About MizMarie

You Don’t Have to Have It Together to Be Welcome Here

This is a place for women in the middle of something hard.

If you’ve landed on this page, something brought you here. Maybe it was a season that didn’t go the way you planned. Maybe your faith feels quieter than it used to, or louder in ways that confuse you. Maybe you’re tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix, and you’re not sure whether what you’re carrying is doubt or grief or just the ordinary weight of a life that has asked a lot of you. Whatever it is, you don’t have to name it perfectly to be welcome here.

My name is Marie. Most people call me MizMarie.

I’m 78 years old, a retired registered nurse, a biblical counselor, and someone who has spent more decades than I can count sitting with women in the hard chapters. Not fixing them. Sitting with them. There’s a difference, and I learned it the slow way. I’ve done urban ministry work. I’ve advocated in rooms where the people most affected weren’t invited to speak. I’ve counseled women whose pain didn’t fit neatly into any category and whose faith was holding on by a thread they weren’t sure was strong enough. I know something about the messy middle because I have lived there, and I suspect I will again.

My great-granddaughters Lily and Sophia remind me that grace and beauty keeps showing up in the most ordinary places often in small bundles. I try to pay attention to that.

Here is what I want you to know about why this place exists. It is not my nursing background or my counseling training or my years of ministry work that qualify me to walk alongside you. Those things are part of my story and I won’t pretend otherwise. But they are not the point. The point is Jesus. And the Holy Spirit, who has been a more faithful guide and counselor to me than I have ever managed to be to anyone. Every season I survived, every woman I had the privilege of accompanying, every moment I didn’t have the words and something came anyway, that was Him. I am just the woman He kept showing up for and apparently decided to put to work.

If God can use a burning bush, He can probably use a retired nurse with a Chromebook and a lot of stories. I believe He does.

So here is my invitation to you. Come as you are. Bring the questions you haven’t said out loud yet. Bring the faith that’s holding on by its fingernails. Bring the version of yourself that doesn’t have anything figured out. There is room at this table for all of it. You don’t have to have it all together before you pull up a chair.

Seen. Known. Held. (And Loved.)