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Fervent Anchor Coaching

Christ-centered coaching for women ready to reconnect with who they are and move into their next chapter with clarity, confidence, and hope.

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Hi, I’m Michelle.

I’m Michelle Martinson, founder of Fervent Anchor Coaching and creator of Becoming HER. I help women understand the experiences and beliefs that have shaped them, reconnect with who God created them to be, and take meaningful steps into what’s next.My approach brings honest conversation, thoughtful questions, practical action, and faith together. I believe you deserve support that helps you trust your own decisions and live with greater clarity, purpose, and peace.

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Remember HER

A return to who God created you to be.Remember HER workshops offer a place to pause, recognize the roles and patterns you have been carrying, and reconnect with the woman beneath them. Through honest conversation, Scripture, and guided reflection, we begin exploring what moving forward could look like.Reconnect with who you are. Rest in what matters. Rise into your next chapter.Ask about upcoming workshops

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Becoming HER

12 weeks. 10 private sessions. A next chapter that feels like yours.Becoming HER is a personalized, Christ-centered coaching experience with approximately 60-minute online sessions, reflection exercises, practical action steps, and email/Voxer support between sessions.Remember HER: understand the beliefs and patterns that shaped you.
Rediscover HER: reconnect with your values, strengths, and desires.
Rebuild HER: practice healthier boundaries and habits.
Become HER: move forward with greater clarity and confidence.Explore whether we’re a good fit

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© 2026 Fervent Anchor Coaching. All rights reserved.

TRIAGE

In emergency medicine, one of the first things that has to happen is triage.When several people need help at the same time, doctors and nurses can’t simply respond to whoever is the loudest, whoever arrived first, or whoever is demanding the most attention. They have to determine what actually requires immediate intervention, what is important but can safely wait, and what doesn’t require urgent care.Because everything may matter.
But everything is not an emergency.And somewhere along the way, many of us lose the ability to make that distinction in our own lives.The text message feels urgent.
Someone being disappointed in us feels urgent.
The work problem feels urgent.
The favor someone needs feels urgent.
The laundry, the email, the appointment, the phone call, the thing somebody forgot and suddenly needs us to fix…Red. Red. Red. Red.Meanwhile, the things that don’t scream get pushed further down the list.Rest.
Our relationships.
Our health.
Something we’ve wanted to pursue for years.
Time with God.
The question we’ve quietly been asking ourselves: What do I actually want my life to look like?
And sometimes even ourselves.Green.Not because those things aren’t important.
Because they aren’t demanding our attention right this second.
And that’s where we can get into trouble.Because something doesn’t have to be urgent to be important.
And something doesn’t have to become an emergency before it deserves our attention.Sometimes what looks like a time-management problem is actually a triage problem.
We’ve gotten so accustomed to responding to what is loud that we’ve stopped intentionally deciding what matters.
And eventually, some things that stay green for too long do become red.A relationship we’ve neglected becomes a crisis.
Our bodies finally force us to slow down.
Resentment builds.
Burnout hits.Or one day we look at our lives and realize:
I have spent years taking care of everything that needed me, and somewhere in there, I stopped knowing what I needed.The goal isn’t to make ourselves the emergency.
The goal is to stop believing we have to become one before we’re worthy of our own attention.Maybe the question isn’t simply:
What needs me today?
Maybe it’s also:What matters enough that I don’t want to wait until it becomes an emergency?Michelle Martinson · Fervent Anchor CoachingBack to Rooted Truths

Scaffolding

For most of our childhood, someone else creates the structure of our lives.Wake up at this time.
Go to school.
Sit in this class.
Eat lunch now.
Finish this assignment.
Be here tomorrow.For years, much of the framework already exists. Then eventually adulthood arrives and essentially says:Okay. Now build a life.Decide when to wake up.
Decide what’s important.
Manage your time.
Set your goals.
Follow through when nobody is checking.
Make decisions.
Create boundaries.
Stay disciplined.
Know when to rest and when to push.
Figure out what matters and organize your life around it.And somehow we’re expected to automatically know how to do all of that.There’s a concept used in education and development called scaffolding. Think about the scaffolding around a building while it’s being constructed.The scaffolding isn’t the building. It’s temporary support that allows the building to become strong enough to eventually stand without it.Human beings often need something similar. We learn with structure, guidance, modeling, repetition, feedback and support. As our own ability grows, that outside structure can gradually be removed. Eventually, what once required someone beside us becomes something we know how to do ourselves. And maybe that’s one of the healthiest ways to think about coaching, mentorship and other forms of support.The goal isn’t dependence. The goal isn’t to need someone forever to tell you what decision to make.The goal is to have someone walk beside you long enough to help you notice what you haven’t been noticing.
To ask questions you haven’t been asking.
To challenge patterns you’ve been repeating.
To help you separate what feels urgent from what actually matters.And then, little by little, something changes.You start catching yourself.
You start asking the questions before someone else asks them.
You recognize the pattern while it’s happening instead of three weeks later.
You pause before automatically saying yes.
You begin trusting your own decisions.The external structure slowly becomes internal structure. The scaffolding starts coming down. Not because you never need support again. But because you’ve become stronger underneath it.Maybe strength isn’t proving that you can figure everything out alone. Sometimes strength is being willing to use the right support long enough to learn how to stand differently when it’s gone.Michelle Martinson · Fervent Anchor CoachingBack to Rooted Truths

