I write for the one who has run out of words.
This is the testimony underneath the books.
Tara’s voice carries the weight of lived revelation, calling others out of survival and into victory.
Tara is honest about the hard places, and she speaks with a deep conviction about what she knows to be true. A lot of her work has come from trying to put words around the places people often carry alone, especially when they are exhausted, afraid, grieving, or simply do not know what to pray anymore.
Her life has taken her all over the world. She has traveled to more than 54 countries, built an internationally award-winning photography business, played Division I soccer, flown by helicopter through the jungles of Madagascar, and spent more than 14 years doing nonprofit work in Uganda. Both of her parents came from the world of Olympic swimming, and she has lived in every region of the United States. She has seen a lot of life, in a lot of places, and that has shaped the way she sees people.
She is also a mother of four. Two of her children have walked through serious health crises, and she has faced major health battles of her own. She knows what it feels like to reach the place where your own words are gone and you need something true to hold onto.
What I Believe
Scripture is alive and active.
The Word is not a record of what God once said. It is what He is still saying, and it does not return empty. I would not survive without the Word. When I have run out of words, the Word has not run out of me.
God does not waste the pain.
Some seasons seem to stretch endlessly. The ground is marked with suffering, with joy, with breakthrough and with delay. If there is one thing I know, deep in my spirit, it is this. He does not waste the pain. Even when the circumstances around you say the opposite, keep trusting Him. Talk to Him. Don’t ever believe the lie that you are forgotten.
There are only Two Kingdoms.
What you say over your life matters. It carries weight and it either ushers in light or darkness. A declaration is not a prayer and it is not a wish. It is agreement with what God has already said is true, spoken out loud until your own ears believe it. You are not speaking things into existence. You are speaking your way back into agreement with the One who already did.
Community in the wilderness changes everything.
The longer the hard season runs, the more alone it convinces you that you are. You were never meant to carry it without words, and you were never meant to carry it without people. My hope is that I can hand you a Scripture-heavy decree you could not find, and you realize you were never as alone as the silence told you.
Beyond the Books
Tara lives outside of Nashville with her husband Clint and their four kids — Maxx, Bayy, Boone, and Goldy.
Tara grew up wanting to play soccer at the highest level. She earned a Division I scholarship, but during her freshman year, an injury changed the direction of everything. Soccer had been such a large part of how she saw herself, and losing the future she had imagined forced her to figure out who she was outside of it.
She kept playing and chose to study English. Somewhere along the way, a professor told her no one would ever read a book she wrote.
For years after college, Tara worked as a photographer and built an internationally award-winning business. She learned how to tell stories through images before she ever began telling them through books.
Then she wrote one anyway.
She wrote Declarations in the Desert at her kitchen table, and it went on to sell more than 40,000 copies. That book eventually opened the door to a publishing deal and House of the Forest, which became an instant USA Today bestseller after its September 2026 release. Her third book is coming in 2027.
What has meant the most to her has never been the numbers. It is hearing from people who found the words when they could not find their own, and knowing something written in one hard place became something another person could hold onto in theirs.
The Lord can do anything with a surrendered yes.
These declarations were written while life was still very much happening. Her own children were walking through excruciating seasons, and Tara was dealing with serious health battles of her own. She wrote from inside those moments. From the waiting, the fear, the exhaustion, and the constant desire to return to what was true and unchanging. These words were not written after everything had resolved. They were written while she was still living it, holding onto Scripture, praying over her family, and choosing again and again to believe what God had said.
She has traveled most of her life and intends to keep going. Most places give her something. One place gives her everything. England — the Lake District, the wide fells and the still water, the sky that sits low and grey over all of it. She keeps going back to write, to rest, and to just be.
Fourteen years ago, she and Clint said yes to Uganda, and they haven’t stopped. Project R12 builds sustainable solutions in rural villages, empowering local people to be the change in their own country.
Beyond the books, she writes on Substack — longer, slower, closer to the bone than anything that fits in a caption. On Instagram, the daily life of someone who actually believes these declarations are weapons shows up in real time.
If you’re in a hard place tonight, you’re one of the reasons she writes.