Why You Feel Empty (Even in the Life You Prayed For)

Have you ever wondered why the life that once brought you joy, that you actually prayed for, now leaves you feeling completely empty – like your spark is gone and there’s no zest for life? If your days feel heavy, it’s not because you need more sleep, or a bigger village — it’s because you’ve trained your brain to live without delight.

So here’s the real question: how does a mother who’s lost her joy get it back… without changing her circumstances? Most moms try to fix this by changing their schedule, or their routine, or somehow altering their circumstances. And that almost never helps.

Because the real issue isn’t that you need a new life or routine. It’s that your joy has become conditional — it shows up only when your circumstances cooperate. And I’m going to show you how to build unconditional joy and how that will help you find your spark again, even if nothing about your life changes.

When Joy Feels Elusive

In December 1914, Thomas Edison stood outside his laboratory watching it burn to the ground. Years of experiments. Research. Two million dollars’ worth of work and equipment — gone in one night. His son came running, panicked, searching for him through the smoke. And Edison was standing there watching the flames. Not in a panic or despair. But, wonder. And he said something unbelievable.

“Go get your mother. Bring her here. She’ll never see anything like this again as long as she lives.”

He didn’t just watch the fire. He delighted in the beauty of it and wanted to share his delight with his wife. He was looking at destruction… and seeing something worth beholding. The next morning, walking through the ashes, he said,

“There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.”

Value… in disaster. A fresh start. Lord willing, most of us will never watch a laboratory burn, or have our life’s work destroyed, or millions of dollars go up in flames. But we will watch plans burn. Expectations burn… our precious quiet time in the morning that we’ve come to rely on for our peace. The version of motherhood we day-dreamed about as little girls.

So, the question is not whether things will burn. The question is whether your joy burns with them. Or do you look at the fire and say, “There is value here”? It would be foolish to think life can be lived without setbacks. And it would be equally foolish to allow those setbacks to steal our joy. Troubles may enter your day, but they don’t get to rule it. The joy you experience in life is shaped far more by how you approach life than by how successfully you avoid trials.

The Moment I Realized Joy is a Choice

I learned this lesson the hard way about a year ago. Picture this: I’m in the thick of creating a video. And before I reworked my entire workflow—before I learned to build in margin and grace—I had this impossibly small window of opportunity to film. I’d spend hours researching, more hours writing the script, editing, re-editing, getting every word just right. And by the time I was ready to film, I had exactly one shot. One chance. One tiny sliver of time before the children woke up to get what actually shows up on my channel. Miss that window, and the video didn’t happen. Or worse, I’d have to sacrifice precious family time, and that’s a line I refuse to cross.

So there I was, after hours upon hours of preparation over the span of several days, finally ready to film. I set up the camera—adjusting the lighting, checking the angles, making sure everything was perfect. Filming itself takes over an hour for even just a 10 minute video when you factor in all the setup, all the takes to get it just right, all the little adjustments. And so, I finished filming the video. I felt that rush of accomplishment, that “I did it” feeling. Filming can be exhausting, you guys. So, then I went to my computer to process the footage…

And that’s when I realized something that felt like a punch in the gut. The video was there. My lips were moving. I was clearly speaking. But there was no sound. Not even a whisper. Nothing. At first, I was in denial. You know that stage of grief where your brain just refuses to accept reality? That was me.

“No, no, no—the sound on my computer must be off. There’s got to be a simple fix. Maybe it’s the file format. It’s got to be something.”

And then it hit me… it’s gone. All of it. All those hours. Wasted. This was tiny in comparison to the Thomas Edison disaster, but to me, it felt monumental. I could hear the children starting to stir from their naps, those little sounds that mean you have maybe five minutes before they’re fully awake and needing you. And I felt my heart drop into my stomach. It was a complete wash. Gone. Everything gone.

I sat there in my chair and cried. I gave myself exactly five minutes to fall apart before the children woke up and needed their mother. And then I had a choice. I could let this moment define my day. I could let the frustration and disappointment seep into every interaction, every task, every breath for the rest of the afternoon. Or I could decide that this problem—this very real, very frustrating problem—only has as much power as I give it.

I couldn’t control the fact that the audio didn’t record because the cord decided to break right at the very moment I needed it. I couldn’t get those hours back. But I could control what happened next. I could control whether I let this setback steal my joy or whether I chose to start again and decide that maybe the next version will be even better.