The Will, the Testament, and Our Advocate

Have you ever thought about what a will actually represents?We spend our lives building something, accumulating possessions, making plans, and deciding what matters most to us. And when we die, our last will and testament becomes a declaration of our intentions for everything we’re leaving behind. It’s our way of making sure that what we’ve been entrusted with goes where we intended.But here’s something I find fascinating.
God has a will, too.And while we’re busy making arrangements for what happens to everything we own after we die, how much time do we spend thinking about what happens to us?We prepare for our possessions to be passed on.
But are we preparing our souls for eternity?And here’s where this comparison becomes so much more meaningful. When someone dies without a valid will, the law generally determines how their estate is distributed. Even with a will, probate may still be necessary.But spiritually, there is something far greater at stake than the distribution of earthly possessions. Scripture tells us that one day we will stand before God.And if our eternity depended on our own goodness, our own righteousness, or how perfectly we followed God’s instructions, none of us could earn our way into heaven. Because we’ve all sinned. We’ve all fallen short. And no amount of good deeds can erase that.Our AdvocateBut that’s why Jesus came.He didn’t come simply to tell us how to live. He came to save us. He willingly went to the cross, took the punishment for our sins, died, and rose again so that through Him we could receive forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life.And here’s something beautiful. The Bible doesn’t just tell us that Jesus is our Savior. It also calls Him our Advocate.1 John 2:1 says:“And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”An advocate is someone who represents you, someone who speaks on your behalf. And Romans 8:34 tells us that Jesus is at the right hand of God, interceding for us.Think about that. The very One who gave His life for us is also the One who stands on our behalf.Jesus isn’t defending our goodness. He’s the reason we can be forgiven despite our sin.And the Bible tells us something else. Through Jesus, we are offered an eternal inheritance. Hebrews 9:15 says that through Christ, those who are called may receive the promise of an eternal inheritance.But we don’t receive that inheritance simply because we believe God exists. Jesus calls us to something much deeper.To repent. To believe in Him.
To surrender our lives to Him. To be born again.Not just to acknowledge His name, but to receive Him as our Lord and Savior.An Eternal InheritanceAnd when we do, something extraordinary happens. The old life no longer defines who we are. 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us:“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”We die to our old way of living so that we can begin a new life in Christ. Not because we’ve suddenly become perfect. But because we’ve been made new through Him.And that’s what makes this inheritance so different from anything we could ever leave behind on earth. An earthly inheritance is something someone receives because another person has died.Our eternal inheritance is possible because Jesus died and rose again.He paid a debt we could never pay. He made a way where there was no other way. And He offers us something that money could never purchase and good works could never earn. Eternal life with Him. But that gift must be received through faith.Jesus said in John 14:6:“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”So here’s what I keep coming back to. We spend so much time preparing our last will and testament. We make arrangements for everything we’re going to leave behind.But have we considered God’s will for the life we’re living? Have we surrendered that life to Jesus? Have we accepted the inheritance He died to make possible?The Question That MattersBecause at the end of our lives, the most important thing won’t be how much we accumulated, what we owned, or even what we left behind. It will be whether we belong to Jesus Christ.The greatest tragedy wouldn’t be dying without leaving a will.It would be living and dying without ever surrendering to the One who gave His life so we could inherit eternity.That brings me to a question more important than:What am I going to leave behind?I believe it is:Have I given my life to the One who made a way for me to inherit eternal life?Michelle Martinson · Fervent Anchor CoachingBack to Rooted Truths

What If God Never Lost a Word?

