Renew: A Season of Pruning

For 2025, the word God gave me was renew. While 2024 was easy to understand, 2025 brought more challenges. I was healing from some health issues that were scary and took me several weeks to overcome. That just put me in the wrong mindset at the beginning of the year.

Once I was doing better, I began trying to figure out what it meant to renew. I thought God wanted me closer to Him and I should read my Bible more. Over the next few months, I tried podcasts, Bible app readings in the car…. But it just wasn’t hitting the spot.

Looking back, I can see how I thought that I was doing what it meant to renew. However, I didn’t take the time to pray deeply about it. I didn’t ask my husband to pray with me. That’s where I went wrong.

Tim and I had some rough patches that were triggered by our past trauma. I had stopped going to my ladies’ small group at church as well. I felt lost.

Tim and I started attending a new church together, while I continued to take my kids to the church we had been attending for several years. They needed consistency, and I didn’t want to uproot them. I wanted to worship with my husband, so I went with him when I could. I knew we must be doing something right, because it felt like everything was falling apart—and I wasn’t willing to give up on anything God had given me.

He gave us the gift of restoration to equip us for the renewal process.

One week we were out of town and missed church. The associate pastor sent Tim his sermon. It took me a few days but I sat down to read it. It was from John 15:1-11 – on the vine and the branches.

“ I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that

bears no fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

That’s only part of the passage, and I’m sure we’ve all read it before. When I first read the sermon, I thought, Okay, yeah – I’ve read this before…. What is new here.

I read it three times and knew there was something there, but I couldn’t grasp it yet.

Fast forward two weeks. I was home with a sick child, doing some dusting, and I felt the nudging of the spirit to read a letter Tim had written to me earlier in the year.

I had once asked him what his favorite picture of us was. He printed a photo from our engagement --     my eyes closed with tears of joy, and he’s kissing my cheek. He said the picture reminded him of the innocence of our youth. He used the word renew, and how years ago before our hurts, this is how our love would’ve been: joyful, innocent, trusting -- with faith, hope and love.

He wrote that in February 2025, but it didn’t hit me until November.

In the moments I felt lost, God was still with me. He healed me this year – that was a huge answered prayer. Then I began to understand the pruning side, that he will cut away the dead parts. We both carried some past hurts and unhealthy responses to those hurts. Neither of us handled those situations perfectly.

But those moments of restoration came through the hard days of pruning.

God was bringing light to the areas that needed to be cut out – not to wound us in frustration, but to allow us to grow as a couple and grow in sprit. During all of it, my greatest mistake was forgetting to abide in the Lord. Relationships take work –even spiritual ones.

So in my renewal, it’s about getting back to the basics.

Knowing that my spouse is not my enemy.

Our kids are a blessing.

Having fun.

Laughing.

Dancing in the kitchen.

Connecting,

Being open to growth and change.

Staying humble.

Renewal doesn’t just happen in prayer closets or quiet moments alone. Sometimes it happens across a table – in honest conversations, shared meals, laughter between hard days, and choosing to stay present when it would be easier to withdraw. The table becomes a place of abiding, where restoration is practiced in real life, not just talked about.

That’s what Come to the Table is about.