I want to tell you about a farm.
Not in a metaphorical way. An actual farm, the kind that still actually farms, with wide open land and a quiet that sits differently than the quiet you find at home. I was there for a gathering and I showed up with something I don’t always carry into a room.
No agenda.
No outcome I was chasing. No ROI I was measuring in the back of my mind. Just me, settling back, and asking the Lord to show me what He was going to do.
Why Letting Go of ROI Is So Hard
I talk about ROI a lot. Return on investment. What we get back for what we put in. As an entrepreneur, as someone who loves strategy and building and seeing things move, I’m very familiar with going into a room and quietly calculating what this is going to produce.
And honestly I don’t think that’s always wrong. Intention matters. Clarity matters. Knowing why you’re in a room matters.
But here’s what I’ve found to be true over and over again.
Our definition of what a return is supposed to look like is almost always too small. Too flat. Too one dimensional. We come in expecting one thing and God has something so much more layered, so much more alive, than the version we sketched out in our heads.
So what I’ve been learning to do, slowly and sometimes imperfectly, is hold the expectation loosely. Show up with purpose but stay open to the fact that His return on what you bring is always going to be more than what you planned for.
The Farm, the Worship, and the Shift
At this gathering I was invited to lead a moment of worship. And the space itself was already doing something. From the moment I arrived I felt the presence of God so strong there. It was thick in the way that sometimes catches you off guard, where you walk in and you just know He is already moving before anything has even started.
When I went up to lead I wasn’t coming in with a set plan for what the moment was going to be. I just brought what I had.
And in what felt like a very small moment, something shifted. For me personally, something moved.
I can’t fully put it into words, and I think that’s actually the point. Some of what God does in a space, in a quiet moment, in a song, in an open field on a working farm where you weren’t even expecting anything in particular, cannot be packaged into a report or a metric or a takeaway. It just lives in you differently after.
The Invitation to Settle Back
What I keep thinking about from that day is the thing I felt the Lord saying when I got there. Settle back. See what happens.
Not “have a plan.” Not “produce something.” Not even “be ready to lead.” Just settle back.
There’s something so countercultural about that for those of us who are wired to build and create and move. To show up somewhere with an open hand instead of a tight fist feels almost irresponsible sometimes.
But that posture is actually one of the most powerful ones you can carry into a room, into a season, into a business. Because when you’re not white knuckling the outcome, you’re actually available for whatever God wants to do. And what He wants to do is always better.
What Releasing the Outcome Actually Looks Like in Your Life and Business
This isn’t just a principle for worship gatherings. This is a real and practical thing for how we build.
How many decisions have you made from a place of needing to control the return? How many rooms have you walked into already decided about what this was going to produce, and then felt disappointed or confused when it didn’t land the way you expected?
What if the thing God was trying to give you in that room was never going to show up in the metric you were tracking?
His return is always 3D. Always more than what we mapped out. But we only see it when we’re not so fixated on the version we came in looking for.
This is honestly one of my favorite things to work through with the women I coach, especially those in the thick of building something. Learning to lead, create, and grow from a place of trust instead of control is a whole shift. It’s quiet work. It changes how you make decisions, how you show up in relationships, and how you receive what God is actually doing versus what you thought He should be doing.
If that resonates with where you are right now, I’d love to have a conversation. Connect with me here and let’s talk about what working together could look like.
And if you want more of this kind of conversation woven into your regular week, the podcast is a really good place to keep going. Laughing Over Tomorrow is running and we’re talking about all of it, faith, building, trusting God with the outcomes, and what it looks like to actually live from the Spirit in the everyday.
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