What I Almost Missed — And Why God Wouldn't Let Me
I want to share with you about a season of my life that I have been sitting with differently lately. It’s not really regret, per se, because I genuinely believe that every experience is a data point and every hard season a thread in the story that brought me here. But with a tenderness. A subtle acknowledgment of something true that I want to say out loud.
I missed some parts of the little years with my son.
Not because I wasn't there physically. I was there at the dinner table, going through bedtime routines, at the school pickup line and the Sunday morning French toast, and all the ordinary moments that make up a childhood. My body was present for all of it. But mentally, I just always felt like I was deep in a fog. I was not always there in the way that matters most, in the full and available and genuinely inhabiting way that I understand now, on the other side of it, to be the thing he most needed from me.
And I think a lot of women reading this know exactly what I mean, even if they have never said it out loud either.
THE ATMOSPHERE OF THAT SEASON
In that season, life felt demanding and relentless and slightly too much, the way life always feels when you are in the middle of something hard without the perspective to understand what it is.
What I remember most is not a specific missed moment but an atmosphere. An agitation that followed me from room to room. A crankiness that settled over my days like weather I couldn't escape. A low hum of sadness and overwhelm that colored everything, even the good things, even the moments that should have been simple and sweet and uncomplicated.
I was short-tempered with my son far more often than I want to remember. For a long time I attributed that to whatever was happening in my body — the fatigue, the symptoms, the physical weight of feeling unwell day after day. And while that was partially true, I understand now what was more fully at work. A nervous system so dysregulated that patience was simply not available to me, no matter how sincerely I wanted it to be. My body was in a constant state of low-grade activation, and from that place, the ordinary demands of motherhood — the questions and the needs and the beautiful, relentless presence of a small child — felt like more than I could hold.
I carried my woes to my husband constantly. He is wonderfully loving and supportive, the kind of man who shows up fully for the people he loves, and he held what I brought him with more grace than I probably deserved. But he was never meant to carry that weight any more than I was, and I think some part of me knew that even then.
Supplements were packed into every suitcase. “Safe” snacks traveled with us everywhere. The research followed me on vacation. The worry about what I was putting into my body came to the dinner table and the beach and the holiday gatherings and every place that should have been a rest from the ongoing hunt for the root cause of why I felt the way I felt.
I was going through the motions of my own life. Present in the technical sense. But not there. Not really, not in the way that the people I loved most deserved and that I genuinely wanted to be.
THE GRIEF AND THE GRACE
I do not regret any of it. I mean that with my whole heart. Every experience is a data point, every hard season a thread woven into the story that brought me here — to this work, to this understanding, to the ability to sit across from a woman who is living what I lived and say I know. I have been there. I understand it from the inside.
And I am also sad, in the way that honest women allow themselves to be sad about true things, that I missed some parts of the little years with my son. The pre-K years especially — years of small hands and smaller questions and a world that was still entirely new and endlessly wonder-filled. The years that do not come back.
That grief deserves to be named. Not to collapse under it, not to carry it as shame or self-condemnation, but to acknowledge it honestly — and to let it become the very reason I show up fully now. The grief of what was missed is not a wound to hide. It is a compass pointing me toward what matters most in the ordinary moments I still have.
WHEN THE FOG BEGAN TO LIFT
It was not a supplement that lifted it. It was not a protocol or a practitioner or finally finding the right elimination diet or getting the right test results.
It was Jesus.
Very soon after the “Enough” moment — the season of obedience I have written about before, when I heard God say it was time to lay down the striving and I listened (go back to my first, introductory blog post to read more on that) — I began to deepen my relationship with Him in a way I had not prioritized during the years of health consuming. I started diving into my Bible. I built my morning rhythm around His presence rather than around symptom management. I plugged more fully into my church community and allowed myself to be known and held by people who were not also trying to carry my health anxiety alongside their own lives.
And something in the atmosphere of my daily life began to change. The fog thinned. The agitation softened. The ordinary moments began to come back into focus — not all at once and not without hard days, but gradually, the way light comes back after a long winter, so slowly you almost miss it until one morning you step outside and realize the world looks different than it did.
Around that same time I enrolled in a health coaching certification program. I had my story. I had the knowledge I had accumulated through years of lived experience and research and the hard-won wisdom of the other side. I was ready, I was certain, to step immediately into my purpose.
And God, in His faithful and sometimes gently humbling way, said — not yet.
THE HUMBLING
I heard it clearly. Slow down. Not yet. And I obeyed, even without fully understanding why, because I had just come through a season of learning what obedience to His voice looked like and I was not ready to stop practicing it.
At the time I understood the instruction primarily as being about my son. He was halfway through kindergarten and I knew, with a clarity that felt like more than just my own thinking, that I needed to be present for those years rather than building a business. That I needed to show up for the ordinary moments rather than dividing myself between motherhood and a new career. And so I waited.
