You Can’t Bear New Fruit Without New Roots: How I Recreated Myself in Christ

A couple years ago, I realized something painful—I didn’t recognize the woman I had become – and not in a good way.

I was doing everything right on paper, but inside, I was bitter, frantic, and felt like a shell of a human.

One morning, I thought, this can’t be the life God meant for me.

That moment changed something in me. I didn’t want to just survive motherhood or manage my moods. I wanted to be completely transformed.

Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (ESV)

That longing you feel to change—to actually become someone new—is evidence that the Holy Spirit is already moving in your life.

If you still see yourself as the stressed, impatient, easily-overwhelmed mom, you’ll keep living from that place no matter how many self-help systems you try. That’s exactly where I lived a few years ago – completely miserable and didn’t recognize who I was anymore.

But when I began to believe that I am a woman who walks in peace, that I am patient because the Holy Spirit lives in me, my choices began to align with that truth.

Most people approach transformation like it’s about doing more, but real transformation is an inside job.

Behavior Follows Identity

Behavior FOLLOWS identity. When you shift how you see yourself, your habits and actions naturally align with that new image of yourself.

Your behaviors are like branches; your identity is the root. If you want new fruit, you have to change the root.

Jesus said in John 15:5,
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

The takeaway here is to stop trying to change your behavior alone — change who you believe you are in Christ.

That’s what I want to share with you—exactly how I reinvented myself. How I stopped being a woman who reacted to life and instead became a woman who creates the atmosphere of her home. A woman who wakes up excited for her life and is truly transformed and how you can do the same starting today. I’m giving you the very practical and intimate details of how exactly I changed all the way down to the nitty gritty details or my goals, how I reached those goals, micro habits, as well as how I made the transformation sustainable even when my circumstances weren’t ideal.

But here was the problem and maybe you can relate: I didn’t know how to change. And there was this voice in the back of my mind whispering that I couldn’t change. That no matter how much I tried, I would always be the same, that my family would think I was being fake, and that the process of transformation would take too long anyway to be worth it.

Maybe you’ve felt that too—like transformation is too daunting, or it would take years of striving, and that you’ll just fail anyway, so why even try?

The Moment God Flipped the Light On

But boy was I wrong in this thinking: yes, sanctification is a lifelong process. But God is not limited by time. He can do in a moment what we think should take a lifetime. I know because I watched Him do it in me. One day, it was as if the Lord reached into my life and flipped a light on. The woman who was bitter, restless, and anxious, contentious and rude—the one who clung to control—was gone. I remember feeling this deep peace, like He had literally rewired me from the inside out. My thoughts, my reactions, my desires—everything began to change.

That was the moment I realized the power of surrender. When I finally stopped trying to become someone new and instead let Him make me new, I witnessed firsthand how fast He can move when we yield to Him. But here’s what I learned next: surrender doesn’t mean passivity—it means partnership. God transformed my heart, yes, but then He invited me to walk that transformation out, one obedient step at a time.

You can’t bear new fruit without new roots—and those roots are planted when your beliefs, habits, and daily choices begin to align with the truth of who God says you are.

Recreate Yourself in 3 Steps

You don’t rise to the level of your goals—you default to the identity you practice daily. If your identity doesn’t change, your outcomes won’t either.

When I set out to reinvent myself – or rather, let God sanctify me, I realized I wanted to really embody the Proverbs 31 woman—God-fearing, gracious, clothed with strength and dignity. That picture became my map and is how I developed the three steps I’m about to share with you.

Step 1: Create Your Categories of Transformation

Before you can create goals, the first step is you need to figure out what areas of your life you actually want to change. Because if you try to change everything at once, you’ll end up changing nothing.

For me, I broke it down into three big categories – yours might be different, mine were:

1. Faith
2. Relationships
3. Health

These were my core priorities, but you can add more like finances or anything else that applies to your season of life.

Step 2: Develop Goals Within Those Categories

Once I had my categories, I had to get specific about what I actually wanted to change. Because saying, “I want to be better” is too vague. You need a clear, measurable target.

