7 DAYS TO GO 🎤

When the waiting becomes the gift

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📖 “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!” — Psalm 27:14 (NKJV)

🕯️ There’s something about a countdown that does something to you on the inside.

Not a loud something. Not the sharp, urgent thing you might expect from seven days standing between you and a milestone. It’s quieter than that. It’s the feeling of standing at the edge of a lake very early in the morning, watching the mist lift — not slowly, not dramatically, just… inevitably — and realising you’ve been holding your breath for longer than you knew.

Seven days. That’s all that stands between now and the afternoon we’ve been working toward, praying over, and pouring ourselves into for months. Seven days — and yet, sitting here this morning with my tea growing cool beside me, it doesn’t feel small at all. It feels like standing at the edge of something beautiful, watching it come into focus at last.

✍️ I’ve been asking myself why a countdown carries so much weight. I think it’s because numbers make real what faith has been holding. For months, the 20th of June has existed as a kind of promissory note — something believed, something worked toward, something hoped for. Now, with seven days remaining, it’s crossing the threshold from hope into happening. The invisible is becoming visible. The seed is becoming a stem, reaching for light.

🕊️ On the 20th, eleven remarkable people will walk onto the stage at Te Pou Theatre in Auckland and do something quietly extraordinary. They’ll open their mouths and offer the room something that can’t be bought, borrowed, or manufactured. They’ll offer their stories.

Not polished performances. Not carefully curated highlight reels. Real stories — the kind that carry the fingerprints of real living on them. Stories shaped by courage, by loss, by discovery, by the long and winding road of becoming. Eleven voices, eleven worlds — and yet, if we listen well, one story threading through them all. The story of what it means to be human, to wrestle with something, and to choose to speak anyway.

🪨 Many Worlds. One Story.

That’s the theme of our Mini-TENx event this year, and the longer I sit with it, the more I love it. We each come from somewhere different. We carry different histories, different languages, different landscapes behind our eyes. We’ve been broken in different places and healed by the same grace. We’ve wept different tears that fell from the same kind of heartache. We’ve known the particular ache of a wound that doesn’t have a name yet — and the particular relief of discovering someone else has known it too.

That’s what a story does, when it’s told from the truest part of the teller. It doesn’t divide. It draws us in.

📖 “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling.” — Ephesians 4:4 (NKJV)

🌱 I’ve had the privilege of watching these speakers prepare. I’ve watched them dig deeper than they thought they could, find the thread that holds their message together, and step into a courage they didn’t know they had. I’ve watched someone discover mid-session that the story they thought was about one thing was actually about something much more tender. I’ve watched voices steady themselves. I’ve watched shoulders drop as the truth of what they were carrying was finally named.

I’m not going to lie to you: I’ve teared up more than once.

These aren’t just talks. These are offerings.

🕯️ I’ve watched all of this — and I’m one of them.

Honestly? I’m still wondering what on earth I was thinking when I signed up for this. The spiritual warfare these past weeks has been intense, and the fears I’ve been facing have been anything but small. Some of them have names I’ve known for a long time. Some of them I didn’t even realise were still crouching in the corners until this season flushed them out into the open.

✍️ Here’s the thing. Two years ago, my dear friend Elias first mentioned nations. He spoke it like it was the most natural thing in the world — like he could already see something I absolutely could not. My response was anything but gracious. Then Peter saw me on stages, in stadiums, and my internal answer was a very firm, very certain no. Not a polite no. A no with its arms crossed and its heels dug in.

I was resisting the idea quite vehemently, as they say.

🌱 Yet here I am. Seven days from a stage. Still a little wide-eyed about it, still talking myself off the occasional ledge — but here. Somehow, quietly, without me fully noticing, a longer journey has been at work than I ever realised at the time. God has been moving in the background of my resistance, patient and unhurried, the way He always is. He doesn’t need our enthusiasm to begin. He just needs our eventual yes.