Every once in a while, somebody discovers that there are ancient writings that aren’t in the Bible.The Dead Sea Scrolls. The Gospel of Thomas. The Apocrypha. “Lost” gospels. Different manuscripts.And suddenly the question becomes:“Wait. Who decided what made it into the Bible?”Which is actually a fair question. There is an entire history behind how the Bible we hold today came to us.These writings existed long before printing presses or computers. They were copied by hand, carried across enormous distances, translated into different languages, quoted by early Christians, passed from one generation to another and compared against other copies. And there are people who have spent their entire careers studying that history.If that part fascinates you, read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.Strobel was an atheist and an investigative journalist who set out to examine Christianity like a case. He interviewed scholars and experts and dug into questions like:Can we trust what was written about Jesus?
How do we know these accounts were preserved accurately?
What happened as these writings were copied and passed down?
Is there evidence outside the Bible that supports what’s inside it?
And what happens when the different pieces of evidence are compared against one another?There is a much deeper historical conversation there than I could ever fit into a few minutes. But eventually, all of that led me to an even bigger question.If I believe God created the universe…
If I believe He knew humanity before humanity existed…
If I believe He stepped into human history in the person of Jesus Christ…Then why would I suddenly imagine that preserving the words He wanted us to have was the part He couldn’t handle?Think about that.God knew there would be manuscripts. He knew there would be translations. He knew there would be disagreements. He knew there would be printing presses, denominations, scholars debating Greek words and people thousands of years later asking whether something had been left out.And yes… He knew there would eventually be people in 2026 with an attention span approximately the size of an ant scrolling through a phone.None of this surprised Him.
Not one second of human history has ever caught God off guard.Scripture says that all Scripture is God-breathed. Jesus said that until heaven and earth pass away, not even the smallest letter or stroke would disappear from the Law until its purpose was accomplished. Isaiah says the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.So that changes the question for me. I don’t believe every ancient religious document was supposed to be in the Bible.Ancient doesn’t automatically mean inspired.
Interesting doesn’t mean authoritative.
And “not included” doesn’t automatically mean “covered up.”Because if God really is who He says He is, then the Bible isn’t the surviving evidence of God barely managing to get His message through human history.Human hands were involved. Human languages were involved. Human decisions were involved. Human history was involved.But God has never been threatened by having to accomplish His purposes through imperfect human beings. That’s basically the entire Bible.And this is where faith begins to ask something of us that historical research alone cannot.Research can tell me how old a manuscript is. A scholar can explain how writings were copied and compared. Archaeology can tell me whether people, places and cultures described in an ancient text correspond with what we know about history.Those things matter. I think we should ask those questions. I think we should investigate. I think God is big enough for every question we have.But research can only take me so far.
It can give me evidence.
It cannot give me relationship.Because at some point Christianity stops being information you’re examining from the outside… and becomes Someone you’re encountering from the inside.And that is something I don’t think you can fully understand until you are willing to give Him the opportunity to show you Himself.Because the more I know God, the harder it becomes for me to believe that the God who knows every star by name and counts the hairs on our heads somehow misplaced the words He knew His children would need.God doesn’t do accidental.He doesn’t do:
“Oops. Forgot that chapter.”
He doesn’t look at human history and say:
“Well… that got away from Me.”And He certainly wasn’t sitting in heaven centuries later realizing somebody accidentally left something critical out of the most influential book humanity would ever read.He knew. He knew what we would question. He knew what we would doubt. He knew what we would need. He knew where humanity would be thousands of years later.And He knew exactly how much we needed to know to find our way back to Him.His Word has traveled through kingdoms, persecution, languages, cultures, wars, generations and thousands of years of human history. And we’re still reading it.The miracle isn’t simply that God spoke.It’s also that He knew exactly what we would need to hear… and made sure His voice could still reach us.Michelle Martinson · Fervent Anchor CoachingBack to Rooted Truths

God Isn’t Hiding: Learning to Recognize His Voice

Learning to Recognize His VoiceIf we’re talking about hearing God’s voice, I think sometimes we make the assumption that God is difficult to hear. Like He’s somewhere far away, whispering, and we’re desperately trying to figure out what He’s saying.But I don’t think God is the one hiding.I think sometimes His voice is difficult to discern because everything else is taking up so much space.Our thoughts take up space. Fear takes up space. Other people’s opinions take up space. Our responsibilities, our plans, what we want the answer to be, what the world is telling us… all of it takes up space.I know I’ve had times when I’ve asked God to make something clearer. I’ve prayed for direction and wondered why I couldn’t seem to figure out what He was saying. But looking back, I don’t always think God was being unclear. Sometimes I was just surrounded by so much noise, including my own, that I was struggling to recognize what was Him and what was me.But there’s another part of this that I think we miss.You recognize the voice of someone you know.Think about someone you love. They could call you from a number you’ve never seen before, say two words, and you’d know exactly who it was.Why? Because you’ve spent time with them. You’ve heard their voice over and over again. You know their tone. You know how they speak. You know them.So why would we expect our relationship with God to require less?Jesus says:“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
John 10:27There’s relationship in that. There’s familiarity. There’s recognition. And that kind of recognition is built by spending time with Him.But here’s the difference.
Our relationship with God has competition.There are distractions constantly fighting for our attention. Some of them are just life. Work, responsibilities, our phones, our own thoughts. But I also believe there’s an enemy who would love nothing more than to keep us distracted from the relationship that matters most.Because if he can keep us busy enough, distracted enough, and surrounded by enough noise, he may not need to convince us to walk away from God. He just has to keep us from getting close enough to recognize His voice.So this relationship requires intentionality.Think about it. We schedule everything else. We time block meetings. We time block work. We schedule appointments. We put dinner with someone on the calendar because we don’t want to forget it.So why wouldn’t we put Jesus on our calendar?And I don’t mean that in some religious way where we say, “Okay God, I gave You Your thirty minutes today.”I mean protect that time because you value that relationship. Make it a time you actually look forward to.Open your Bible. Sit somewhere you love. Take a walk. Talk to Him. Be quiet with Him.Make that time a respite from everything else that is constantly demanding your attention. Make it a conversation with your best friend.More Than HearingThe goal goes beyond getting better at hearing God. It’s knowing Him so intimately that when He speaks, you recognize His voice.And the more time you spend with Him, the more familiar that voice becomes.Until eventually, in the middle of all the other voices competing for your attention, there’s something in you that knows…I know that voice.
That’s Him.Michelle Martinson · Fervent Anchor CoachingBack to Rooted Truths