Here’s what I came up with for myself:

• Faith: Feel and follow the Holy Spirit more deeply.
• Relationships: Build stronger connections, be a living example of Christ’s love, and stay in active fellowship with my family.
• Health: Heal my nervous system, get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, and have a little motherhood glow-up.

Step 3: Create a Plan for How to Accomplish Those Goals

Now, this is the part where most people get stuck. Because knowing what you want is easy. But knowing how to get there? That’s where the real work begins.

Faith:

• Spend 30min in the Word every single day – I also had a plan for how I was going to do this. Like what types of Bible studies I was going to do. Personally, I started off with the Bible recap which takes you through the bible in a year in chronological order, then I did deep dive studies into each book of the new testament – like verse by verse style. I have a free book of Romans bible study below if you want to download that to help you with your own time in the word.
• Set out to memorize at least one Bible verse per month and really meditate on it.
• Renew my mind by replacing every negative thought with Truth. This is real work, but was so pivotal in my transformation. I have tons of tools in my free workshop for exactly what this looks like practically.

Relationships:

• Be intentional about reaching out to family and friends—check in, ask more questions, and follow up. Generously provide meals and just bless those around me more. Guys this brought way more blessing to me than I ever could have thought. My empathy grew so much, I became genuinely more interested in others and so much less self-focused.
• Be more available for my husband—emotionally and physically. This was huge because I didn’t realize how much I was blocking his love for me. I used to feel frustrated that he “didn’t love me enough,” only to realize I was shutting him down whenever he tried to love on me. Just being present and receptive made a huge difference. I stopped flinching when he touched me, I stopped shutting down his advances – part of this became possible when I healed my nervous system and got out of fight-or flight, but part of it had to be really intentional and really opening up to him. This blessed our marriage on an emotional level too.
• Slow down and truly be present with my children. Stop rushing through motherhood because I recognized that this was a big reason for the anger, anxiety and resentment I was experiencing in motherhood.

Health:

• Heal my nervous system. I didn’t know how I was going to do this at first but I just recognized that my body was in a constant state of panic and I needed to heal from past trauma. The Lord graciously led me to Christian brain retraining, which is exactly what I teach inside my Transformed Homemakers Society course and I tailor this specifically to women and mothers and the specific struggles we face. If you’re struggling with stress, overstimulation, or constantly feeling on edge, maybe you have chronic fatigue, or illnesses I highly recommend checking out my free workshop (linked below) where I go more in-depth on this and how I overcame this.
• Lose weight: I started doing Hotworx, which is a workout done in an infrared sauna that helps detox your body and accelerate weight loss – its not hot yoga which was a no for me, but all kinds of other workouts. I also started taking daily walks and had a goal of walking around our block 4 times per day. I also implemented intermittent fasting, and cut back to one sweet per week. So for me, I kept fasting very simple and just did the 16:8 method which is fast for 16 hours and eat for 8 hours. This along with the one sweet per week gave me the boundaries I really needed to make progress in this area. But the Lord did throw me a huge curveball here and I ended up getting pregnant and wasn’t able to do the fasting, or the sauna workouts anymore and had to pivot my approach.
• Motherhood Glow up: Prioritized simple self-care routines like basic grooming which I’m sad to say I kind of stopped doing. drinking more water, using better skincare products and actually having a skincare routine, throwing on some bronzer because it made me feel better about myself, dressing in a way that made me feel put-together more often.

Results: Who I Became in Just 6 Months

The changes that happened in just 6 months were so profound.

• Faith: I went from a pretty lukewarm, surface-level relationship with God to feeling the Holy Spirit’s presence daily and having the fruit of the spirit very evident in my life. Even in the hardest season of my life, I had peace that surpassed all understanding (Philippians 4:7). Not only did I renew my mind, but in doing so, I literally rewired my brain. My natural reactions to stress and frustration completely changed. My triggers went away almost completely. I became just, chill and joyful. And a happier person. A nicer wife and mother.
• Relationships: My marriage became deeper and more meaningful, my husband and I grew so much closer (baby #3 was proof of that, lol). I became the kind and gentle mother I always wanted to be – far from perfect, but so much better than before. I cultivated a beautiful community of Christian mothers, and I became more others-focused—checking in on friends, bringing meals, and being a true sister in Christ.
• Health: I healed my nervous system, learned to romanticize my life, and fell in love with my simple, quiet life. Even during pregnancy, I stayed consistent, lost weight safely.

