Maggie Grace Facebook ad: “Which Woman of the Bible Are You?”

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I finished my morning devotional at 6:22 a.m. on the dot, closed my journal, and checked it off the list. The list lives on the nightstand — a spiral notepad, the kind you buy in packs of three at the dollar store. I write it every night before bed. Tomorrow’s tasks, in order. The devotional is always number one. Not because it’s most important to me. Because doing it first means it’s done, and done means I can move to number two. The journal is leather. Frank gave it to me the Christmas before he died — 2016, the last one. He’d inscribed the inside: For the woman who talks to God the way she talks to everyone else — directly. Frank thought that was a compliment. He was right. But he was also, I realize now, describing the problem. I pray every morning. 6:00 to 6:22. Twenty-two minutes. Not because twenty-two is a spiritual number — because that’s how long it takes to get through my list. The list: Pray for Thomas and his family. Pray for Linda’s hip. Pray for the church building fund. Pray for the election. Pray for the women’s group. Pray for guidance on the gutters. Thank God for three things. Declare the day covered. Close. I’ve been doing this every morning for thirty-one years. I haven’t missed a day. Not when Frank was sick. Not when Frank died. Not during COVID. Not during the week I had pneumonia and could barely sit up — I prayed lying down, journal on my chest, pen sideways. I’m disciplined. I’m consistent. I’m faithful. And I haven’t actually talked to God in years. I closed the journal. Set the pen in the crease. Reached for the notepad to move to item two. And something stopped me. The chair. The silence. The 6:22 kitchen with the light just starting through the window over the sink — the window Frank replaced in 2014, the last project he finished. In the silence, something I couldn’t hear. Not a voice. Not a verse. Just — space. Like a room with its arms open. I reached for my phone. The space closed. I moved to item two. My faith has been a checklist for as long as I can remember. Age twelve: memorized fifty Bible verses for the church program. Checked. Age twenty: led the youth group prayer chain. Checked. Age thirty-five: organized the women’s retreat for the first time. Checked. Age fifty: taught the Wednesday Bible study for ten years straight. Checked. Every box checked. Every task completed. Every spiritual discipline executed with the same precision I bring to my garden, my kitchen, my household — the precision of a woman who believes that done is the same as faithful. Frank used to say, “Evie, you pray like you’re filing taxes. God’s not the IRS.” I’d swat him with the dish towel. He’d laugh. I’d laugh too — because Frank made everything funny, and because the truth inside the joke was too sharp to hold without humor. God is not the IRS. But I’ve been filing returns for thirty-one years, and I don’t know any other way. A Wednesday evening. Bible study at the church. I’d taught on prayer. Ironic, looking back. Driving home. Dark roads — the Virginia kind, no streetlights, just headlights and trees and the occasional deer. I turned the radio off. The silence again. The same silence from the kitchen. The one that felt like space. I pulled to the shoulder. Gravel. Engine idling. What if I’ve been talking at Him for thirty-one years and never once listened? The fear at sixty-seven isn’t that I’ve been unfaithful. I’ve been the most faithful woman I know. Thirty-one years of daily devotionals. Zero missed days. The fear is that all of it — every journal entry, every prayer list, every checked box — has been a performance. Not faith. Performance. The spiritual equivalent of forty-seven vacation days: proof that I’m disciplined, consistent, worthy. What if God didn’t want my list? What if He wanted me? What if the twenty-two minutes every morning — the precision, the order, the closing — was my way of controlling the conversation? Keeping it safe? Making sure I never had to sit in the silence long enough to hear something I wasn’t prepared for? Frank used to sit on the porch after supper and just… be. No book. No list. No agenda. He’d look at the hills and say, “God’s in a good mood tonight.” I’d roll my eyes. But Frank talked to God the way you talk to someone who’s in the room. I talk to God the way you talk to someone you’re afraid of — with an agenda and an exit strategy. Late. The porch. Frank’s chair still there — the wooden rocker he built from a kit, slightly uneven because he measured twice and still cut wrong. I love that chair. “Which Woman of the Bible Are You?” I took it sitting in Frank’s chair because the silence was there again and I couldn’t face it, and the quiz was something to do with my hands and my mind and the parts of me that can’t stop moving. Expected Martha. The