(Coach’s Corner)

The Narrow Gate (A Return to Who You Really Are)
 
Lately I’ve been sitting with the words in Matthew 7 — especially the passage about the Narrow Gate. I’ve read it before, many times, but this season of life has a way of giving old scriptures new edges… and new tenderness.
 
For most of my life, I heard the “narrow gate” taught as restriction — behave better, try harder, stay inside the lines. But the more life I live, the more I hear something different in Jesus’ words. Not a threat. Not a rule. A calling back to what is real.
 
The wide road — the easy one — is the one the world keeps waving in front of us.
 
“Buy this.”
“Fix yourself.”
“Stay busy so you don’t have to feel.”
“Become someone shinier, younger, smaller, louder.”
 
It’s the path of trends, comparison, distraction, and constant self-correction.
 
And here’s the part that hits me most:
 
When we live on the wide road long enough, we don’t just lose peace or energy —
we start to lose ourselves.
 
We forget our own voice.
We forget what matters.
We forget that we are already loved.
 
The wide way doesn’t always look reckless or rebellious. Sometimes it looks perfectly acceptable — even praised — by society’s standards. Hustle harder. Do more. Shrink yourself. Prove your worth.
 
But slowly, quietly, we drift away from the woman God actually created us to be.
 
The Narrow Gate, to me, is a path of remembrance.
 
Not becoming someone new…
but returning to who we already are in God.
 
When we walk a little closer with Him — when we choose the quieter, truer way — something inside us begins to re-align. The fog lifts. The noise softens. And our spirit whispers:
 
Oh. I remember this place. I remember this me.
 
The narrow path is not glamorous. It rarely wins applause. It asks for honesty, integrity, patience, and courage. It invites us to lay down all the shiny distractions that promise meaning but never deliver it.
 
It’s choosing depth over distraction.
Truth over performance.
What is eternal over what is loud and temporary.
 
And yes — it feels narrow sometimes. It asks us to release approval, ego, and the illusion of control. But it also leads to life — the grounded, rooted, unshakable kind that can’t be manufactured or marketed.
 
The narrow path isn’t about squeezing yourself smaller.
It’s about becoming truer.
 
It’s coming home — to God, and to yourself.

The Narrow Gate isn’t about restriction.
It’s about returning — fully and honestly — to the woman God created you to be.