The View from Where You’re Standing

Have you ever replayed a conversation in your head and become more upset with every replay?I have.By the third or fourth time through it, I can usually tell you what the other person meant, why they said it, what they should have said instead, and possibly diagnose three generations of their family while I’m at it.There’s only one problem. I might be completely wrong.Because I wasn’t inside their head. I wasn’t there for everything that happened before that conversation. I don’t know what fear, insecurity, exhaustion, disappointment, or history they carried into the room with them.I only know what happened from where I was standing.And that is the tricky thing about perspective.It rarely feels like perspective. It feels like truth.We all see life through lenses shaped by where we’ve been. Our childhoods. Relationships. Rejection. Success. Failure. The things people said to us. The things we learned to expect from people. Even the ways we learned to protect ourselves.None of that necessarily makes our perspective wrong. It just means it isn’t complete.And I think remembering that could change a lot about the way we live.Think about the relationships that are hardest for you right now.Your adult child might be making choices you don’t understand, and everything in you wants to explain why your way makes more sense. A friend said something that hurt you, and you’ve already decided what it says about how she feels about you. Someone you love keeps responding in a way that feels completely unreasonable.Or the person you are having the hardest time seeing clearly right now is yourself.That one matters too. Because sometimes we give everyone else the benefit of context while judging ourselves by a single moment.I should be further along by now.
I should have handled that better.
I shouldn’t still struggle with this.
I should know what I’m doing by this point in my life.We can turn one mistake into a character assessment remarkably fast.But what if the perspective we need to borrow isn’t someone else’s? What if it’s Jesus’?When I look at the way Jesus interacted with people, one thing stands out to me again and again: He was never limited to what was happening right in front of Him.Other people saw a tax collector. Jesus saw Zacchaeus.Other people saw a woman whose reputation had already told them everything they thought they needed to know. Jesus sat beside a well and talked with her.Peter denied Him three times. Jesus knew exactly what Peter had done, but He also knew that Peter’s worst moment wasn’t the end of Peter’s story.Jesus never needed to pretend something was okay when it wasn’t. That matters.Seeing someone through the eyes of Jesus does not mean tolerating terrible behavior, abandoning boundaries, ignoring wisdom, or convincing ourselves that something doesn’t hurt when it does.Jesus was full of grace and truth. We tend to pick whichever one makes us more comfortable.Sometimes we call judgment “discernment.” Other times we call avoiding a necessary boundary “grace.”Jesus managed to see people completely and respond appropriately. We don’t. Which is probably why a little humility about our own perspective would serve us well.Before deciding, “She doesn’t care about me,” there is room to ask, “I wonder what I don’t know.”Before deciding, “My child has completely lost their way,” we can remember that God is writing a story we cannot yet see.Before deciding, “He always does this because he doesn’t respect me,” we can separate what we actually know from what we have assumed.And before deciding, “I’ve messed this up again. This is just who I am,” we should ask whether Jesus is speaking to us that way at all.I don’t think He is.There is a moment during the crucifixion that I keep coming back to when I think about perspective.Jesus is being mocked, tortured, and crucified, and He says, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”They did not know. Jesus did.That doesn’t make what they were doing less horrific. It doesn’t make wrong suddenly right. It means Jesus could see something inside the situation that they could not.That may be one of the clearest pictures of perfect perspective we have.And that is what we are trying to learn. Not how to explain everybody away. Not how to become so understanding that we stop having standards. Not how to put a positive spin on painful things.How to leave room for what we cannot see.That changes the way we walk into difficult conversations. It lets us become curious before defensive. It helps us listen without immediately preparing our rebuttal.It allows an adult child to have a different perspective without interpreting that difference as rejection. It lets a friendship survive a misunderstanding long enough for two people to actually talk about it.It helps us recognize that someone else’s reaction may have far more to do with their story than with our worth. And sometimes it helps us stop carrying things that were never ours to carry in the first place.But there is another side to this that I think we miss.If Jesus has the clearest perspective of everyone else’s life, He also has the clearest perspective of ours.He knows the parts of your story no one else knows. He knows why certain things are harder for you. He knows where you are still healing. He knows the difference between rebellion and struggle, between refusing to grow and learning how to grow.He knows where you started. And He knows where He is taking you.Seeing ourselves through Jesus’ eyes also means learning the difference between receiving grace and letting ourselves off the hook.Grace doesn’t say, “It doesn’t matter.”Grace says, “This matters, but this moment does not get to define the entire story.”That is a perspective worth learning.There will always be things about other people we don’t understand, circumstances we cannot make sense of yet, and parts of ourselves that we wish were further along.Our view is limited because we are standing inside the story. Jesus isn’t.He sees what came before the moment we are judging. He sees what is happening inside the moment we are struggling through. And He sees what He is still going to do after it.The next time we are certain we know what someone meant, why they did it, what this season says about our future, or what our latest failure says about us, we can leave a little room for another possibility:Maybe I don’t have the whole story.There could be something here I cannot see yet. Before I decide what it means, I can ask the One with the better view.Michelle Martinson · Fervent Anchor CoachingBack to Rooted Truths

