Some thoughts on agency, God's sovereignty, and your own positive psychology experiment
August 2026 Newsletter
We’re going to do this newsletter a little in reverse because the thoughts I’m processing and loving are interconnected (and also - a little heavy for a sunny Saturday).
So! Let’s get into it!
🆓 August’s resource: [the three things exercise]
🔗 Some link love
💕 A thought I’m loving on [God didn’t tell you to marry your spouse]
🤔 A thought I’m processing [on all that ⬆️ ]
🗳️ A poll [on agency]
📆 A full recap & links to this past month’s posts
🆓 August’s Resource
I’m putting the final touches on my content for some Psych 101 classes I’ll be teaching this fall, and one of the things I’m having students do is re-enact the “three things study.” It’s a positive psych study that found that writing down three positive events each evening for one to two weeks significantly increases happiness and decreases depressive symptoms for up to six months to a year!
So this month’s free resource is a worksheet to walk you through the exercise for two weeks. But hey, be ambitious. Why not try the whole month?? LMK how it goes!
🔗 Some links for August
Here are some links I’m loving:
A way to ‘draw’ your month (tried this in July and mine looked terrible.)
A graphic to show you how our culture has escalated dopamine intensity in activities (which isn’t good for us)
A way to manage those racing thoughts about all you have to do
Six snacks to calm your nervous system (this is probably not true, but I’ll give ‘em a shot and let you know)
Most played artist in July (for some reason I can’t find most played song!)
❤️ A thought I’m loving [on God didn’t tell you to marry your spouse]
I’ve been thinking about this very old blog post a lot lately in relation to a few situations. I encourage you to read the full post, but here’s an excerpt:
Is it possible God has told a couple to get married? Look, I’m not going to put God in a box. I can’t say “He can do this but He can never do that”... All I can say is that the clearest scriptural teaching makes marriage our choice—both as to whether we get married and to whom we marry…
Why does this matter?
To move forward, we have to own up to our choices—why we made them and how to be responsible in the face of them. To a woman who was abused by her dad and then married an abusive husband, I’d say, with a pastoral heart, “You were deeply sinned against and hurt. The kind of man you felt ‘comfortable’ with, because of your upbringing, wasn’t good for you, so you chose a man who continued your father’s practices. Psychologically, that’s perfectly explainable, but let’s discuss how the grace of Christ can redeem your situation, help you evaluate what the right thing to do now is, and help you make better choices in the future.” I would never tell a woman who had been abused by her dad that God’s “perfect will” was for her to also marry a violent husband. There is nothing about the biblical doctrine of God’s providence that demands that application, unless you slip all the way over to determinism.
Far healthier, spiritually, than to sit in resentment against God, is to say to yourself, “I chose this man/woman. It might or might not help to explore why. But since I made the choice…I bear certain responsibilities…” Then God becomes your ally, not your enemy, in helping you face the future. Instead of, “God, why did you lead me into this mess,” you’ll pray, “God, help lead me out of the mess I’ve made.”
🤔 A thought I’m processing [on all that ⬆️ ]
I’ve been thinking about that post ⬆️ so much lately that I finally had to ask Claude to help me find it. I read it a million years ago in another life, but it has stayed with me.
I keep having conversations where people seem to imply that the existence of something is God’s endorsement of it. Like, because something happened or is happening, it must mean God’s into it. E.g. there kept being ‘open doors,’ so I knew this was the right thing to do…If God didn’t want this, God would change it…I’ve prayed for God to remove me from this church if God doesn’t want me here, and God hasn’t…
I’ve been bothered by this for a long time. In high-control spaces, this is used to imply God’s endorsement of leadership structures or decisions. If God didn’t want that pastor in that role, God wouldn’t have put them there. Or after some catastrophic decision: well, good thing God is sovereign.
What a strange, miraculous idea - that some of us humans believe in - that God is above and beyond and can work all things - even the most broken - for good.
But what a terrible and horrific misuse it is - to use that idea to imply that because something has happened or is happening - it’s what God wants.
I’ve hated that misuse for a long time because removing agency removes accountability, which means there's no willingness to truly own your choices, and removing accountability removes responsibility, which means there's no burden or power to make changes moving forward.
🗳️ A poll on [agency]
There was a poll done with 2000 folks on how much agency they felt in different life domains, and I thought I’d do a little survey of my own. Personal agency is the belief in one’s capacity to influence life circumstances and determine one’s own path by self-regulating one’s thoughts, emotions, goals, and behaviors.
With that in mind:
📅 What you missed in July
Below are some links to thoughts I’ve shared this past month! (Please note that some of my messier thoughts and musings are behind a paywall. You can read more about why I do that here, and feel free to upgrade your subscription to access them and support my research!)
Why trusting yourself isn’t heretical - part four of the series, kind of self-explanatory
How do they know what is true? - part three, reflecting on how some people in the church seem trustworthy to figure out what is true about God and others aren’t
Whose truth were you actually trusting? - the second part of a series responding to the question people often have - how do we know what is true?
Some thoughts on cultures of control, grief & gratitude - last month’s newsletter