And let me tell you the feeling when you start to see your progress is exhilarating. You feel better in your skin, the brain fog lifts, you’re proud of how you showed up that day for your family. Your husband notices, your relationships improve, the list goes on. I remember my husband telling me early on in my transformation, hey, I feel like I have my wife back – thank you. And all those little moments where before, I would have flipped my lid on my child if they spilled something, and instead I calmly handled the situation just like the mother I always imagined I would be! I felt like I didn’t recognize myself anymore but in a really good way.

That feeling of realizing I was finally doing it, finally becoming the woman I knew I was created to be for my family—actually feeling at peace and true joy again— changed my whole life in less than 6 months.

And honestly? It wasn’t just one aha moment.

It was a complete reworking of the landscape of my mind. I walk you step by step through my whole process in my free workshop From Survival Mode to Peace-Filled Homemaking in 7 Days. You’ll learn how to retrain your brain to experience stress and triggers in a different way, restore peace in your home, and become that calm, confident woman God designed you to be.

You can sign up using the link below. It’s the first link in the description.

Everything flowed from those first three steps. You can’t reach goals if you don’t know who you need to become in order to reach her.

Now the question I know you have after you’ve figured out your goals is: how do you become her now—before the results start showing up?

Define Your Future Self and Practice It

Before you can change your habits, you have to see the woman you’re becoming and practice living it out.

Philippians 3:13 says,
“Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” (ESV)

So write your vision for who you want to be in Christ.

What kind of mother are you when you’re walking in His peace?

How do you carry yourself?

How do you talk to your children when they disobey? Or when 47 things are all happening at once and you feel like freaking out but instead you… do what?

How do you respond to your husband when he walks through the door?

There’s a simple principle in neuroscience called Hebb’s Law: Neurons that fire together wire together.

The more you focus on a thought or experience, the more it becomes your brain’s default pathway.

So when you consistently imagine yourself healthy, joyful, at peace, and serving God with dignity and strength, you’re actually training your brain towards those outcomes.

You’ve imagined her—now comes the hard part: are you willing to drop everything that doesn’t match that person anymore?

Release What No Longer Serves You

Your problem isn’t discipline; it’s allegiance. If you keep pledging loyalty to your old self, you’ll keep living her life.

Ephesians 4:22–24 says,
“to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

That means letting go of patterns, mindsets, and routines that no longer serve who you are in Christ.

Maybe it’s the constant rushing and just being sort of frantic all the time.

Maybe it’s the self-criticism or hatred.

Maybe it’s the way you justify anger because you’re “just exhausted.”

Personally, I used to be quick-tempered. If something irritated me, I let it be known. I was impatient with my family. I was constantly overwhelmed, constantly in a rush for no reason, always feeling like I was drowning in my own life. And worst of all? I justified it. I thought you know what this is just who I am there’s no changing me now.

I didn’t even realize how much my nervous system was dysregulated. How much I lived in a constant state of stress and reactivity and I didn’t realize that I didn’t have to be like that and I didn’t have to feel like that either. I never felt confident in myself, never felt truly put together – like I was just run ragged all the time. My eloquence was gone and I was brash and vulgar. I was truly in survival mode.

But here’s the thing—God didn’t call me to live like that. He didn’t call you to live like that either.

When I finally decided that I didn’t want to just wish for change but actually become a different person, I started taking action.

I had to stop identifying as “the overwhelmed mom.”

I had to stop saying, “I’m just not a calm person.” And I had to stop talking about how exhausted I was all the time and that this is just mom life.

Because that identity wasn’t biblical—it was bondage and it was holding me back from the mother I wanted to be and the woman my husband married.

So what do you do? Write down these beliefs – in my course I call them ODPs – Old destructive patterns and acknowledge them, and decide to let them go and replace them with what the Lord thinks about you and your circumstances instead.

