A Spacious Place

On Identity, Stewardship, and Spiritual Growth Birthed in Abundance

There’s an invitation in hardship that many of us have learned to recognize.

Difficulty and loss are experiences that demand your heart, your habits, and your identity be reshaped by the hand of God.

Personally, I’ve known seasons of pruning.
I’ve felt the ache of lack press me closer to the Lord.
I’ve grown familiar with the kind of surrender that comes through tears, with the kind of faith that’s formed when you have no choice but to trust.

But what about the sanctification that comes through blessing?

Recently, I came across a reflection by the late Derek Prince that resonated deeply. He said that while many recognize suffering as a way God tests and grows us into the likeness of his Son Jesus, few realize that abundance can also be a test.

Provision, beauty, and overflow are not just gifts from the Father of Lights — they can be refining fires in their own right.

---

For years, my family and I lived in a tiny home on the edge of our land. We didn’t just “make it work,” we chose it. We crafted a life inside its smallness… not because we had to, but because we believed in it.

I believed I was the kind of person who lived that life.

Someone satisfied with little.
Someone wholly content with less.
Someone who saw holiness in simplicity, who didn’t need much because needing little somehow felt more noble.

Smallness and simplicity became part of my identity.

And, in some ways, my sense of righteousness.

Now, we’ve stepped into a different experience entirely: a sprawling 5,500-square-foot once-abandoned Mexican hacienda that we’ve spent the last year completing. Arched doorways, floor to ceiling cedar windows, a central courtyard open to the sky. Many rooms where we once had one. Light and air and beauty in every direction.

And I feel it: that strange disorientation that accompanies a shift in identity, alongside a softness of the Lord’s presence & grace.

A subtle question rises in me: Who am I to live like this?

If holiness once felt like choosing less, what does it mean to live with much more?

This move has taught me that abundance can shake our identity as much as loss. It has demanded that I surrender whatever stories I once believed to be true, stories I once told about who it is I am— the image of the “simple woman,” the minimalist mother, the humble homemaker who doesn’t need much. It’s required me to die to the pride I didn’t know I had in being “small.” It’s invited me to redirect my gaze upon Jesus, knowing that who I am pales in comparison to the truth of whose I am.

He brought me into a spacious place…

-Psalm 18:19

People don’t just change through an experience of suffering.
People often change when they meet success.

And, not always for the better.

God warned His people about this.

In Deuteronomy 8, He says:

“For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land…a land where you will lack nothing… When you eat and are full, and build beautiful houses to live in… you will bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you… Be careful that your heart doesn’t become proud and you forget the Lord your God… [saying] to yourself, ‘My power and my own ability have gained this wealth for me…”

It’s a holy warning.

Abundance can become a trap. Not because it’s evil, but because it’s easy.

Easy to grow self-reliant.
Easy to believe we’ve been self-made.
Easy to trade dependence on God for comfort.
Easy to wrap our identity around the blessings, instead of root it into the One who gives them.

This home, this hacienda — this spacious, echoing, light-drenched place — is not a monument to me. It’s not a reward for faithfulness. It’s not a badge of honor or proof of growth.

It’s a gift.
And, it’s a test.

“To whom much is given, much will be required.”

- Luke 12:48

This home is an invitation. To steward well what I’ve been given.

Not to isolate but to invite.
Not to control, but to create.
Not to curate perfection, but to invite in His presence.
Not to show and tell, but to serve as a vessel for His love.

I want to become the woman who lives here — not by default, but by daily decision, dedication, devotion.

A woman who lets her overflowing cup pour out into others.

Who walks slowly through her home, never ceasing in offering up prayers of praise and thanksgiving.

Who opens the door wide because she knows none of it is truly hers, but His.

Who works with willing hands. Who can laugh at the time to come.

I don’t want to shrink back or apologize for this gift God has given —

but I don’t want to be lulled into self-reliance, either.

So I keep asking:

Lord, sanctify me in this, too. Guide me on the narrow path, even as I walk through broad, sweeping hallways. Keep me close in the spacious place. Let me be formed here, not by square footage, but by complete surrender.

I refuse to be defined by small or large, by lack or abundance, by any temporary condition or external measure.

My identity is not forged in my surroundings, but in the God who dwells with me wherever I am.

You brought me into this spacious place — not so I could finally arrive, but so I could keep becoming.

Becoming the woman, wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend You made me to be; One who reflects Your love in every space she inhabits.

One who lives not for less or for more —
but for You.