MARCH 2026 NEWSLETTER

March has felt like I’m living in a paradox.
Which, honestly, is why this newsletter is arriving in April.
I’ve found it incredibly difficult to write in a way that feels genuine—without crossing lines or saying so little that it falls flat.
There’s been a whole host of beauty and tension woven together.
The beauty has looked like
weddings and milestone birthdays,
new opportunities—like a book interview offer and a re-selected poetry publication,
slow mornings in the garden,
time with friends,
and the victory of truth being upheld.
And the tension…
has looked like shifting relationships,
internal grief I don’t always have words for,
a quiet sense of isolation,
wrestling with the normalization of things I can no longer agree with,
alongside the ongoing ache of infertility and health struggles.
Some days, I’ve felt like a ghost wandering the halls of my own home.
And in other moments, I find myself singing praises as I water my garden beds.
When I step back and look at it all, it feels a lot like gardening.
To maintain a flourishing garden, you have to tend to both what is beautiful and what is unwanted. There is pruning, pulling, uprooting—work that isn’t pretty, but is necessary for anything good to grow.
Sometimes when you’re pulling weeds and wondering what to do with them, you can lose sight of the beautiful flowers right in front of you. I think over the past several days that has very much been the case. I’ve been grieving friendships that can no longer be and sins being glorified. In some ways, I’ve found myself relating to the hopelessness of the disciples on Good Friday—the kind of heaviness that makes it hard to see what could possibly come next.
And yet… that’s not the whole story.
There are beautiful flowers in March, sitting right next to the weeds of hopelessness.
I can smile at our witness in New Orleans, and the happy tears that rolled down my face as my sweet little sister got married.
I can hold the moment where tears of infertility turned into tears of celebration as I stood beside my best friend at her daughter’s first birthday.
Even isolation gave way to a full day of laughter with friends.
Just like Good Friday… It was a dark day that foreshadowed victory. Easter is coming on Sunday. God is still sovereign. He is still good, He is still holy, and He is still King!

-Jessica Railsback-