Why This Name

Have you ever looked at someone’s life and thought, they seem so put together… so holy… just so perfect? Felt the quiet ache in your own heart that your faith doesn’t feel that way? You’re not alone. That tension, that contrast, is exactly what gave rise to the name of this blog: Paper Saints & Living Stones.

It started as a reflection on my own faith journey. I’ve spent years wrestling with what it means to follow Christ not just in theory, but in the ordinary, sometimes messy, sometimes quiet rhythms of my daily life. I’ve watched myself—and sometimes others—hold up faith like a beautifully printed image, neat, perfect, flat. That’s what I call a paper saint: a life that looks complete on the surface but has never been fully tested, fully formed, or fully surrendered.

One particular morning several years ago, my youngest daughter was still cozy in her pajamas, sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of beeswax crayons and a coloring book. I was tired. I had risen early, lingering over the warmth of a spiced chai latte as I tried to catch up on a few emails, and yet here I was, still in my robe, feeling perpetually behind. As I watched her carefully choose each color for her picture, I realized how much of my faith had been like a coloring book I was afraid to actually touch. Afraid to get messy, to make mistakes, frightened to go outside the lines. Afraid that if I stepped into real life the picture wouldn’t turn out perfect.

But God has a way of teaching us that life is never meant to be lived on paper. He wants us to be living stones, not paper saints. Look at 1st Peter 2:4-5 with me (CSB Version)…

“As you come to him, a living stone—rejected by people but chosen and honored by God—you yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house, are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Living stones are alive. They are shaped over time, tested, and fitted together with care. They bear weight, they endure, and they support each other. Unlike paper, they are not fragile illusions; rather, they are part of something eternal, connected to the foundation of Christ Himself.

This blog is my attempt to capture that movement—from the flatness of paper faith to the depth and resilience of living stones. It’s about dwelling daily on holy ground: noticing God’s presence in the ordinary, responding to His shaping hand in the routines of life, and recognizing that even the smallest acts of obedience are sacred.

“Holy ground” isn’t just a metaphor here. It comes from one of my favorite passages, Exodus 3:5, when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush:

“Do not come closer,” He said. “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

That moment reminds me that holiness is not distant or abstract. It isn’t only found on a mountaintop or in a perfectly curated devotional. It’s present in the very place where you are standing—whether that’s the kitchen floor, a classroom, a desk at work, or beside a child’s bed. God meets us in the ordinary. He calls our daily life holy ground and invites us to dwell with Him there.

I’ve come to learn that the ordinary can be the hardest place to encounter God. Faith grows in the daily, ordinary moments—folding laundry while quietly praying for my children, journaling during a baby's nap, making breakfast, juggling schedules, and reading Scripture. There is no shortcut. There is no glamorous version of holiness that bypasses the daily grind. And yet, when we learn to recognize His presence, when we approach life with reverence and intentionality, our daily routines become holy ground and our lives begin to reflect the depth and strength of living stones.

I still wrestle with the temptation to be a paper saint (likely, I always will). I still sometimes want faith to look right rather than be right. I catch myself comparing my small, private obedience with someone else’s curated highlight reel. I struggle with the tension between what I feel capable of doing in my own strength and what God asks me to trust Him with. And yet, the more I embrace the ordinary as holy, the more I see God shaping me—little by little, mistake by mistake—into someone more like Him.

One morning last spring, I had a particularly challenging day. My eldest son was frustrated with a simple homeschool mathematics assignment, my middle son was agonizing over penmanship, and my daughters were arguing over Barbies and kitten chores. Laundry had grown to Everest proportions. Equally high was the pile of dirty dishes left in the sink from dinner the night before and a rushed breakfast that morning. I felt pulled in every direction, stretched thin, and quietly wondered if I was failing. I sat down in my chair for an exasperated moment, tapped open the Bible app on my phone, took a deep breath, and read these words from Colossians 3:23–24:

“Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people, knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord. You serve the Lord Christ.”

Truth crashed into me: this—this chaotic, messy, ordinary day—is holy ground. Each small act, each moment of patience, each whispered prayer is a stone being shaped and placed. The faith I live here, in the middle of everything, is the faith that matters. The faith that endures.

This is what I hope this blog will be for you, too. A place to see the sacred in the everyday. A place to explore faith honestly and vulnerably. A place where prayers, reflections, and writing musings meet Scripture and life. A space where we can recognize our own tendency toward paper saints—to want faith that looks perfect—and gently, prayerfully, be encouraged to become living stones, shaped on holy ground, built into something enduring, and anchored in Christ.

Some days, holy ground feels tangible, does it not? The quiet early morning when everyone else is asleep, a shared laugh with a child, a hand written note from your spouse, the smell of dinner cooking on the stove, a small act of service done without recognition. Some days, holy ground feels like a grind: schedules, responsibilities, bills, disagreements, mistakes, exhaustion. But all of it is sacred when we invite God into the ordinary. He is faithful to meet us where we are standing, shaping us into living stones as we dwell daily on holy ground.

I share my writing here with humility, fully aware that I am still learning, still growing, and still being shaped. These reflections are not meant to provide answers, but to encourage, to point toward God, and to create a space where honesty and faithfulness coexist.

I hope you will find here a companionable rhythm for your own journey. To notice the holy ground under your own feet and recognize how living stones are being shaped in your daily life all while being gently reminded that your small acts of faith are not unnoticed. They are part of the work God is doing in you and through you.

So, welcome. I’m so glad you are here. May this space encourage you to step off the paper and into the life-giving, sometimes challenging, always sacred work of being a living stone, dwelling daily on holy ground.

John Muir (1838–1914), a naturalist and early conservationist, spent much of his life walking wilderness trails with little more than a notebook, simple provisions, and a deep attentiveness to the world around him. He believed that time spent in untamed places had a way of steadying the soul and reordering human desires, not because nature replaces God’s truth, but because it quiets us enough to notice it.

He once wrote, “the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” Muir understood that light—whether from the sun breaking through trees or a lantern carried at dusk—was meant to guide, not overwhelm.

Scripture tells similar stories of people who walked by limited light.

Abraham stepped forward without knowing where the path would end.

Moses followed God through wilderness by pillar and flame, light given day by day.

Elijah learned to listen for the Lord not in wind or fire, but in a quiet whisper.

None of them were given full visibility. They were given direction.

“Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105)

Faith has always been a matter of trusting God enough to walk by the light He provides, step by step, leaving what remains unseen in His care.