Someone Else’s Name

In April of 1964, a woman dressed as a nurse walked into a hospital room in Chicago. Dora Fronczak had given birth to a baby boy the day before. His name was Paul. The woman told Dora that the doctor needed to examine her baby. There was no obvious reason to question her. She looked like a nurse. She was in a hospital. So Dora handed her newborn son over.The woman walked out of the room. Paul never came back. What followed became one of the largest manhunts Chicago had seen. Police searched hundreds of homes. The FBI became involved. Thousands of people knew the story of a baby who had disappeared before he was old enough to know his own name.Then, more than a year later, a little boy was found abandoned in New Jersey. He was about the right age. He looked enough like the missing baby that investigators wondered if the impossible had happened. Could this be Paul? DNA testing wasn’t available then. There was no simple swab that could settle the question.Eventually, Dora and her husband, Chester, brought the little boy home. They raised him as their son. His name was Paul Fronczak. At least, that’s what everyone believed. And when everyone around you agrees on who you are, there isn’t much reason to question it. Paul grew up. He went to school, became an adult, got married and had a daughter. He lived an entire life under a name that had been given to him before he was old enough to say it himself.But there had always been questions. When Paul was ten, he discovered newspaper clippings about the kidnapping and learned the extraordinary story of how he had supposedly disappeared as a newborn and somehow made his way back to his family. His parents loved him. As far as they were concerned, he was their son.Still, something about the story never completely settled. Decades passed. Then DNA could answer a question that photographs, blood tests and hope never could. Paul took the test. He was 49 years old when he learned the truth. He wasn’t Paul Fronczak. There was no biological relationship between him and the parents who had raised him.Imagine finding that out at 49. Your name. Your birthday. The story of how you entered the world. The people you came from. Things most of us would never think to question because they are among the most basic facts of our existence. Suddenly, they aren’t facts anymore. And you’re left with a question most of us haven’t had to ask since we were children.If I’m not Paul, then who am I? It would take more searching, more DNA and genetic genealogy before he finally got an answer. His name was Jack Rosenthal. He had been born months before Paul Fronczak and had a twin sister named Jill. The little boy found abandoned in New Jersey all those years ago wasn’t a kidnapped baby being returned home.He was a completely different missing child. And somewhere out there was still another man who had been born Paul Fronczak. Eventually, he would be found too. It’s an almost unbelievable story. But there is one part of it I keep coming back to. For nearly fifty years, when someone called, “Paul,” Jack turned around.Of course he did. Everyone he trusted had told him that was his name. They weren’t trying to deceive him. They believed it too. And that’s why his story has something to say to the rest of us. Most of us will never discover that the name on our birth certificate belongs to somebody else.But I wonder how many of us have spent years answering to other names that were never really ours. Too much. Too sensitive. Difficult. Not enough. The strong one. The problem. The one who never quite gets it right. Some of those names hurt. Others sound almost like compliments. But both can tell us who we’re allowed to be.The strange thing is that most of these identities aren’t handed to us all at once. Nobody sits a child of six down at the kitchen table and says, “Here is who you are. Please carry this for the next forty years.” It happens much more quietly than that. We notice what gets praised and what gets corrected. We figure out which parts of ourselves make the people we love comfortable and which parts seem to worry them. We learn what “normal” looks like, what success is supposed to look like, and where the lines are.And because the people teaching us these things often love us very much, we don’t think to question whether every conclusion they reach about us is true. That matters. Because someone doesn’t have to be cruel to be wrong about you. They can love you deeply and still see you through the limits of their own experience.And eventually, if we hear something often enough, something interesting happens. We stop hearing the person who said it. We just hear ourselves. That is one of the more dangerous things about identity. A voice doesn’t have to belong to you to eventually sound like your own. Scripture gives us a very different place to begin.Isaiah 43:1 says: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!” There is something about those words that hits differently when you think about a man who spent nearly fifty years answering to someone else’s name. God knows who He’s talking to.He knows what He made. And we belong to Him. That doesn’t mean every instinct we have is automatically part of God’s design. That’s where I think our culture sometimes gets identity wrong too. “Just be yourself” sounds freeing until you realize that we are perfectly capable of being confidently wrong about ourselves.Following Christ isn’t about protecting every part of ourselves from being challenged. Some things need to change. Some need to be surrendered. Some need to heal. But there is a difference between being transformed by God and being shaped into whatever version of you makes everyone else most comfortable. And I think many of us have confused the two.We have spent years fixing things that weren’t necessarily broken. Quieting things that weren’t necessarily too loud. Staying inside lines God may never have drawn. And this is where discernment matters, because sometimes the criticism is right. Sometimes we really are the problem. Sometimes the person who loves us sees something we desperately need God to change.Identity in Christ isn’t permission to dismiss every uncomfortable truth about ourselves. It’s knowing where the final authority lies. Psalm 139 reminds us that God knew us before any of these other voices ever got a chance to weigh in. “You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me.Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.” Before the opinions. Before the comparisons. Before the failures. Before someone decided what kind of person you were likely to become. There was God. Growing into who He created us to be isn’t always about adding something new.Sometimes it begins with examining what we’ve been carrying and asking where it came from. Whose expectation was that? Whose definition of success? Whose version of normal? Whose voice is that? Because if we never ask, we can spend an entire life trying to become someone we were never actually called to be.Jack Rosenthal had something most of us don’t. A DNA test. Something objective enough to finally tell him: The story you’ve been given about who you are isn’t the whole truth. Faith offers us a way to question that inherited story, too. Not permission to invent ourselves. Something better. A way to return to the One who knew us before anyone else had an opinion.The world will give you names. Your family may give you a few. Your failures will certainly try. Even your own mind will come up with some convincing ones. But before you spend another year answering to them, there is one question worth asking. Who called me that? Because you can answer to a name for so long that you forget it was never yours.And sometimes finding yourself begins by remembering who actually has the right to name you.Michelle Martinson · Fervent Anchor CoachingBack to Rooted Truths