Would my joy be conditional on things going right? Or unconditional enough to remain when circumstances don’t go my way?

Conditional Joy vs Unconditional Joy

Circumstances do not get to dictate your joy. The Bible talks about this kind of joy. In Philippians 4:4, Paul writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

Paul wrote it from prison. From chains. From a place where circumstances ordinarily would not call for joy and without a word of complaint, he rejoiced anyway.

Philippians 4:6 (ESV) says: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

With thanksgiving. Your brain cannot hold two opposing focal thoughts at the same time. It can only switch between them. This may be surprising if you’re a mom who prides herself in her multitasking abilities, but multitasking is actually a myth. When you think your brain is doing two things simultaneously, it’s actually just switching tasks rapidly back and forth.

So when you deliberately choose thoughts of gratitude — praise, rejoicing, appreciation — you are pulling mental energy away from regret and disappointment. You cannot be fully anxious and fully thankful in the same moment. One will crowd the other out.

A Small Shift That Changes Everything

But here’s where I want to get really practical with you, because if you’re like me, you might be feeling a little disillusioned by the whole “gratitude journal” concept. I tried it. I really did. I’d write: “I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful for a roof over my head.” And it felt… hollow and rote. Like I was checking a box. Like I was saying the right words but not feeling anything.

So I changed two words, and it changed everything. Instead of “I’m grateful for,” I started saying “I’m delighting in.”

Instead of “I’m grateful for my family,” I’d say: “I’m delighting in sitting on the floor playing blocks with the children while my dear sweet husband makes dinner.”

Do you see the difference? Just that minor change in semantics helped me to pull out the little details of why I so grateful, and what I love about that moment, or even just the mundane little daily joys the Lord blesses us with that we so often miss. And when you train your brain to delight—to actively seek out and savor these delicious moments—you’re literally rewiring your neural pathways to notice beauty, to expect goodness, to find joy even in the mundane.

As Blaise Pascal said so beautifully… Joy joy joy — tears of joy — began to visit me again in the most ordinary places.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “That sounds so nice – I am desperate for that, but I’m literally drowning here. I need something practical, I need a step-by-step framework to completely transform my life.”

I know what it feels like to want to delight in motherhood — to want to be present, joyful, light — and yet feel so far past burnt out that even the word “delight” feels exhausting. To love your children deeply… and still feel like there’s nothing left in you. That tension is real. And you’re not crazy for feeling it. These are all signs of a dysregulated nervous system.

Why So Many Live in Survival Mode

Think about it: God created your body with this incredibly sophisticated system that’s constantly monitoring your environment, assessing threats, and responding accordingly. It’s always working in the background, trying to keep you safe. But here’s the problem: most of us mothers have been unknowingly walking around in low-grade fight or flight for far too long.

Which is why so many moms are constantly overstimulated. Reacting before they even have time to think. Tiny things stress them out beyond belief and before they know it they’re frantically moving about the house and don’t even know why.

You feel tired but wired.
You have trouble sleeping even though you’re exhausted.
You’re irritable and short-tempered.
You get sick more often.
You feel anxious for no clear reason.

And the beautiful thing is: there are very practical, very effective ways to regulate your nervous system intentionally. To move yourself out of that fight-or-flight state and into a state of rest and restoration.

This is exactly what I teach in my free workshop. In that workshop I give you very practical tools you can implement starting today to calm your nervous system. Everything I talk about in this article comes more naturally when your nervous system is regulated. When you’re constantly in fight or flight, everything feels harder. Your patience is shorter. Your capacity is smaller. Your joy is more elusive. But when you learn to steward your nervous system well, when you learn to intentionally move yourself into a state of calm and rest, everything else flows more easily.

You have more patience with your children. More grace for yourself. More capacity to show up for the rhythms and practices you’re trying to build. So think of that free workshop as a quick-start guide for all of this — a catalyst for transformation. It’s built around a 7-day reset that will give you immediate tools and immediate relief for free.

Your Character in the Home

Charles Spurgeon said, “Take care of your character in the home, for what we are there, we really are.”

What we are at home—when no one’s watching, when we’re tired, when we’re at our worst—that’s who we really are. Not the version of ourselves we present to the world. Not the curated, filtered, best-foot-forward version. The real us.

