Cultivate

1.Casey opens by confessing that she spent years chasing a picture-perfect life — the right look, the right career, the right image — only to find herself empty. What is your version of that pursuit? What have you been striving after that has left you feeling more depleted than fulfilled?

2.She describes the moment she realized that 'making it happen' on her own terms was actually working against her. Have you had a similar moment of recognition — a point where your own striving clearly wasn't working? What did that feel like?

1.Casey describes her own life as cluttered — not just physically, but with commitments, expectations, and identities that were suffocating the things she actually valued. What forms of clutter are most present in your life right now? (Think beyond stuff — think time, relationships, mental noise.)

2.She talks about how we often clutter our lives with good things that crowd out the best things. Can you name a 'good thing' in your life that may actually be functioning as clutter right now — something that is preventing deeper growth?

1.Casey uses the image of breaking up hard, compacted soil as a metaphor for preparing our hearts and lives to receive growth. What does 'hard soil' look like in your life right now — areas that have become resistant, closed off, or difficult to work with?

2.She is honest that soil preparation is hard, slow, dirty work that yields no immediate visible reward. How do you typically respond to work that is necessary but invisible? Do you tend to skip it or embrace it?

1.Casey argues that most of us are planting things by default — by the habits, patterns, and yeses we drift into — rather than by intentional choice. What are you currently planting in your life by default that you haven't consciously chosen?

2.She uses her PowerSheets goal-setting tool as a framework for thinking intentionally about what we are planting. Even if you haven't used PowerSheets, what is your current process (if any) for choosing your goals and priorities? How intentional is it, really?

1.Casey is candid about her own struggles with prayer — that it has felt dry, rote, or impossible to sustain. How would you honestly describe your current prayer life? Is it watering your life, or has it become more of an afterthought?

2.She talks about prayer as an act of dependence — an acknowledgment that we cannot grow anything of lasting value by ourselves. Why is dependence so hard for driven, goal-oriented people? Where does the resistance to dependence show up most in your life?

1.Casey describes how weeds in her garden were not obviously evil plants — they looked, at first glance, like they might belong there. What 'weeds' in your life currently look respectable or neutral but are actually stealing resources from what you are trying to grow?

2.She identifies comparison as one of the most insidious weeds — particularly in the age of social media. How does comparison function as a weed in your specific life? What does it steal from you when you allow it to grow unchecked?

1.Casey describes the temptation to dig up a seed to check if it's growing — something every impatient gardener has done and every impatient person has done in their own life. What seeds have you dug up prematurely because you couldn't trust the process? What happened?

2.She makes the case that tending is active, not passive — it is the daily faithfulness of showing up, doing small things, and trusting that they matter. What small, unglamorous acts of tending are you being called to in this season of your life?

1.Casey's central phrase in this chapter is 'imperfect progress is still progress.' How does that simple reframe land on you? Does it feel like permission, like lowering standards, or like genuine wisdom?

2.She confesses that her pursuit of the perfect life was actually a form of control — a way of managing anxiety and maintaining the appearance of having it together. Can you relate to that dynamic? How has your own pursuit of perfect functioned as control or fear management?

1.Casey opens this chapter by acknowledging that true community is rare, and that many of us have settled for surface-level connection because vulnerability feels too risky. Where would you honestly place your current closest relationships on a spectrum from 'surface-level' to 'genuinely known'?

2.She talks about the way that isolation fuels comparison and perfectionism — without real community, we are left measuring ourselves against curated images rather than honest, messy human lives. How has isolation (even isolation in a crowd) fed perfectionism or comparison in your life?

1.Casey shares her experience of pregnancy loss with striking vulnerability. How did her honesty in this chapter affect you? Did it open up something in your own experience of loss or grief?

2.She reflects that her hardest seasons — not her easiest — produced the deepest growth in her character and faith. Looking back at your own life, can you identify a hard season that, in retrospect, grew something significant in you that you couldn't have grown any other way?

1.Casey observes that many goal-oriented, driven people move directly from one harvest to the next planting without ever stopping to celebrate what has grown. Is this true of you? What is your relationship with celebration and gratitude for progress?

2.She frames celebration not as self-congratulation but as an act of worship — a way of acknowledging that God is the one who brings the harvest, and that gratitude is the right response. How does that reframe change the way celebration feels? Does it make it easier or harder to stop and celebrate?

1.Looking back across the entire book, which single chapter or concept was most personally significant to you? Why that one? What nerve did it touch that others didn't?

2.At the beginning of this study, you were invited to name one expectation and one fear you were bringing into the book. How has your thinking on those two things shifted — or not shifted — over the past eleven weeks?