The Choice God Refuses to Make for Us

Understanding Free Will, Heaven, Hell & the God Who Keeps Pursuing UsThere’s something I’ve been thinking about lately that has changed the way I think about heaven, hell, free will, and even Satan.And I want to be careful with this because I’m painting a picture here. I’m not pretending I understand every mystery of God or exactly how every person’s story works.But sometimes I think we’ve made this picture way too simple.Good people go to heaven. Bad people go to hell.Except that isn’t actually the Gospel.The Gospel isn’t that good people earn heaven.The Gospel is that none of us could earn our way back to God, so God came to us.Jesus said:“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
; John 14:6That means heaven isn’t God’s reward for people who managed to be good enough.Eternal life is a gift.And that gift exists because of Jesus.Because He came.Because He died.Because He rose again.Because He did for us what we could never do for ourselves.And then comes the part I keep thinking about:God still lets us choose.God Could Force Us. He Doesn’t.From the very beginning, God gave human beings free will.And when you really think about that, it’s enormous.Because God could have created us without the ability to reject Him.He could have created people programmed to obey Him, worship Him and love Him.But programmed love isn’t really love.Love requires choice.And choice means there has to be another option.So if God gives me the freedom to choose Him, He also has to allow me the freedom to reject Him.He can pursue me.He can reveal Himself to me.He can convict me.He can put people in my life.He can use circumstances.He can call me.He can forgive me.He can keep standing at the door.But at some point, He allows my answer to matter.This raises a question about how we understand hell.Do People Actually Choose Hell?Stay with me here.I’m not saying someone necessarily wakes up one Tuesday morning and says:“You know what? I’ve thought about it. I’d like hell.”That’s not what I mean.What I mean is that Scripture describes human beings as capable of encountering truth and still resisting it.Jesus talks about light coming into the world and people loving darkness rather than light.Romans talks about people suppressing truth and exchanging the truth of God for something else.There are people who ultimately say, in one form or another:I don’t want God.I want life on my terms.I want to decide what is true.I want to decide what is right.I want control.And if eternity with God means receiving the life He offers through Jesus, then rejecting Him has a consequence.In that sense, hell isn’t simply God looking at somebody and saying:“You weren’t good enough. Get out.”The Gospel tells almost the opposite story.God came looking for us.God offered Himself to us.God paid the price Himself.And still, He refuses to force Himself upon us.There are things about this I don’t understand.I don’t know exactly how God reveals Himself to every human being.I don’t know what every person’s moment of understanding looks like.I don’t know how God judges someone who grew up in circumstances completely different from mine.And I don’t want to claim Scripture tells me things it doesn’t.But I do believe what Scripture tells me about God’s character.He is loving.He is merciful.He is just.He knows every human heart completely.And He desires people to come to Him.So where my understanding ends, I have to trust His character.And Then There’s SatanThis is another place where I think we sometimes have the picture completely wrong.We talk about God and Satan almost like they’re standing on opposite sides of a boxing ring.Good God over here.Bad God over there.And humanity stuck somewhere in the middle while these two equally powerful forces battle it out.But that isn’t Christianity.Satan isn’t the bad version of God.He isn’t God’s evil twin.He isn’t God’s equal.God doesn’t have an equal.God is Creator.Satan is created.God is eternal and sovereign.Satan is not omnipotent.He isn’t omniscient.He isn’t omnipresent.He is a created being who rebelled against the God who created him.And when I think about that rebellion, there’s something incredibly revealing about it.Pride Taken All the Way to Its DestinationImagine the arrogance of a created being essentially looking toward his Creator and saying:I want what You have.I want the throne.I want the glory.I want this on my terms.Satan knew God.And still rebelled.Think about that.That’s pride taken all the way to its destination.And suddenly the warning that pride comes before the fall becomes much bigger than somebody simply thinking too highly of herself.Pride says:I know better.Pride says:I don’t need You.Pride says:I’ll decide what’s true.Pride says:I’ll run my own life.And taken far enough, pride eventually puts the created thing in competition with the Creator.That’s the danger.Evil Usually Doesn’t Walk Through the Front Door Wearing a Name TagAnd this is another part I’ve been thinking about.Satan is described throughout Scripture as a deceiver.A liar.An accuser.And deception works precisely because it doesn’t usually look like deception.If something destructive walked into our lives wearing a giant flashing sign saying:HELLO. I’M HERE TO DESTROY YOUR LIFE AND PULL YOU AWAY FROM GOD.Most of us would probably shut the door.That’s not how