The us that shows up in sweatpants at 6 AM when the toddler needs you and you just want to sleep, or have your instagram-worthy quiet time. You don’t have to be perfect at home. You don’t have to have it all together. But you do get to choose joy.

A Little Moment From Our Home

Let me give you a real-life example from just last week. We were doing Bible time with the kids—you know, that sacred homeschool moment where you’re trying to instill eternal truths and praying at least some of it sticks. I asked my son, “Where did Adam and Eve live?” And without missing a beat, he said, “The Garden of Eatin’, because they were always eatin’.”

I started howling in laughter, realizing he’d been hearing “Eden” as “eatin'” this whole time, imagining Adam and Eve just constantly snacking their way through paradise.

Ok, so about one minute later, my nose started running, and I asked my daughter to go grab me a tissue. She comes back with this tissue in her little hands, and she’s squeezing it, and water is literally dripping out of it all over the floor. I’m like, “What—why is that so wet?!” And then it dawned on me. The toilet wasn’t flushed. She’d grabbed the toilet paper from inside the toilet. With pee in it. We were all touching pee. Walking in pee. Pee everywhere.

This is motherhood. Now, I had a choice in that moment. I could let it ruin the morning, ruin the joy I had for the hilarious Bible time we were having. Or I could laugh and delight in the absurdity of it all. I could recognize that this—this ridiculous, messy, imperfect moment—is exactly the kind of thing I’ll miss someday when my kids are grown and my house is clean and quiet.

So I laughed. We cleaned it up. And I delighted in the chaos. Because joy isn’t found in perfect moments. It’s found in our response to imperfect ones.

Choosing Joy in Everyday Life

What a shame would it be to wish away a season you once longed for. What a tragedy to let your phone distract you from the work right in front of you. To rush through life like everything is an emergency.

Listen to me: Almost nothing in your day-to-day life is an emergency.

But here’s what happens when we rush around frantically—our brain and nervous system think we’re in danger. They activate all the stress responses, flood our body with cortisol, put us in fight-or-flight mode. But the reality is that you’re actually just living the life you once prayed for.

And yes, it’s exhausting. Yes, it’s overwhelming. Yes, there are days when you collapse into bed and wonder how you’re going to do it all again tomorrow. But what a blessing to collapse in bed every night after a whole day of loving your children.

What a gift that the Lord put these children in your life to slow you down, and to teach you how to delight in life as children do. So maybe you let today be the day you decide to let go of old destructive habits that used to protect you but no longer serve you. Let today be the day you are unconditionally filled with joy.

And when conditions don’t call for joy, decide to be the type of person that creates joyful moments — to delight in the unexpected fussiness of a recipe that sets dinner back 30 minutes. We stand in awe of the endless to-do list we have and our own supreme inadequacy to do it all ourselves—and the blessing that we get to rely on a God who is perfectly capable of carrying what we cannot, of providing what we lack, of being strong in our weakness.

We marvel at the fact that although raising children is impossible in our own strength, it was never meant to be done in our own strength in the first place. We rest in the knowledge that through all this, the only thing we truly control is our attitude through it all.

And yes, there’s a lot on your plate. Trust me, I know. The overwhelm is real. The exhaustion is real. But you don’t have to live in a state of low-key panic while you’re building this beautiful life.

Simple Ways to Add Joy Today

So here’s what I want you to do today: Add some joy to your schedule.

Dip the biscotti in your coffee and actually taste it instead of gulping it down while you’re doing seventeen other things.
Light a candle in the middle of the afternoon for no reason at all.
Put on music you love and dance in your kitchen while you’re making dinner.
Sit on the floor and play with your kids instead of watching them play while you scroll your phone.
Text a friend and tell them something specific you love about them.
Read a chapter of a book that has nothing to do with productivity or parenting or self-improvement—just something that makes you feel alive.

These aren’t big things. They don’t require more time or money or energy than you have. They just require intention. They require you to decide that joy matters, that your life is worth savoring.

Joy Is Available To You

If you’re feeling drained right now — if you’ve lost your spark — I want you to hear this clearly: You are not broken. You are not failing. You are simply being invited into deeper joy. Joy that doesn’t hinge on a life of ease. Joy that survives the fires of life.

So if you feel like you’re stuck in survival mode, it’s not too late. You can feel calm, present, and in control again. I walk through it all inside the free workshop. It’s always such a joy to have you here.