Trusting Your Gut Might Be the Bravest Thing You Ever Do

There’s something about midlife that makes you reflective.

You start looking back at your life—not with panic, but with perspective. You begin to evaluate decisions you once made quickly or quietly. Not always with regret. Often with curiosity. Sometimes with grief. And sometimes with deep compassion for the version of you who didn’t yet know what you know now.

One of my closest friends once told me something that changed the way I look at my past. I was revisiting a decision I’d made years earlier, second-guessing it with the wisdom I have now. She gently said:

“I always give myself grace to know I did the best I could with the information I had at the time.”

That sentence rearranged something inside me.

Because it’s true—we cannot fairly judge past decisions using present knowledge. We can’t hold our former selves hostage to insight they didn’t yet possess. And honestly, we need to extend that same grace to other people too. Everyone is making decisions based on the information they currently hold: conversations, experiences, prayers, quiet nudges, gut feelings.

We rarely see the full picture behind someone else’s choice.

There are always hundreds of tiny data points behind a decision—some conscious, some prayerfully discerned, and some simply known deep in the body before they can be explained in words.

I’m learning to trust those inner signals again.

For a long time, I didn’t.

I was taught, subtly but clearly, to trust systems more than my own experience. To defer to authority even when something felt off. To equate silence with faithfulness.

When those assumptions begin to unravel, it can feel like the ground itself is shifting. You don’t know what to hold onto. You don’t know which instincts are safe to trust.

And so you learn to override yourself.

You brush off the tightness in your chest.
You explain away the unease.
You push through the hesitation.

Especially if you’re someone who learned early to keep peace, to not ruffle feathers, to be agreeable, to be “good.”

If you’re a recovering people pleaser, you know this rhythm well. You become skilled at dismissing your own signals in order to keep everyone else comfortable. But over time, something costly happens: you begin to disconnect from your own body. Your instincts don’t disappear—but they do get quieter.

Not because they stopped speaking.
Because they learned you weren’t listening.

Rebuilding that trust—with yourself and with God—takes time.

For my husband and me, deep down, we knew for years that living in New Jersey wasn’t right for our family. Finances were tight in ways that would have taken years to change. But that was only one part of the story. There were other reasons too—layered, personal ones only we fully understood. The kind of reasons you can’t always articulate to others, but you feel them clearly in your spirit.

Still, we stayed longer than we should have.

Not because we didn’t sense the nudge.
Because we were afraid of the noise that would follow if we listened to it.

Change invites opinions.
Big decisions invite criticism.
And going against expectations often invites misunderstanding.

So we kept trudging forward in a life that looked fine from the outside but didn’t feel aligned on the inside.

I think many of us live there.

We stay in situations that aren’t quite right because they’re familiar. Because they’re expected. Because they’re approved of. Because leaving feels terrifying.

But here’s what I’m slowly learning:

Sometimes trusting God doesn’t feel like following a booming voice from heaven. Sometimes it feels like finally listening to the quiet one He already placed within you.

The one that nudges.
The one that unsettles.
The one that whispers, this isn’t it.

Trusting that voice takes courage—especially when other voices are louder.

We had people who understood and encouraged us. But we also had voices that didn’t. Voices that questioned, doubted, dismissed, and sometimes spoke with sharpness we didn’t expect.

It takes enormous bravery to move forward when approval is not guaranteed.

And still—we moved.

Moving to South Carolina has been one of the greatest blessings for our family. I see it everywhere. I see it in the time my husband now has with our kids. I see it in children who are thriving and loving school. I see it in slower mornings, deeper breaths, laughter that lingers longer, and friendships that feel like gifts we didn’t even know to pray for.

We miss the people we left. Love doesn’t disappear with distance. But God, in His kindness, met us here too—with beauty, with connection, with freedom, with peace.

And that peace feels like confirmation.

Not because the path is perfect.
But because it’s aligned.

I’m beginning to believe that the instincts we so often dismiss are not obstacles to faith. Sometimes they are instruments of it.

Maybe learning to trust God and learning to trust the discernment He placed inside us are not two separate journeys after all.

Maybe they’re the same road.

Lord,

For the woman reading this who feels the quiet nudge in her spirit…
the one who senses something needs to change but is afraid to move —
meet her here.

Give her the courage to listen to the voice You placed within her.
Quiet the noise of fear, doubt, and outside opinions that drown out Your gentle leading.
Remind her that You are not the author of confusion, but of peace.

When she feels torn between pleasing others and honoring what You are stirring in her heart, steady her.
When she questions herself, reassure her.
When the path feels lonely, walk closely beside her.

Teach her to trust the wisdom You wove into her — the instincts, the discernment, the quiet knowing that often speaks before words ever form. Restore her confidence in hearing You.

And if she is standing at the edge of a decision that requires bravery, remind her that courage does not mean the absence of fear — it means moving forward with You despite it.

Bless her steps.
Guard her peace.
Confirm her path.

And may she discover, just as I have, that when we follow where You lead, even when others don’t understand… You meet us there with more goodness than we imagined.

Amen.