There’s something almost comical about building a business around sourdough and still needing to learn patience.
After all, sourdough is one of those things that simply cannot be rushed. You can feed your starter, mix your dough, stretch it, fold it, shape it, and create every possible condition for it to become what you hope it will become—but at some point, you have to let it do the work.
I thought I understood that concept, but then I was asked to live it.
CarbQueen began with simple roots. It grew out of our kitchen and my love for feeding people. It grew out of our belief that some of the most meaningful things in life happen around a table.
What started at home—gifting loaves to friends and helping manage my kids’ gluten intolerance—grew into an exploding business. Sold-out markets. Sold-out porch pickups. Business and event inquiries. Flour everywhere. I loved it. I had plans for it.
My husband, Austin, was one of my biggest cheerleaders. We were both amazed as the floodgates seemed to swing wide open. There was something incredible about watching something we had created take on a life of its own.
And then, as it often does when we make our own plans and attach our own timelines to them, life changed.
This last school year, we stepped into a season of homeschooling our four children—something we did not choose but nevertheless had to walk through. It wasn’t a gentle adjustment, either. It was an upheaval—the kind that rearranges your days before you’ve fully named what’s happening. Our whole life changed in one week, and suddenly, we found ourselves in a season where so much was beyond our control.
Almost overnight, my kitchen table was transformed. The flour, proofing dough, and quiet anticipation of CarbQueen rising gave way to sharpened pencils, open books, and hundreds of questions. Suddenly, the hours I thought belonged to one thing belonged to four tiny humans.
And somewhere in that surrender, I began to realize that as much as I loved CarbQueen, it didn’t define me. The season I thought had buried me in loss ended up teaching me that I could trust God with something I loved, even if it meant letting go of it for a while. My purpose didn’t disappear when the orders stopped. My worth didn’t rise and fall with how much I could produce, even when it felt that way.
Sometimes faithfulness doesn’t look like building; it looks like staying. Sometimes it looks like putting down the thing you love so you can give your attention to what has been placed in front of you. And the funny thing about starter is that even when it’s dehydrated or thrown in the back of the fridge and “forgotten,” when you add flour and water to it, it comes back to life. What looked dead was simply waiting for the right conditions to grow again.
So right now, there is a little less bread coming out of my kitchen, and I’m learning that I don’t have to force any of my seasons to rise before their time.
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