Dawn of Valor

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In todays toiling in lifes garden out loud episode I share the poem I wrote, recorded and shared to social this week. The culmination of truth, pain and hope I've been ruminating on for years that I finally found words for.

I also share a moment I felt God hugged me for doing this podcast. Something came from it- a bible study with 70 women?? 

Then, in a turn of events that feels almost too specific to be accidental, I discovered an upcoming retreat created exclusively for Substack writers. Ironically taking place on a sixty-acre farm only twenty minutes from my house in the same farm town my church is in. I applied, and I should find out within the next few days whether I have been selected.

Finally, I talk about the quiet, fresh work God seems to be doing inside of me: beginning to uproot my consuming desire for a home.

The desire has not disappeared completely, but it no longer engulfs me. I am noticing how seldom I think about it compared with when we first moved. 

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In this episode I catch you up on the last 3 months since I recorded. 
What is it really like moving cross country and trusting God with the outcome? Nine months in- Have I been saved from trials, suffering, or depression? 
Maturing in the Christian faith continues to open my eyes to how immature I actually am and how little I know. 

God has evolved our original business and investment into something that seems like he's writing a cool story, but unsure of the outcome yet and don't know what exactly he's doing. 

I do my best to catch you up on the most important things, though in hindsight I feel like I missed several things I wanted to say.
Alas, I'll have to make another episode- hopefully less than 3 months from now!

I also share my idea for a direction to take this podcast- we shall see. 

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In this episode, I share what God has been showing me about holiness and how my view of it is changing.

More and more, holiness is not feeling dull, lifeless, or restrictive to me. It is starting to feel beautiful.

To be holy is to be set apart for God. To belong to Him. To reflect His character more clearly in every area of life.

And I’m realizing that holiness is not God calling us to become blank, colorless people. He is not making us less ourselves. He is making us into what we were always meant to be: lives that bear His image well.

I talk about how this shift feels similar to the way my understanding of heaven changed as I got older. What once felt flat and sterile has become, through Scripture, something far richer, fuller, weightier, and more alive. Holiness is beginning to feel that way too.

I also share an update about a home we looked at this week, and why it was not the right fit.

If I’m honest, I do not even know how we would get approved for a mortgage right now or how any of that would come together. But even in that, I found myself wondering if maybe the Lord is being kind to me.

Maybe He is preparing me for the weight of the glory of home, so that home itself will not become my identity, my source of joy, or my reason for existing.

Maybe some things are not withheld because God is cruel.

Maybe they are withheld because He is merciful.

Because weight reveals what is underneath. And God, in His kindness, prepares us before He places more on us.  

In this episode:

•  why my view of holiness is changing 
•  how holiness is starting to feel beautiful, freeing, and full of life 
•  why holiness is not the same thing as legalism 
•  how God sanctifies what He saves 
•  why the Lord often prepares us before He gives us more 
•  a personal update on the home we looked at this week 
•  why I think even that disappointment may be mercy 

📖 Scripture referenced
 1 Peter 1:15–16
 Romans 8:18
 Romans 8:29
 John 15

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Two weeks after my last recording, I sat down on 3/27 to share this episode. That date holds deep meaning for me, and this episode became a marker of God’s mercy in the middle of intense spiritual warfare.

I share about the frightening events our family walked through on 3/22, the mental and emotional crash that followed, and how the Lord used truth, prayer, and the renewing of my mind to help me fight differently this time.

I also share what I’m learning right now about holiness: that to be holy is to be set apart for God, reflecting His character in every area of life. More and more, holiness is not feeling dull or restrictive to me, but beautiful, freeing, and full of life.

In this episode:

•  why 3/27 feels significant to me 
•  the very obvious spiritual warfare our family faced last week 
•  how studying the battlefield of the mind helped prepare me
•  why holiness is beginning to feel beautiful, not burdensome 
•  how creativity, beauty, and obedience can all reflect God’s character 

📖 Scripture referenced
 John 3:27- A man may receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.

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For the first time, I’m playing the audio from the day Justice and I were baptized at church. You’ll hear my testimony and baptism first, and then Justice shares his testimony in his own words.

Justice has never really had a platform. This is the first time his story has been shared publicly. It felt like such a gift to be able to include it here.

This episode also marks the beginning of something new.

Two weeks ago I finally sat down with our neighbor and landlord, Linda Cross. When we moved here, I had no idea she teaches the Bible every week to women in Spanish across Argentina and Chile. When I asked if I could see her curriculum, I realized it was exactly what my heart has been hungry to learn.

The very first lesson begins with a truth that feels simple but profound: The battle is first won or lost in the mind. 

Sow a thought.
 Reap an action.
 Sow an action.
 Reap a habit.
 Sow a habit.
 Reap a character.
 Sow a character.
 Reap a destiny.

From there we begin learning how real change actually happens.

Not by trying harder to fix behavior.

But by tracing the fruit in our lives back to the root of what we believe about God.

In this episode I share the framework I’m learning:

Fruit: the visible behavior in our lives
Trunk: the desires driving those behaviors
Root: the belief about God underneath it all

For example, my anxiety about provision might look like striving or fear on the surface. But if you follow it down to the root, it can reveal something deeper: unbelief that God will truly provide.

Transformation isn’t cutting a weed at ground level.

It’s uprooting the lie, repenting of unbelief, and replacing it with the truth of Scripture. We are TRANSFORMED by the renewing of our MIND.

Watch the Baptisms

You can watch the baptisms from our church service here:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEzIufDFveo&t=1977s
(((Our baptisms begin around minute 24 of the service.)))

