Heather Cherrington Coaching

We just got home this afternoon. My son has been in the hospital since I last posted, and I do not have an easy way to describe the days in between. I am running on caffeine and prayers, and some days there was not enough of either to go around. Sleep has been hard to come by, and the stress has been more than I know how to put into words.

My parents showed up with a meal and gave their time. My mother-in-law packed a bag and stayed the whole weekend so the house kept running while I sat in a hospital room. Two women from my ward brought meals. So many people texted just to check on him, and three of them have already shown up with something for him since we walked in the door. We kept the store by appointment only over the weekend so we could be where we needed to be. Because people showed up for us, I was able to show up for myself, in whatever small way I could find, so I could stay steady for him.

I keep coming back to this. I do not have to be an island. I was never meant to carry this alone, mothering the one who was in that hospital bed and the ones still at home, and somehow still standing upright. God did not ask me to do any of it by myself. He put people in my life who showed up exactly when I needed them, and letting them in has been its own kind of grace.

The hard becomes holy when you stop pretending you can do it without help.

If you are in a hard season right now, what would it look like to let yourself be taken care of instead of carrying it alone?

My girl turned sixteen today, and I spent part of it at the dealership. She thinks that is both hilarious and mildly outrageous. Honestly, so do I.

Summer is almost over, and I can feel it the way you feel a room start to empty before the last guest actually leaves. This one held a dealership opening, our 21st wedding anniversary, kayaking with the kids, sick kids back to back, and a temple morning I needed more than I knew, and now a daughter turning sixteen. It did not look like the summer I planned in May. It looked fuller and harder and more alive than anything I could have planned, all at once, which I am learning is usually how real life actually shows up.

Somewhere in the middle was the dealership, which is my husband's dream, and I have shown up for it fully. And underneath all this living, a quieter place, was coaching, which is mine. It is the thing I think about in the quiet minutes, the thing I built with my own hands before this summer asked me to set it down for a season. Carrying his dream did not erase mine. It just meant mine waited its turn, still true the whole time, still where my heart actually lives.

I used to think a good summer meant holding it all without anyone noticing the seams. I do not believe that anymore. What actually matters is not whether I had it together through the anniversary and the kayaking and the sick days and the opening. It is whether I stayed myself while I carried it, present for a sixteenth birthday with dealership plates still on my mind, and the work God planted within me still quietly waiting its turn.

Then culture taught me that holding it together was required, that holding every plate without a crack showing was what strength looked like. Being sovereign anyway is not that. It is not arranging a season so nothing hard happens in it. It is staying fully yourself, fully living, right in the middle of everything you did not plan for, instead of waiting for calmer circumstances to give yourself permission to show up as her, or to come back to what you built for her.

Sixteen years of my girl. However today actually goes, that part is not lost on me.

I told you I was back, and then I disappeared again.

Opening weekend at the dealership took everything I had, and right in the middle of it my kids got sick, one after another, the way it always seems to happen when there is no room left to give. My house has dishes in the sink and laundry on the stairs, and some mornings this week it has felt like more than my house was falling apart.

So, today my husband and I went to the temple.

I did not go in looking for an answer to how I hold the dealership, my business, motherhood, wifehood, and my calling all at once, because I do not think that question gets answered in one sitting. I went in wanting to feel something besides behind, and God gave it to me. That quiet settled into me the way it only does in that building, and for two blissful hours I was not carrying anything. I was simply there.

On the way home we picked up a car for the dealership, and I noticed something. His dream did not undo the peace I had just been given. It came right alongside it. I am learning that I do not have to choose between being fully in his dream and fully in mine, that I can hold both at once and let each one breathe life into the other instead of competing for the air.

That is the part I want to remember more than the hard week. Not that I got through it, but that I was given peace in the middle of it, and that peace taught me something about how I actually want to hold all of this going forward.

What have you been treating like a competition for air, that might actually be able to breathe alongside everything else?

Three weeks ago, I told you the building wasn't my dream, and it still isn't.

But I showed up for it and him, anyway. Every day, for three weeks straight, even when I had nothing left to give to my own work.

This isn't a contradiction within me. Showing up for someone else's dream while your own sits untouched doesn't erase your calling. It does, however, test whether you actually believe you're allowed to hold both.

I didn't disappear because I stopped caring about this. I disappeared because I chose to carry what was actually in front of me, and I refused to pretend to have it together while I did.

Being sovereign anyway, despite the cultural “should” of being perfect while doing it all, doesn't mean you never set something down. It means trusting Him with the timing of when you pick it back up.

I'm back and ready to keep going. Are you with me?

If you are new here, welcome. My name is Heather Cherrington. I'm a wife. A mother. A certified coach for women of faith. An active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I'm a woman who spent years pouring herself into every role except the one God gave her agency to become, herself.

This account is for women who are faithful and devoted and still quietly restless. Women who have spent years measuring themselves against a version of good that was never actually God's. Women now asking themselves one honest question: whose voice have I been listening to, His, or someone else's?

Here you can expect real moments from my life, not a highlight reel. Honest reflections on faith and the quiet negotiations of everyday womanhood. Coaching insight drawn from my own journey and the women I walk alongside. And a standing invitation to keep asking whose voice you're following.

This is for women who have decided, no more. No more shrinking to fit a shape someone else handed her. No more calling exhaustion holiness just because it's familiar. No more waiting for a version of herself that culture will finally call good enough.

If you read that and thought, "that's me," you already know why you're here. You're not just in the right place. You're ready.

Start with Sunday Stirrings, my weekly newsletter. It's free. Link in bio.

I finished this in the middle of one of the busiest, most stretched weeks I've had all summer.

Five days straight cleaning up someone else's mess in a building that isn't even mine, so my husband's business finally has a place to open.

My own work waiting on the back burner again, the way it so often does this time of year, but this one thing couldn't wait.

Set It Down is a guided workbook I built for exactly the kind of week I'm living right now. The kind where you're carrying more than you meant to and nobody handed you permission to put any of it down. This is your permission.

I created room to write this anyway, five minutes at a time, because some things matter enough to finish even when there's no good time to finish them. And once God places something on your heart, you listen. So, it's here and it's ready.

If you too are carrying something that hasn't had room to be set down yet, this is for you.

Link in bio.

This is the conviction underneath everything I post.

Save this for yourself and come back to it when culture's version of a good woman starts feeling louder than His.

If you made it this far without swiping past, Sunday Stirrings is where we go deeper. Link in bio.

The building is my husband's dream, not mine. Town council approved it, but the inspections came back needing revisions, so it's more delays and more expense before he can even open, on top of the licensing paperwork for his business still not sorted.

I've spent five days straight cleaning up damage the previous occupants left behind, all day, every day. Not building the actual work I set out to build. Just scrubbing floors and hauling out someone else's mess so his business can eventually live there. That's where all my hours have gone this week.

Meanwhile my own work has been sitting on the back burner, again. I keep thinking about how strange it is that a dream coming true can still feel this hard. I thought once something was actually happening, it would feel lighter. It doesn't, not yet. It just feels like more to carry...7 months for this to be how it finally starts. I'm exhausted from carrying the hope, enduring the waiting period, and holding my faith steady in my trust that God is working in this.

And tonight I'm torn, honestly. Torn between motherhood, the building, the house that's falling behind, his business, my business, and a calling I haven't had the capacity to fully show up for this week.

Living sovereign anyway isn't only for the moments that are about my own dream. Some weeks it's choosing to show up fully for someone else's, torn between that and mine, and trusting both still matter even when only one of them is getting my hours right now...and being fully me through it all.