The Samaritan woman’s story feels incredibly personal to me because when I say there was a time when I felt unqualified to talk about God, I’m not talking about some distant version of myself.

I’m talking about just a few months ago.

I loved Jesus.

I believed in God.

I had faith.

But I didn’t feel like I was the kind of woman who should be publicly talking about Him.

My story wasn’t neat enough.

There are things that happened to me that I never chose, and there are choices I made myself that I wouldn’t make today.

I’ve survived things I don’t always talk about. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve had seasons of my life that don’t exactly look like the testimony you expect from the woman talking about Jesus on the internet.

And for a long time, somewhere deep down, I carried this feeling that maybe I just didn’t belong in certain spaces.

Honestly, that came from rejection I experienced from my own family.

That rejection stayed with me much longer than I realized.

It took me years to overcome it.

Even after circumstances changed, part of me was still carrying around this quiet feeling of being less than. Like maybe there were people who could confidently talk about Jesus and share their faith, and I wasn’t one of them.

I loved Jesus.

I had faith.

But there was still this little voice in me saying people would look at me and say “Who are you to talk about God?” or try to label me in the shame and guilt of my past.

If I’m being honest, only recently have I realized how wrong that voice was.

Because Jesus never rejected me.

He never said he was tired of giving me second chances.

He never looked at the messy parts of my story and decided I didn’t belong.

He never asked me to prove myself before I could come close to Him.

And that’s part of why the Samaritan woman hits me so deeply.

Jesus knew everything about her before He ever spoke to her.

He knew her relationships.

He knew her mistakes.

He knew the things people probably whispered about.

He knew the parts of her story that could have made her feel less than.

And He still chose to sit with her.

He didn’t wait for her life to look better first.

He didn’t ask her to clean up her story before she could tell people about Him.

And He didn’t make her feel like she had to prove she belonged there.

That hits me differently now.

Because only a few months ago, I probably would have questioned whether someone like me had any business sharing Bible studies every day.

But now?

I know exactly who I am.

I’m a woman who needs Jesus.

I’m a woman who has experienced His grace.

I’m a woman who has watched Him show up in my life in ways I cannot explain.

I’m a woman who has felt Him bring peace into places where I spent years living in survival mode.

And I’m a woman who finally understands that none of the messy parts disqualified me nor can anyone’s thoughts or opinions about me.

If anything, my story is exactly why I can talk about Him the way I do.

I know what grace feels like because I’ve needed it.

I know what redemption means because there are parts of my life I could never rewrite myself.

And I know what it feels like to realize that God never disqualified me.

The Samaritan woman didn’t leave that well suddenly knowing the entire Bible.

She didn’t have years of theology behind her.

She simply knew:

I encountered Jesus.

And she went and told people.

That’s how I feel about She’s Wild & Worthy.

I’m not sharing because I have all the answers.

I’m sharing because I’ve encountered Jesus in my own life, and I know what He has done for me.

That’s enough to give me something worth saying.

And maybe that’s one of the biggest things God has changed in me lately.

I now understand that my job isn’t to convince anyone that I belong here.

It’s to point people toward Jesus.

He knows my whole story.

Every beautiful part.

Every ugly part.

Every part I once wished I could erase.

I fell down and failed him a million times but he forgave me and lifted me up a million and one.

And guess what?! He still chose me.

So I’m not hiding the messy chapters anymore.

Because maybe another woman is sitting somewhere believing her past makes her less worthy of being loved, accepted, or used by God.

And maybe she needs to hear this from a woman who was wrestling with those same feelings just a few months ago:

Jesus already knows your story.

Come to the well anyway.