Believing bigger, one year at a time

In 2021, I was grieving. 

My husband had passed, and the holiday season leading up to the anniversary of his death had become the hardest stretch of the year for me. Somewhere in the middle of trying to find my footing, I found Marshawn Evans Daniels on social media. I read her book because I wanted to find out what she meant by “reinventing” herself. When I finished it, I became invested and started paying more attention to her posts on social media because they made me think about how I, too, was in the position to reinvent myself.

That’s how I found Marshawn’s devotional, Believing Bigger.

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 I joined a group led by Marshawn, and each day we came together around the day’s devotional—a scripture, lesson and prompt. We prayed the same bold, faith-stretching prayers together. I needed that. Someone else reading the same words on the same day meant grief didn’t feel like something I was carrying by myself.

Then, one day, I was invited to lead a devotional in the community. As a matter of fact, it was Day 90, on December 20, 2021, and the theme centered on stepping fully into God’s power and letting go of lingering fears or self-doubt.

That year, I learned something I didn’t expect a devotional could teach me: you can build toward the hardest day of the year instead of just bracing for it. I had always thought grief was something you survived by getting through it as fast as possible. But Marshawn’s devotional showed me a different way—to start early, walk slowly and let the practice carry you forward on purpose.

This year is different in one good way:    

I now have the Believing Bigger Devotional Planner by Marshawn Evans Daniels, too. I was gifted the devotional planner, and I started using it back in July. Where the devotional carries me emotionally and spiritually, the planner helps me get practical—naming my goals, tracking what’s working, making my plans plain instead of just hoping they happen. The planner also reminds me to spend quiet time with God and just wait for the word to come to me.

As I work through the planner, Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV has become my anchor: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” I don’t have to know how the year unfolds. I just have to keep showing up to the pages.

And there’s a verse from Habakkuk 2:2 NIV that I return to as well; it’s the instruction to write the vision down and make it plain: “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.”

That’s what the planner has given me:   

A place to put my plans in writing, so they’re not just feelings I’m hoping to hold onto, but something I can see, revisit and build toward.

This September, Marshawn will lead a group of women, starting on the day before my birthday. I’ll be walking into that first devotional entry not as someone bracing for December, but as someone who has done this before and knows what’s on the other side. I know the road. I’ve walked it for four years now.

And every year, I learn the same lesson in a new way: you don’t have to face your hardest day unprepared. You can spend the days ahead getting ready for it, and by the time it arrives, you’re not just surviving it. You’re believing bigger than it.

Dr. Alisha Reed is a licensed pharmacist and a boy mom who is unapologetic about self-care. She is the creator of the REFILL Strategy, hosts the Your Self Care Prescription podcast, and is passionate about teaching women how to advocate for themselves.