Once you’ve released what’s no longer serving you, it’s time to replace it with something else—with tiny daily habits that reinforce who you’re becoming.

Reinvent Yourself with Micro Habits

Reinvention isn’t disappearing for six months and coming back unrecognizable. It’s doing the quiet, ordinary things in your day to day life… differently—until the fruit starts to speak for itself. Real change doesn’t come from overnight overhauls but from tiny, consistent actions. So here are some ideas for some small actions I did consistently that had the power to reshape who I was.

Curate your influences: Make a YouTube playlist of inspiring content. Surround yourself with people who embody who you want to become. Make a YouTube playlist of people that motivate you to be the person you desire to be. Whenever I felt in a funk, I would put one of these playlists on and feel so inspired. I do the same thing for fitness. If I’m in a season of trying to lose weight, I just flood my watch later on YouTube with people who inspire me to live a super healthy lifestyle – suddenly, because that’s what I’ve trained my brain to desire, anything outside of that is unappealing. For example, if I’m only watching and listening to people living a super healthy lifestyle, then stopping by the donut shop doesn’t sound appealing, but making a green smoothie instead becomes what actually sounds good. Does that make sense?

Become animalistic about reaching your goals. I became relentless when it came to my weight loss goals. I would feed my baby and go workout at 3am, sometimes 2am because it was the only time I’d be able to get my workout in that day. And because my body loved the workouts so much I wasn’t even dragging throughout the day because they energized me. I tried to remember that motivation precedes dedication – so if I just found a way to put my dedication into autopilot by setting out my clothes the night before, having my wallet and keys by the door so I could just roll out of bed, feed my baby, then leave, then it was so much easier to get the motivation to workout because all of a sudden, I would just be at the gym and at that point, I may as well do my best to get a good workout. Then once I started seeing results, the results themselves became my motivation.

Serve others daily: Ironically, when you stop obsessing over yourself and start focusing on serving others, everything else falls into place. Transformation isn’t about focusing so much on yourself that you neglect others, in fact, I find that it’s the exact opposite. When I am others-focused all these categories and goals just seem to fall into place. So Just help other people and get your mind off yourself. This actually helped me become the best version of myself. I would drop meals off to families in need, make just-because homemade cookies, ask others about their lives and just invest in other people more in general.

Renew your mind: Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). Let the Lord redeem your mind. Anytime an unhelpful thought comes into your mind, or an old way of thinking (in my course I call these Old Destructive Patterns ODPs) you need to take it captive and replace it with a thought that is in the direction you’re going. I have so many tools for this in my course but one of the tools I have is called the Ideal homemaker persona. In this exercise we go in depth to create the homemaker you want to be. We go into each detail about her life, her routine, how she acts, thinks, responds to her family, everything. Fix your mind on things that are lovely, pure, commendable as it says in Philippians 4:8. When you can accomplish this, you’ll be able to reinvent yourself and become the woman you want to be.

Glorify the Lord: Set your life up in such a way that the Lord is exalted…When you set up your days in such a way that honor, exalt, and put your focus on the Lord, you will walk so closely with the Holy Spirit that self-control comes naturally. So build a Godly routine and bathe yourself in scripture – you’ll find that the days where you take this seriously tend to go much smoother as a result. Not because God is rewarding you for being in the Word, and not because you were able to check this off your list as a job well done, but just for the simple fact that you NEED His word and His wisdom and He is using the Word to do a work in you. You will begin to see the fruit in your life once you can shift from feeling obligated to be in the Word to genuinely desiring it. When you are sneaking little pockets of reading scripture into your day because you are so thirsty for it.

Add more Joy and whimsy to your life: Just be joyful. Find the joy in everything. Make your life more whimsical and it’ll feel so much more fun and when you’re having fun, you’ll reach your goals without even trying.

Slow down: This is not a race to accomplish your goals. Remember, the Lord accomplishes wonderful things in a very short time if you just slow down long enough to notice.

Next, we’ll bulletproof your reinvention plan for real life—so when curveballs come – and they will, you don’t backslide.

Adaptive Discipline for Curveballs and Setbacks

Your progress doesn’t depend on perfect circumstances – it depends on preparation for setbacks and curveballs. This is called adaptive discipline – you expect the interruption, plan for it and continue transforming even through it.