deception works.It sounds reasonable.It sounds justified.It might even sound compassionate.It can sound like:You deserve this.You’re right to stay angry.Nobody understands you.God isn’t listening anyway.You need to protect yourself.You should be in control.Just this once.Everybody does it.You don’t need God for this.And sometimes something can even look good while quietly pulling us somewhere destructive.That doesn’t mean Satan is personally behind every bad decision we make.Scripture doesn’t let us get away with that either.Sometimes the problem isn’t a devil whispering in our ear.Sometimes it’s us.Our pride.Our fear.Our resentment.Our insecurity.Our appetites.Our selfishness.Our desire to control.James tells us that people can be tempted by their own desires.So spiritual maturity isn’t walking around seeing a demon behind everything that goes wrong.It’s learning discernment.What is true?What is false?What is drawing me toward God?What is quietly pulling me away from Him?Which Brings Me Back to the QuestionHow could a loving God send good people to hell?I think there is another question we need to ask:How far has a loving God gone to bring people home?Because when I look at Jesus, I don’t see a God desperately searching for reasons to keep people out.I see a God coming after people.“For God so loved the world…”The world.Not just Christians.Not just people who had their lives together.Not people who earned it.The world.He came here.He stepped into humanity.He suffered.He went to the cross.He died.He rose.And He made a way home.The cross doesn’t look like a God who doesn’t want us.The cross looks like a God willing to go unimaginably far to rescue us.And yet He still leaves us with something extraordinary.Choice.The Terrifying Dignity of Free WillThat is what makes free will so significant.It’s beautiful.But it’s also terrifying.Because God allows my choices to mean something.He takes my yes seriously.And He takes my no seriously.He doesn’t force love.And yet grace means my wrong choices don’t automatically become the end of my story either.That’s another part we can’t leave out.Because Christianity isn’t:MAKE THE CORRECT CHOICE BEFORE THE TIMER RUNS OUT.Look at Peter.He failed spectacularly.He denied Jesus.And Jesus restored him.Look at Paul.He wasn’t merely uninterested in Christianity.He was actively persecuting Christians.And Jesus interrupted his life.Again and again throughout Scripture, we see human beings headed one direction when God steps into the story and gives them an opportunity to turn.Choice matters.But so does grace.Grace keeps interrupting our choices. God pursues, calls and reveals Himself, giving people opportunities to turn around.And This Isn’t Just About “Those People”That’s probably the most uncomfortable part.Because it’s easy to turn this into a conversation about somebody else’s eternity.Who’s saved?Who’s not?Who chose God?Who rejected Him?But I need to bring the question much closer to home.Because every day, in smaller ways, I’m choosing too.Truth or deception.Surrender or control.Humility or pride.Forgiveness or bitterness.Trust or fear.God’s way or mine.That doesn’t mean every bad decision means I’ve rejected Jesus.Thank God.Grace is much bigger than that.But my choices are shaping me.They’re shaping what I listen to.They’re shaping what I believe.They’re shaping what I desire.They’re shaping who I’m becoming.That helps me understand why Scripture takes our everyday decisions so seriously.Because direction matters.The Thing I Keep Coming Back ToI don’t believe God delights in losing people.Scripture says He desires people to come to repentance.And the cross tells me how far He was willing to go to reconcile us to Himself.So when I encounter the questions I cannot answer:What about this person?What about that circumstance?What about somebody who was taught something completely different?What about somebody who never seemed to have the opportunities I had?I don’t have to invent an answer just so everything fits neatly inside my brain.I can say:I don’t know.And still believe.Because ultimately my faith isn’t built on my ability to explain every decision God makes.It’s built on knowing who He is.And if God is perfectly loving, perfectly just, perfectly merciful and knows every human heart completely, then nobody will someday stand before Him and have been misunderstood.Nobody will have been overlooked.Nobody will have been judged because God didn’t know the whole story.He knows the whole story.That is where I find peace in a question this big.God gives us something astonishing:real choice.And then He does everything necessary to make coming home possible.He offers Himself, forgives us, rescues us and transforms us. When we turn the wrong direction, He gives grace and calls us back.But there is one thing love will not do.Love will not force itself to be loved.That is why I don’t see eternity as simply a story about good people and bad people.It’s the story of a Creator who loved His creation enough to give them freedomand then loved them enough to come after them when they used that freedom to walk away.He came looking for people who could never save themselves. He made a way home through Jesus. And He continues calling.And the choice He refuses to make for us:whether we will receive Him.Michelle Martinson · Fervent Anchor CoachingBack to Rooted Truths