🕊️ I think that’s what makes a story worth telling. Not that it’s tidy. Not that it has a triumphant ending all wrapped up with a bow. What makes a story worth telling is that it’s true — that it carries the fingerprints of real wrestling, real fear, real grace. That somewhere in the telling, someone in the room recognises themselves and thinks: if she can, maybe I can too.

That’s the only reason I’m standing up there. Not because I have it all together. Not because the fear has completely gone. Simply because He asked, and after a fairly lengthy negotiation, I said yes.

🪨 An offering deserves an audience.

So if you’ve been hovering, wondering whether to come — let this be your nudge. You don’t need to be a speaker. You don’t need to be in leadership. You don’t need any credential other than a willingness to show up, sit down, and let someone’s story speak to yours. That’s all we ask.

Come and be moved. Come and be surprised. Come and discover that your own story — the one you’re still living, still making sense of, still finding words for — matters more than you know.

🕊️ Seven days. The stage is almost ready. The prayers have gone ahead of us. The One who holds every story has already been there — including mine, including yours.

I hope to see you there. 💛

🎟️ Tickets are available at: https://www.tepoutheatre.nz/mini-tenx/#

📅 Mini-TENx NZ | Saturday, 20 June 2026 | Te Pou Theatre, Auckland | 12pm – 4pm

For the Tribe. By the Tribe. Speakers Tribe — Making a Difference.

💡 Reflection:

🤔 Is there something God has been speaking over your life that you’ve been resisting — something that feels too big, too exposed, or simply too unlikely for someone like you?

🤔 When you think about the fears that surface whenever God asks you to step further into visibility, do they have names? What would it mean to bring even one of them into the light?

🤔 Has someone ever seen something in you — a calling, a gift, a future — before you could see it yourself? What did that feel like, and where are you now in relation to what they saw?

🤔 What has the waiting season been teaching you that the arriving season couldn’t have taught you any other way?

🤔 If your eventual yes — however reluctant, however long it took — could encourage someone else to say yes to something they’ve been avoiding, what would you want them to know about what the journey between no and yes actually looks like?

🎺 Affirmation:

My yes matters, even when it arrives late and a little breathless. God doesn’t need my confidence — He only needs my willingness. The fears I’m facing are not signs that I’ve got it wrong; they’re signs that something real is happening. I was seen before I could see myself, and I am being held through every moment of this. I don’t have to be ready. I only have to show up. That is enough. I am enough. He makes it enough.

🙌 Prayer:

Lord, You knew. You knew two years ago, and You know now — and somehow, in Your extraordinary patience, You kept the invitation open until I was ready to receive it. I don’t fully understand why You chose me for this, or what You’re going to do with ten minutes and a stage and a story that still feels unfinished. I only know that You asked, and I said yes, and that has to be enough.

Would You meet me in these seven days? Would You silence the voice that says it’s too late to back out and the voice that says I was never qualified to begin? Would You steady my hands and settle my heart and remind me, when the fear rises, that You have already been in that room — that You were there before I arrived, and You’ll be there when I open my mouth?

I bring You this offering — imperfect, still a little shaky, but mine. Take it and do with it what only You can do.

May something said from that stage find the heart it was always meant for.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

🌱 Seven days, beloved. The mist is lifting. Something beautiful is coming into focus — and perhaps you, like me, are standing here a little astonished that you’re this close to it. If God has been whispering something over your life that you haven’t quite said yes to yet, let this week be the week you lean in a little closer and listen again. He is patient. He is faithful. He keeps the invitation open far longer than we deserve.

The stage is almost ready. So, it turns out, are we.

I hope to see you there. 💛

🎟️ Tickets are available at: https://www.tepoutheatre.nz/mini-tenx/#

📅 Mini-TENx NZ | Saturday, 20 June 2026 | Te Pou Theatre, Auckland | 12pm – 4pm

For the Tribe. By the Tribe. Speakers Tribe — Making a Difference.

💛