First, you need to be adaptable. Just like the pregnancy that the Lord blessed me with when I was trying to lose the weight from the previous pregnancy – I adapted my routine and still reached my goal. Instead of doing my sauna workouts, I went for more walks – every morning I would wake up super early, while it was still dark, and walk around my neighborhood. No phone – just got to listen to the quietness of the early morning hours, pray, and listen to those first birds chirping. The blessing in this was amazing. I developed this habit that allowed me to get even closer to the Lord and see the beauty of those early morning hours outside. I got to experience the change in seasons, see the little routines of the neighborhood. The milk drop offs, the cars that always left at the exact same time every morning, I even made up this little game of counting how many cars I saw that morning and would report back to my husband everyday and it became this little inside joke about how riveting my life was. 6 cars today – busy morning in the neighborhood! Lol Then, I started doing more weight training which as soon as I started doing it I could tell my body LOVED it and was craving it. Something I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t get pregnant and was able to stick with my sauna workouts. My point in all of this is that there is so much blessing in the curveballs. The things you think will take you off track but actually are exactly what keep you on the track the Lord planned for you.

Second, you can’t do it all, all the time. So I rotated which balls I dropped. You have a limited capacity for dedication and delayed gratification in life. Psychologists call this ego depletion— but it basically means we have a finite amount of willpower, so be strategic about where you focus your energy and understand that you’ll have to rotate which balls you drop. One thing I will say is that whenever I dropped the ball on my faith category all the other goals I had seemed to crumble as well, so I wouldn’t choose that ball to drop. But keep in mind that the reverse is usually true too… keep your faith ball in the air and every other ball seems to fall into place as well.

Lastly, we have to address something – and that’s self sabotage – this is a real thing and I’ve witnessed this so many times in my life whenever I’m trying to reach a goal – even though I’m a pretty dedicated person, I STILL catch myself self-sabotaging. Typically, it’s the thing you think doesn’t matter – but it really does.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: when we get close to change, something inside us resists it. For example, when I wanted to grow in my faith, I felt a little tug to start memorizing Scripture. And then immediately, another voice in my head said, “That’s not that important you’re too old to memorize lots of information anyway. Just read your Bible.” But that was the key I needed and actually what I feel was the tipping point for me. The thing you resist the most is often exactly what will contribute to the most profound transformation.

This is called cognitive dissonance—your brain is trying to keep you in your comfort zone. But Romans 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. So fight against that resistance. Do the thing that scares you. That’s where your breakthrough lies. Many psychologists also describe this resistance as “status quo bias” or “limbic friction”; the takeaway remains the same—press through that friction.

So recognize this – usually it’ll be something that’s ordinarily positive that you catch yourself talking yourself out of. THAT’S the thing you definitely need to do. Fight against those thoughts and do it because its probably the thing that’ll take you to the next level.

This is exactly why people who have a weight loss goal end up backsliding right when they start to lose weight – because there’s this status quo bias, this friction telling them that they’ve made enough progress and they can go back to their old way of living. But if they would just push through that, they would find the blessing which is a total lifestyle change, not just a quick diet change or fitness routine.

It’s like those runners who reach the top of a hill during a marathon—most people slow down the moment they crest the hill, thinking they’ve earned a break. But the ones who accelerate through that point are the ones who win. They don’t stop where it starts to get easier; they press through the discomfort and turn it into momentum.

That’s what transformation feels like. The moment you’re tempted to ease up is often the moment you’re closest to the real change.

So yes—push through the resistance. But do it with Christ, not apart from Him. When you feel that friction, let it become your cue to lean deeper into His presence, not your own performance.

Becoming Who God Died to Redeem

God isn’t asking you to polish the old you—He’s inviting you to become someone totally new in Him – to live as the woman He died to redeem. This isn’t a return to your old self transformation—it’s a reinvention into your new one.

If you want to take this deeper, join my free workshop where I’ll show you how to retrain your brain, calm your nervous system, and restore peace in your home through biblical principles. The link is below.

It’s always such a joy to have you here.