Are you living in the gap between the motherhood you pictured and the motherhood you actually have? If Mother's Day stirred up grief you didn't know was still there — or if something has been quietly hardening around the edges of your heart — this episode is for you.

In this post–Mother's Day episode, Rachel sits with the question almost no one says out loud: How do I pray when bitterness keeps creeping into my motherhood? Anchored in the story of Naomi in Ruth chapter 1 — the woman who came home and told her whole town to call her by a different name, Mara, because the Almighty had made her life bitter — this episode gives moms permission to name what they're actually feeling and reminds them that the bitter chapter is not the last chapter.

Rachel shares the season in her own life when bitterness was closer to her than it had ever been: losing her mom at 62 when she was 27, and grieving the grandmother her mom would have been to her kids. She talks about how reading the Psalms — not one specific psalm, just the whole book of them, day after day — became her lifeline through a season she didn't know how to pray through.

You'll discover:

• The difference between grief and bitterness, and why naming it matters
• What Naomi's honest "call me Mara" prayer teaches us about coming to God with the actual word for what we're feeling
• Why the Psalms hold both honesty and faith on the same page, and how that becomes a lifeline
• How God works in the gap between the motherhood we pictured and the motherhood we have

If you're in a bitter chapter today, this episode is a gentle reminder that God is doing something underneath the surface — even when you can't see it. The bitter chapter is not the last chapter.

RESOURCES 

• 31 Prayers for a Mom's Heart prayer cards — rachelwojo.com/shop
• The Hope Circle women's community — rachelwojo.com/the-hope-circle