📖 Scripture referenced
Matthew 6:26
Romans 12:2

💛 Support this work
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 https://dawnphotoco.com/

🌐 More about me
 www.mikayladawn.com

📬 Contact
 [email protected]

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It has been one month and twelve days into the new year.
 And five months since we left home.

In this episode, I share what the Lord has been doing in this season of life in a furnished rental, unfamiliar rhythms, and spiritual reorientation.

This has not been a season of arrival. It has been a season of placement.

A season of radical amputation.
A season of integration into the Body.
A season of learning the difference between provision and permanence.

We talk about:

•  my lack of a vision board this year and why
•  Jesus’ call to radical amputation in Matthew 5:29–30, and our decision to give up alcohol this year
•  Why God withholds lasting security, but gives joy along the way
•  What themes of 'home' God keeps hammering into my soul, while withholding what I think 'home' is or should be.
•  Starting Growth groups + Marriage and Family Class
•  What Jeremiah 29 teaches about life and living while in exile

Scripture referenced:

Matthew 5:29–30
 Jeremiah 29:5–7

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
 “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

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Recorded on New Year’s Eve. 2025 behind. 2026 ahead. A quiet closing of one year and an unsteady step into another.

Simply a look back at what God has done and an honest look forward into what we still do not know yet.

I read last year’s New Year’s Eve journal entry and compare it to today. The ways God has faithfully met us in both joy and ache. It is strange and sacred to hear myself one year ago and realize how much has changed even when life still feels raw and unfinished.

Then we move into a Q&A. These are the real questions you asked. 

In this episode we talk about:

• How has your marriage changed since Justice has been saved? 🤍
• How does your faith stay centered in the unknown, especially in seasons of change and overwhelm?
• How do you keep faith in yourself and let God handle things? Any advice?
• In what ways has Jesus drawn near? Have you seen Him move in big ways?
• How has the move been on everyone?
• Was it a hard transition from warm weather to colder temperatures?
• Could you move back if you weren’t happy there?
• Best advice for moms trying to focus on God while juggling everything and feeling overwhelmed.
• Curious if you’ve figured anything out for Beckham.
• What do you hope for in the new year? ✨

Thank you for being here.

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Recorded on December 10th, my 33rd birthday, after nearly two months of silence. This episode is anything but polished. It is not triumphant. Its just honest.

I share what these last months have truly felt like beneath the surface: the homesickness, the continual pruning that does not pause, and the slow, unseen work of becoming a woman of valor in ways that look nothing like the epic transformation I once imagined.

In this episode, I talk about:

• What it has been like to live without any sense of home, stability, or familiarity
 • The strange comfort I find in walking Target just to feel something familiar
 • How the Lord seems to have removed even my natural sense of navigation as a living metaphor for how lost I truly am without Him
 • The difference between pruning and discipline, and how both are signs of being heirs with Christ
 • Why the Christian life feels so heavy: because glory itself is weighty
 • How perhaps this life is strength training for what is to come
 • Our recent Halloween and Thanksgiving

We are studying the “upside down” wisdom of Luke in Sunday school: how the Kingdom of God runs opposite of the world. It is one thing to know this. It is another thing to actually live it. 

I also read from:

2 Corinthians 1:8–10
 John 15, the Vine, the pruning, the abiding

And I close with a liturgy from Every Moment Holy for inconsolable homesickness.

This is not a story of arrival. This is the in between endurance.
 Of learning that self sacrifice is not weakness but power.
 That becoming may look like disappearing.
 And that God is preparing us for a glory that has weight.

Thank you for walking with me through it.

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🌐 More about me:
 www.mikayladawn.com

📬 Contact:
 [email protected]

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In this short and unfiltered episode, I talk about being thankful that God never changes—even when I do.

Lately, I’ve felt jaded and foggy. I finally submitted my book proposal, but my heart has felt weak. My faith feels small, and I miss the girl I used to be—confident, funny, fully alive—yet back then, I was spiritually dead. Now I’m alive, but some days I feel dead.

Justice mentioned that he senses something shifting, like a storm is brewing in a good way. He doesn’t usually say things like that, and it made me wonder what the Lord might be preparing.

I also share a lighthearted moment: entering Darylan Denner’s giveaway with Ring Concierge and watching my comment take off. It made me smile, thinking how full-circle it would be to meet them since they gave to our GoFundMe after Valor died.

And then there’s this thought I couldn’t shake—how God is the original interior designer. He brought order from chaos and gave such careful instruction about His dwelling place in the tabernacle. Maybe that’s why I care so deeply about my home and surroundings. Maybe I don’t need new things. Maybe I just need to create beauty with what I already have.

This one’s more of a brain dump before I left for York to visit a friend—but maybe that’s exactly what it needed to be. God’s truth holds steady, even when our emotions don’t.

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Two weeks after my last recording, I sit down to share an update. It has been a mix of depression, anxiety about financial security, and wrestling with the unknown future.

In this episode I talk about:

• The ways I have struggled with fear, sadness, and feeling fragile.
• How the church here has shown up for us, tangibly being the body of Christ.
• An update on the kids schooling option and why we decided to go with private education
• The unexpected gift of meeting new friends and being invited to dinner.
• Our big financial investment into our business and the weight of that step.
• Missing old friendships that felt like sisters, and longing for that depth again.
• The sanctifying work the Lord is doing in my heart through all of it.

Links & Ways to Support:
🌿 Buy Me a Coffee → https://buymeacoffee.com/mikayladawt

📝 Substack → https://mikayladawnchaparro.substack.com/

🌐 Website → https://www.mikayladawn.com

📸 Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/mikayladawnchaparro/

If you want me to answer any specific questions, or touch on any subjects, please feel free to email directly at [email protected]