It was enough for me to think, well, God promised something good from this.

So I'm going to start looking for that.

And again, it's not like the next day, everything's perfect, but it was just enough to start watching for it.

And I do know that if you open your eyes and you expect the presence of the Lord,

if you expect him to speak and him to guide you and him to give you

the comfort that you need, then it just kind of builds after each other.

One thing builds after another.

And you begin, your heart just begins to recognize him because he's been there the whole time.

You're listening to God Hears Her, a podcast for women where we explore the stunning truth that God hears you.

Join our community of encouraging one another and learning to lean on God through scripture, story, and conversation at godhearsher.org.

God hears her.

Seek and she will find.

Well, hello, everyone.

So excited to have a conversation today with Emily E. Ryan.

She is a minister's wife, a mother of four, a junior high English teacher,

and she has been writing to the Lord since an early age, even as a child. She's in the season of life that probably many of us can relate to full of teens and tweens and noise and chaos. And what I love about our conversation

is that Emily is going to talk about something that I think we all struggle with as women who

want to walk with Jesus. And that is really what it looks like to not be guilt motivated. And so Emily has written an upcoming book called

Guilt Free Quiet Times, where she encourages women with practical creativity to ditch the guilt

and to embrace grace in their devotional time with the Lord. And I'm just so excited for a

conversation. So welcome, Emily. Thank you for having me. I'm so thrilled to get to talk to y'all today.

To just begin with, Emily, we'd love to hear a little bit of your spiritual journey and even

...