Katie Brown on the Everyday Blessings of Faith

Hi, my name is Katie Brown, and I’m a lifestyle expert. I like to think of myself as a lifestyler. And I am incredibly blessed because, for a living, I actually get to focus on all things cooking, gardening, and decorating, and how to turn your house into a home, and how to create family memories, and I mean, everything I love, I get to focus on every single day.

And I’ve made a bit of a pivot in my career, and my new book is all about God. It’s called Dare To See: Finding God in the Everyday. And it’s a collection of over 30 little short stories of moments in my life—oh gosh, I’m just trying not to get emotional—about moments in my life where I’ve been, you know, like touched by grace or had a moment of extreme feeling that God was right there with me.

And they’ve been in sometimes very small moments, sometimes very big moments. Sometimes, I’ve been really grateful to get them. Other times, I didn’t even wanna look at them, you know? I’ve been fortunate enough to be walking in my faith and with God since I was a little girl. Like, I don’t ever remember not having faith or not believing there was something bigger than me or something looking out for me or something taking care of me.

So I’ve always had this kind of ability, I guess, and habit of believing that nothing was an accident. And so in these stories or these moments or these events sometimes, like I said, sometimes tragic, sometimes hysterical, sometimes unbelievable, sometimes very ordinary, the book kind of runs the gamut. When I’ve had these moments, they’ve just always stuck with me and they’ve always informed kind of the way I live my life.

And so I guess maybe it’s getting older or maybe wanting to leave something behind that meant more than just—I mean, listen, I love arranging pine cones and coming up with a new chocolate chip recipe or a new frosting for a birthday cake, but all of that happens because I have this incredible faith that it’s all, for me, something deeper.

This story kind of takes you through those moments in my life, and each story starts with a Bible verse and then the story comes up and then, at the end, I ask you some questions like, you know, when have you ever walked out in nature and felt like you were singing along with all the birds in the trees? Or, you know, a question that has something to do with the story. And then I ask you to kind of reflect on how to strengthen that habit of daring to see and finding these moments in the way you walk through life. Because I think it makes it a little bit better and a little bit more special, and it’s certainly a less lonely way to go, for me.