death, and he meets you there and he walks you into new chapters and new story and new life.

So keep colliding with him and we'll catch you next week.