worker. The one Jesus gently told to stop. Deborah. The leader. The strategist. “Your prayer life isn’t a strategy — it’s a surrender.” Surrender. The one word I’ve never associated with prayer. Prayer, for me, is a briefing. I brief God on the situation, provide my recommendations, and close the meeting. “What if God doesn’t need your plan? What if He needs your presence?” My presence. Without the journal. Without the list. Without the twenty-two minutes of controlled, safe, filed-return faith. I signed up. From Frank’s uneven chair. Deborah sat under the palm tree. She was a judge — the one with the answers, the decisions, the strategy. Israel came to her with their problems and she solved them. Efficiently. Thoroughly. The way I’ve been solving my prayer list every morning for thirty-one years. But Deborah also sang. Judges 5 — the whole chapter. After the battle, after the strategy, after the victory — she didn’t file a report. She sang. She worshipped. She stopped planning and started praising. Not with a checklist. With her voice. With abandon. With the kind of unstructured, undisciplined, unchecked joy that terrifies a woman like me. “You’ve been talking at God like He’s a board meeting. He’s waiting for you to sit with Him like He’s a friend.” A friend. Frank was my friend. And the way I talked to Frank was nothing like the way I talk to God. I talked to Frank on the porch, without an agenda, without an exit strategy, with laughter and silence and the kind of unhurried presence I’ve never once offered to the God who made me. “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit.” Not by discipline. Not by the mighty thirty-one-year streak of checked boxes. By Spirit. By presence. By the thing that happens in the silence when I stop filing and start listening. The next morning. 6:00 a.m. The chair. The journal on my lap. I opened it. Picked up the pen. Then I closed it. Set the pen in the crease. Set the journal on the nightstand. And I sat. No list. No requests. No declarations. No closing. Just sat. In Frank’s chair by the window with the light coming through the glass he replaced in 2014. The first minute was agony. My hands wanted the pen. My mind wanted the list. The machine of my discipline was idling without load and every gear screamed to engage. The second minute: restless. A prayer tried to form — Lord, I pray for Thomas and… — and I let it go. Not rejected. Released. The third minute: something opened. Like a door I’d been standing in front of for thirty-one years finally being pushed from the other side. The fourth minute: I cried. Not from sadness. From the shock of being in a room with God and having nothing in my hands. No agenda. No journal. No performance. Just me. In a chair. In a kitchen. At 6:04 a.m. Crying because the silence wasn’t empty — it was full. I sat for twenty-two minutes. The same length as always. But for the first time in thirty-one years, I didn’t check it off. I started doing this three mornings a week. The other four, I use the journal. I’m not throwing away discipline. Discipline is real. God made me thorough and faithful and I will always bring a pen to the conversation. But three mornings a week, the pen stays in the crease. And the conversation — the one I’ve been controlling for three decades — is finally a two-way street. Last Sunday. Church. The pastor asked me to close in prayer. I stood up. Opened my mouth. The old script started: Lord, we thank you for this day and for— I stopped. “Lord. We’re here. That’s all I’ve got this morning. We’re here.” Seven words. The shortest prayer I’ve ever prayed in public. A woman in the third row said Amen like she meant it. Another one wiped her eyes. After the service, the pastor — young man, earnest, tries too hard — said, “Evelyn, that prayer was different.” “I know.” “It was beautiful.” I thought of Frank. God’s in a good mood tonight. The man who prayed without an agenda and died with a peace I spent thirty-one years of discipline trying to earn. My faith is real. God made me disciplined, consistent, a woman who shows up every morning at 6:00 a.m. without fail. That’s not going away. That’s design. But faith with only discipline is a report. Faith with presence is a relationship. And the difference — I’m learning at sixty-seven — is the silence I spent thirty-one years filling with my own voice. If your prayer life looks perfect on paper but feels empty in practice — If you’ve been talking at God for years and can’t remember the last time you listened — If the discipline is real but the connection is gone and you don’t know how to get it back — The quiz takes 3 minutes. You’ll discover your spiritual archetype — which Woman of the Bible shares your soul. And you’ll get a growth plan built for your unique design. Not my path. Yours. Link below.

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Which Woman of the Bible Are You? 👉