My Approach

Faith based. Christ centered. A place to be honest about your life and what comes next.There are seasons when you need someone beside you who will listen carefully, ask good questions, and help you make sense of what you’re carrying.I work primarily with women because so much of this journey is familiar to me. I know what it can feel like to carry responsibility, move through change, and wonder where you went in the middle of it all.I’ve had to ask difficult questions about my own life, faith, and identity. I believe God has called me to walk alongside other women through part of that journey.A Conversation With PurposeYou might think of me as someone you can consult about life. Someone who helps you step back, see connections, consider another perspective, and decide what you want to do with what you’re discovering.We may explore expectations you’ve carried, patterns you keep returning to, decisions you’re facing, or something you’ve wanted for years but haven’t known how to pursue.There is room to talk. There is also room to be challenged, practice something different, and take action.You don’t have to edit your story to make it more comfortable for me. Questions, doubts, mistakes, and complicated feelings belong in an honest conversation. My intention is to meet you with compassion and tell you the truth with care.Christ at the CenterMy faith shapes the way I approach this work. I believe God cares about the woman beneath the responsibilities, the questions she carries, and the life she is still becoming brave enough to live.We make room for Scripture, prayer, discernment, and honest conversations about following Jesus in everyday decisions.I believe there is something deeply meaningful about seeking Him together. I don’t have to have every answer, and neither do you.We can ask good questions, seek His wisdom, and take the next faithful step.Change You Can Carry ForwardOne of the most encouraging things about being human is that we can keep learning.Our brains retain the ability to adapt through experience and learning. That capacity is called neuroplasticity. Familiar patterns can feel deeply rooted, but familiarity doesn’t mean they are our only possibility.Understanding a pattern is a beginning. Practicing a different response helps us put that understanding to work.That might look like pausing before an automatic yes, setting a boundary, questioning an old assumption, or following through on something that matters.The hope is that what you practice in this season becomes something you can draw on in the next.Support for a SeasonWe may work together around a particular decision, meet for a few conversations, or spend a longer season exploring what you want to change. We can talk honestly about what fits your needs.The goal is for you to grow in your own discernment, confidence, and ability to move forward.I hope that includes renewed purpose, room for joy, and that childlike curiosity that asks, “What else is possible?”And as you grow, what you learn can reach beyond you. The patience, courage, boundaries, and compassion you practice can shape how you show up for your family, your friendships, and the people God places in your path.Clear About the Support I OfferI provide coaching, not therapy or mental health counseling. I do not diagnose or treat mental health conditions. When you need support beyond my scope, I’ll be honest about that.Coaching follows a different training path from licensed clinical care. A four year degree is not a universal requirement, and preparation varies. You deserve clear information about my training, experience, and the work we agree to do together.Holding the ThreadPicture setting down a handful of tangled thread. You know there are connections in it, but from where you’re sitting, it’s difficult to see where one part leads.That’s how a conversation can begin.You talk about something that happened yesterday, a decision you’re avoiding, or a comment you can’t seem to shake. As I listen, I may hear a connection worth following.“Wait. Come back to that with me for a second.”We slow down. We look more closely. You begin to see something you hadn’t noticed before.Over time, you start recognizing those connections yourself. You know when to pause, what to question, and which thread deserves your attention.You bring your story. I help hold the thread while we explore it together, so you can carry what you discover into the life you’re living.Let’s start with a conversationBack to home

Rooted TruthsSometimes the best way to get to know someone is through the words they share. This free collection of writings offers a glimpse into my walk with Jesus, what I’m learning through healing and growth, and the convictions that shape how I coach. My hope is that as you read, you’ll feel understood, find a fresh perspective, or discover words for something you’ve felt but haven’t known how to express.Triage
When everything feels urgent, how do you make room for what truly matters?Scaffolding
The support that helps us learn to stand stronger.The Will, the Testament, and Our Advocate
What we leave behind, and the eternal inheritance Jesus offers.What If God Never Lost a Word?
Questions of Scripture, history, and trusting God.God Isn’t Hiding: Learning to Recognize His Voice
Making room for the relationship that helps us recognize His voice.The View from Where You’re Standing
Leaving room for what we cannot see.Someone Else’s Name
Examining the names we answer to and the One who knows us.The Choice God Refuses to Make for Us
Free will, grace, and the God who keeps pursuing us.Back to home