Fall is my favorite season. Always has been. And in 2024, after the finalization of my divorce and losing my corporate job within weeks of each other, I needed fall to mean something more than just cooler weather and pumpkin everything. I needed it to mean rebuilding.
At that point, I was burnt out on the corporate HR world I’d spent years in, and I knew I needed to find a way to keep generating income while I figured out what came next. That search led me to an online Christian group, where I started learning something completely new to me: online journaling, creating devotionals, and building faith-based products. I spent a few weeks getting familiar with it all, joined in on the community events, and in late September, I published my very first journal on KDP.
I was ready for more.
Fall has always been the season I associate most with gratitude, even though gratitude is something we can (and should) practice all year long. And in the middle of everything falling apart that year, I found myself genuinely grateful. Not because things were easy. They weren’t. I had plenty of doubting days during that season, days where gratitude felt like the last thing I had access to.
But I turned to scripture. I turned to my church. I spent a lot of quiet days by myself, just sitting with God in the middle of the uncertainty. The leaves were changing, the colors were changing, and I said to myself, this is where I need to start changing too.
As a single mom of three kiddos, without a steady stream of income at that point, I knew I couldn’t just sit around and wait without putting in the work. So I kept applying for positions that didn’t tug at my heart, thinking that was the only path forward. But in the middle of all that applying, I kept developing my skills on Canva, website design, and content creation.
That’s where the gratitude devotional came from. Pulling from a few things I’d learned in that Christian group, and adding my own voice and experience, I launched my first devotional: a 21-day gratitude journal meant to carry someone through any season of life, but launched right at the beginning of gratitude season, November.
It opens like this:
“The daily practice of thanking God is a cornerstone of spiritual growth. This intentional act serves as a spiritual discipline, shaping our character and nurturing a deeper understanding of our relationship with God. When we make thanksgiving a daily habit, we cultivate a heart that is attuned to the countless blessings, both big and small, given to us by the Creator.”
The gratitude journal was going to be my next step in continuing to generate income. Small steps, small amounts, but I needed something instead of nothing. That led me to more. I started my own online women’s group where we read the devotional together, shared our responses, and helped each other along the way. I created courses for women to enroll in and participate in, giving them the information to step out and be bold, regardless of where they were at in their life.
There are so many people out there looking to make extra cash and income, and some trying to replace their current full time corporate job. It isn’t for everyone, and there are plenty of online courses you can buy, resell, and profit from, but I’d recommend finding one that actually aligns with your values and purpose.
For me, that was creating Chaos, Coffee, and Love: the journals, the devotionals, the tools and resources to help other moms find their purpose and live a meaningful life.
Did I become a viral sensation? Or a wealthy millionaire who could stop applying for jobs I had no interest in? No. But I did learn so much about myself, my identity, who I wanted to be, and I became more present for myself and my kids.
More to come on what steps God led me through, in another blog coming soon. But for now, I pray this finds the right person at the right moment, where this devotional can walk you through some of the most grateful moments in your life, even when you think you have nothing left.
The Gratitude Devotional is 21 days instead of a full month, and that was intentional. Life gets busy, and honestly, gratitude is a lot easier to talk about than to actually practice every single day without fail. I wanted rest days built in, because grace matters more than perfection. I launched it around November since that’s the season most of us think about gratitude, but it isn’t locked to that month. You can start it whenever you need it. And 21 days happens to be about the amount of time it takes to start building a real habit, which made it feel like the right length from the start.
Looking back, that season taught me something I don’t think I could have learned any other way: gratitude isn’t the absence of hard things. It’s choosing to see God in the middle of them anyway.
If you’re heading into a season, whether it’s fall or just a hard season of life, where you need to rebuild your gratitude practice, my 21-Day Gratitude Devotionalis ready whenever you are.
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