Welcome to The Olive Branch Journal—a place for honest conversations about faith, life, and everything in between.
Here, we talk about the darkness and the light, the funny and the not-so-funny, the mundane and the extraordinary. We talk about the questions we don’t always know how to ask, the things we carry quietly, the lessons God teaches us in unexpected places, and the grace we find along the way.
Some episodes will make you laugh. Some might make you think. Some may meet you right where you are.
Pull up a chair, grab your coffee, and stay awhile.
Welcome to the very first episode of The Olive Branch Journal Podcast.
Today, I’m simply inviting you to pull up a chair and get to know the person behind the journal. I’ll share a little about who I am, why I started The Olive Branch Journal, what this space means to me, and why I decided to take these conversations from the written page to a podcast.
We’ll talk about faith, real life, the beautiful and difficult seasons, and my hope that this becomes a place where we can be honest without having to have everything figured out.
So grab your coffee, get comfortable, and pull up a chair.
I’m glad you’re here. 🌿
🌿 The Olive Branch Journal
A place for the darkness and the light, the funny and the not-so-funny, the mundane and the extraordinary.
If something you heard today met you where you are, I’d love for you to share it with someone who might need it too.
Hey friend, welcome to the Olive Branch Journal. I'm Delilah, and this is a little corner of the world where we make room for the darkness and the light, the funny and the not so funny, the mundane and the extraordinary. So pull up a chair and let's talk. I have to admit, it feels a little strange saying that out loud. I've spent so much time writing my thoughts down, and now I'm sitting here talking to my phone, hoping that someone somewhere decides to listen. So I thought maybe the best place to start is simply by introducing myself. Again, my name is Delilah. I am married to my best friend Justin. We do not have children yet, but we do have five dogs, four cats, of which I'm allergic to, and two turtles. So home life is kind of chaotic, but thankfully I have been blessed with the opportunity to work from home for an insurance company. And so I get to be at home with this chaos that I truly try my best to not take for granted. Everyday life is really simple. It's nothing fancy, nothing dressed up or polished to perfection, but it's mine. And I have recently taken up blogging, and it's something that I truly do pour a lot of my heart into. But if I'm not blogging, I'm playing with the dogs. You know, again, five dogs, three of which are huskies, lots of energy, lots of craziness. Um, so they keep me on my toes. But when they decide to be calm, you can find me either tending to the 39 houseplants that I have or curled up somewhere reading a good book. But chances are, if you don't find me at home, you'll find me at our church that we serve at. My husband and I are both on the worship team, so we get to help with worship on Sundays. And then when needed, we also get to help with worship on Wednesdays for the youth. You know, anything that we can do to help serve at church and just be active participants, you'll find us doing. Um, it's a big honor and something that we are truly passionate about. Plus, we get to serve with some of the most incredible people that I have ever met. And it is just, if there's anything in this life that has ever made me feel so loved, it is serving next to some of the greatest friends. But I do want to touch on why I started the blog, the Olive Branch Journal. Um, it came about from a late-night conversation with the Lord. Um I just I could not go to sleep because it just kept coming back and coming back. Like I needed to do this, I needed to have somewhere to put these thoughts down somewhere, you know, not just in my notes app on my phone. It needed to have somewhere of its own to actually live. And so I finally got that put in motion. And mind you, this was all happening at like two o'clock in the morning. I'm laying there and I go in and I create this blog, and I had already had in my heart what I wanted to call it. Um, and so I do this, we name it, and you know, I'm I'm thinking to myself, okay, I have all these things to say, but verbalizing's never been a strong suit. But when I'm able to write it down, things tend to flow better and I can make better sense of my thoughts. And I'm the same way in my prayer life, you know, when I'm able to put my prayers down, I'm able to actually have better, deeper conversations with the Lord. And so it's the same with my blog. Like when you read anything on that blog, you are seeing the true version of myself. But you know, what I was really hoping to create with this mostly started out as just a creative outlet. But then the more posts that I created, the more I wondered if someone else out there might benefit from seeing someone else deal with similar things that you know life puts us through. And maybe they could find encouragement from my posts. I didn't want to create a space where everything had to be polished, perfect, or inspirational all the time, just somewhere real, a place, you know, to talk about the things that are beautiful and things that hurt, the things that we celebrate and things that we're still trying to understand. And of course, the olive branch journal, it truly does have meaning behind