From a Valley of Dry Bones

The world shifted.

Peace emerged, but not the gentle kind. This was a peace born from chaos, uncertainty, and disruption. Two hummingbirds hovered just beyond the railing of my apartment balcony in Buckhead, Atlanta. I had never seen hummingbirds in person. Never this close. They lingered, suspended in air like a whisper, and it felt like a sign. The earth was healing.

In Venice, canals ran clear again, and fish returned; species unseen for generations. Across the globe, vegetation reemerged, ecosystems stirred, and life pushed its way back to the surface. It was as if God had breathed into dry bones and called the Earth back to life. Her lungs filled with clean air again.

All because humanity paused.

If you were paying attention, 2020 was more than a global shutdown. It was a spiritual awakening. That was the year my inner world began to shift. I started dreaming vividly. Patterns in numbers seemed to follow me. My sensitivity to the Holy Spirit sharpened in a way I couldn’t explain. What I didn’t realize then was that I was awakening to prophetic warnings and visions. The Lord whispered to me things like, “DEI will be dismantled. Trump will win the presidency. America will see war on its soil." Check, check...well.

Some were prepared for that shift. I wasn’t.

I pivoted from working as a virtual assistant into launching a recruitment and consultancy agency, Handled by Gwenn M & Co. It was ahead of its time, as in I moved before the Lord had cleared me to do so. The vision of building safer, more human-centered spaces for people to lead resonated deeply. But my “why” felt unstable. There was no anchor.

By 2022, I was chasing that unanchored vision at full speed—like hell on wheels. I was surviving on five hours of sleep a week, trying to master everything while wearing every hat, and in doing so, I became mediocre at all of it. I joined masterminds, went live on LinkedIn and Instagram, ran every department, designed content, wrote blogs, created newsletters, and led sales—everything—alongside my close down-for-the-ride friend, Janaye.

Then came September. After reviewing my balance sheet and profit and loss statement, I woke up the next morning covered in hives. From my scalp to my toes. My body was screaming what I had refused to hear. Burnout. I was running out of money. I was running out of options. And then it happened—I ran out of both.

“You failed. You did everything wrong.”

The words didn’t just land—they echoed. A close friend cornered me against a wall with them. They seethed from their mouth as if they had been waiting for the moment to release them, and they became a relentless drumbeat in my mind. I broke in ways I didn’t know were possible. That year I walked away from my elementary best friend. My husband’s travel schedule was relentless. Our son was struggling with behavioral issues at school. My business collapsed beneath me. And my youngest brother died of cancer. In one year.

I stood at my brother's bedside as he took his final breath. Later, numb and utterly dumbfounded, I took a bottle of wine and a cheese tray back to my room and had it out with God. Not a polished prayer. Not reverent. Not put together. Raw. I felt a fiery hatred rise up in me: sharp, unfamiliar, and consuming. At the same time, there was a longing just as intense. A desperate need for God to be near, to explain Himself, to make any of it make sense. Anger and ache. Rage and reaching. The room felt heavy and I unraveled as grief came in waves I couldn’t control. I asked questions I didn’t know if I was allowed to ask and said things I didn’t know if I could take back. Beneath all of it was a deep, aching loneliness. The kind that doesn’t come from being alone, but from feeling unseen, unheard, unanswered. I didn’t feel strong. I didn’t feel faithful. I didn’t feel hopeful. I felt empty. 

So I let it all go—the business, the vision, the identity I had built around it. Friends and family. I walked away from it all. I convinced myself that walking away was the best thing for me. It was selfish. It was freeing. But the consequences had deep ripple effects.

In 2024, I sat down to write the email that would officially dissolve Handled by Gwenn M & Co. I had nothing left to give. No energy, no will, no confidence to begin again. “You failed. You did everything wrong,” played on repeat as I typed. Those words had become part of my DNA.

In the background, Pastor Touré Roberts’ corporate prayer streamed live on YouTube, just noise filling the silence. Until it wasn’t. Mid-prayer, he said, “And for the one that was going to quit their business and shut it down…I hear the Lord saying, don’t quit. It’s just not structured right. It’s not set up right. It’s profitable—there’s profit there, you’re just not structured right.”

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/b04fda_430048f5ffef43d9a9cb43378f8535c6/360p/mp4/file.mp4

I froze, looking around the empty room checking if anyone else had heard or experienced what I had just experienced. The room was empty ya’ll. You know that moment—when a word doesn’t just land, it hits? When it carries weight, timing, and conviction all at once?

That was mine. That word was for me.

That season broke me into pieces that didn’t make sense to put back together, so I didn’t. I chose to be rebuilt. I surrendered to being made over by God, fully, intentionally and without resistance. And in that surrender, I found what had always been missing: an anchor. An anchor in my relationships, my identity, my purpose, and my business. The anchor. I rededicated my life to Christ and allowed the purging to take place.

Good Ground Co. was born from a mess God decided He could bless.

Hi—me. I’m the mess. And I carry a testimony I will never again silence, because I know I’m not the only one. Not the only one who has wrestled with purpose, who has buried their light beneath darkness, who has almost walked away from something sacred or who has shrunk because the people around you are intimidated by what you carry.

My assignment is to pull missions out of the darkness and build founders for discipleship. Here, your mission will fall on good ground. Anchored ground, prepared ground, transformed ground.

Let’s plant the seed,

Gwenn M.

Related scriptures:

Hebrews 6:19

John 15

Ezekiel 37:1-14