But I am sitting here now, typing this, and putting together pieces I had not fully connected before this moment.
God was not just protecting my son's kindergarten years. He was giving me back the ordinary moments I had been grieving missing. He was saying — here. Be here now. The work will come in the right time. But first, be here for this. For the school pickup and the Sunday French toast and the bedtime routine and the small hand in yours on the walk to the park. Be here for all of it, fully, in the way you were not able to be during the years the fog was heaviest.
And He was preparing me. Because how could I coach other women through a process I had not yet fully lived? How could I sit across from a woman in the middle of her striving season and offer her genuine understanding if I had rushed past my own integration and into a business before the work was complete in me? The certification was not delayed. It was timed with a precision I could not have managed on my own. The two and a half years of waiting and presence and ordinary Tuesday evenings were not lost time. They were the curriculum that made everything that came after possible.
WHAT PRESENCE ACTUALLY FELT LIKE
I want to tell you what it felt like to gradually arrive back in my own life, because I think that is what you most want to know — not just that it happened, but what it was like from the inside.
The dinner table became a place I was actually at rather than somewhere my body sat while my mind was running through the day's symptoms and the next week's protocol adjustments and all the research I still needed to do. The bedtime routines with my son became something I was fully inside rather than something I was getting through on my way to the next thing. The conversations with my husband became genuinely connected in a way they had not been when I was constantly bringing him the weight of everything I was carrying.
The ordinary moments that had been happening in the background of my life began happening in the foreground instead. Not because they had changed — the dinner table was the same dinner table, the bedtime was the same bedtime — but because I was finally there to receive them.
And in all things — the fog and the grief and the waiting and the humbling and the gradual, tender return to presence — God was working. Not despite those seasons but through them, weaving every thread into something that could not have existed without all of it, including the parts that felt like loss.
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28
All things. Every blurry, foggy, half-present moment. Every supplement packed into a suitcase. Every short-tempered exchange with a small boy who deserved more patience than his mother had to give that day. Every ordinary moment that slipped by while she was somewhere else. All of it, in His hands, working toward something good.
TO THE WOMAN STILL IN THE FOG
I want to close by speaking directly to you — the woman who recognized herself somewhere in these paragraphs. The one who is still consumed, still going through the motions, still present in the technical sense but not yet fully there in the way that matters most.
You are not behind. You are not a bad mother or a checked-out wife or an ungrateful friend. You are a woman whose nervous system has been under more pressure than it was designed to sustain indefinitely, and from that place, full presence has simply not been available to you — no matter how much you have wanted it to be.
And God is not withholding from you in this season. He is working in it, in ways you will not be able to see clearly until you are standing on the other side looking back. The waiting is not wasted. The ordinary moments that feel like they are passing by while you are somewhere else are not lost — some of them are still ahead of you, and you will be there for them in a way you cannot yet imagine.
But you do not have to wait until the fog lifts completely to begin showing up. You can begin today, in the smallest and most unglamorous way, to arrive in your own life. To put down the research and sit at the table. To close the laptop and be in the bedtime. To let the ordinary moment be enough — because it is. It always was.
The life you have been waiting to fully inhabit is not waiting on the other side of healed. It is here. And so, increasingly, are you.
And if you’re not sure where you’re at, that’s okay. Here are 3 Signs Your Nervous System Is Keeping You From Being Fully Present:
You are physically in the room but mentally somewhere else — running through symptoms, to-do lists, or tomorrow's worries while the moment happening right in front of you slips by unnoticed
You are short-tempered or emotionally reactive with the people you love most — not because you don't care, but because your nervous system has no margin left to give
You look back on seasons of your life and they feel blurry — not because nothing happened, but because you were never fully there to receive it
Heavenly Father,
I lift up the woman reading this today, Lord, who sees herself in these paragraphs — who is struggling to find presence with the people she loves most, because she is lost in a fog of overwhelm. Lord, Romans 8:28 reminds us that you work all things for good for those who love you, and we are so grateful to receive your goodness. Sometimes, though, this can be hard to remember in foggy times, when it feels like we will never see clearly again. Please speak to the woman reading this today, Jesus, through your Holy Spirit to remind her that all things are done for your glory and that there is good that will come from her story. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but as always, in your perfect timing. Thank you for loving and caring for us so deeply, Lord. We praise you!
I pray this all in the beautiful name of Jesus. Amen.
With grace and 🤍,
Brynn
A note before you go: I am a certified Health and Wellness Coach, not a licensed medical professional. Everything I share here reflects my personal experience and is offered for educational and informational purposes only — not as a substitute for professional medical, mental health, or dietary advice.
If you are navigating a serious or ongoing health concern, please continue working closely with your licensed healthcare providers. Never discontinue or modify prescribed treatments or medications without their guidance.
This blog exists to support women who feel overwhelmed in their bodies and their daily lives — whether that shows up as physical symptoms, emotional exhaustion, or simply a sense that something needs to shift. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.