the name. And in the story of Noah's Ark, a dove returns with an olive leaf in its beak, signaling that the floodwaters receded. And that represents God's reconciliation with humanity, hope, and renewal of life on earth. So for me, this blog can represent peace, hope, restoration, new beginnings, and grace. And honestly, probably most importantly, the reminder that even after difficult seasons, there can still be something growing. You know, we all are gonna experience different things in this life, this side of heaven. Not all of them are gonna be great, but not all of them are gonna be horrible either. And so being able to have somewhere to be raw and honest with things that I have previously walked through or am currently walking through, you know, I'm getting to put out there that, you know, I'm not anything special. I'm not anything to idolize, you know. I am a person who is in desperate need of his savior, who is still learning and growing. I'm still asking questions and having hard days and still actively discovering what God is teaching me. And I want to be able to talk about faith in a way that actually meets people in real life, not just moments when everything looks good. Because sometimes faith looks like worship and sometimes it looks like getting out of bed, sometimes it looks like celebrating, and sometimes it looks like whispering, God, I don't understand this. And you know, the blog is one thing, and so the thought of a podcast, you know, why why, you know, give this an another kind of platform? And that thought came from a friend, you know, stating it could actually be something really good because we have, you know, such a diverse friend group, and that's directed towards like our worship team that we serve on, you know, we're all different, we come from different backgrounds, and we're all in different walks of life, but we're doing it together. And so having the opportunity to take thoughts that I have put on a page previously, but being able to actually give them a voice for someone to hear, you know, because there can be something intimate about a voice, hearing someone talk to you. It feels a little more like sitting across the table from someone. And that's what I want my blog and this podcast to be like. You know, I don't want it to be what a lot of these out there are, where you know, someone's just talking at you or they're giving you a step-by-step of how to live your life. You know, I I want it to feel like you and I are truly sitting together at my kitchen table having a conversation one-on-one. And for this podcast, like it, it's not a performance, it's not a sermon, and I'm definitely not pretending to have all the answers. Again, it's just a conversation with you and I. And in these conversations, you know, we'll talk about faith and following Jesus. We'll talk about hard conversations that we have to have with people in our life. We'll talk about loneliness, friendship, boundaries, identity, exhaustion, grace, what waiting on God can look like and what it may feel like. We can talk about books, everyday life, again, things that we're learning, and things that we don't always know how to say. And sometimes absolutely nothing particularly profound because life isn't profound every single day. Sometimes it's just coffee, dogs, laundry, a good book, and trying to figure out what on earth we're gonna do for dinner, and that's okay too. Obviously, this is created with someone in mind. So, what I hope you find here is being able to find someone that can talk about what you hope someone feels. You know, I I don't have to change your life, I don't have to have the perfect words, but maybe you can walk away with something that you didn't know you needed. Maybe it's encouragement or a new perspective, maybe it's just a reminder that you're not alone. Hopefully, I can give you a laugh or two or scripture that you may need to hear. And you know, it could also just be giving permission to slow down for a few minutes. This journal becomes a place where people can feel seen, encouraged, challenged, and reminded of God's goodness. And if it can do that for one person, then it will have done everything I could have ever hoped for. But I do want to leave you with one question. And that is if you could pull up a chair and have one completely honest conversation with someone right now, what would you want to talk about? And I suppose that's where we'll begin. I don't know who will eventually find this little corner of the internet. Maybe it's you listening right now. Maybe someone will stumble across this episode months from now. Maybe this grows into something I can't even imagine yet. But wherever it goes, again, I hope it remains a place where we can be honest, where there's room for hard things, beautiful things, where faith doesn't require pretending, and where there's grace for the questions, where we remember that God is present in the extraordinary moments, and he's also present in the ordinary ones. So thank you. Thank you for pulling up a chair and spending a little bit of your day with me. Whatever you're carrying with you today, I hope you give yourself a little grace. And remember, you don't have to have the whole story figured out to trust the one who does. I'll meet you back here next time. Until then, keep your heart open. Keep looking for the little pieces of grace, and remember that God is still writing your story. Thank you for sitting with me.
