Join Now!

I’m sitting in a theater seat in an auditorium full of other grandparents and parents. My granddaughter is about to walk across the stage for her pre-K graduation. Around me, people have taken off work. They’ve asked permission, rearranged schedules, and carved out time from their regular lives to be here.

I didn’t have to ask anyone for permission. I didn’t have to rearrange anything.

I retired five years ago at fifty-four, and I’m sitting in this auditorium completely unhurried, completely free to be fully present for this moment.

And that’s when it hit me: My entire life looks nothing like I thought it would when I was a college freshman.

I can still see that version of me, the girl who had it all mapped out. Pharmacist. Married to Prince Charming. Living near my brother and my parents.

It was a life that made sense on paper, one that fit the blueprint I had chosen with parts that everyone had handed me. I could see the whole thing laid out, step by step. I knew where I was supposed to go.

But life, as it turns out, had other plans.

My brother died in my twenties. I married someone who seemed like the plan, but eighteen years in, I discovered the marriage was built on something other than what I thought. I finished raising my two children on my own. My parents passed a few years ago. I spent thirty-two years as a teacher—work I loved, but work that also consumed me, making me measure my success by everyone else’s achievements but my own.

None of this was in the blueprint.

When you’re in the middle of it—when you’re the single mother working full-time while parenting and managing the finances alone, when you’re standing in your kitchen at eleven PM folding laundry with no spouse to help you—it doesn’t feel like a detour. It feels like failure. It feels like you took a wrong turn somewhere, and now you’re living a life that looks like someone else’s tragedy.

You measure it against the plan.

You think about the pharmacist you didn’t become. You think about the marriage that didn’t hold together. You think about your brother’s voice, which you only hear now in your head. You think about your parents, and how much you miss them in your actual life, the one you’re living now.

You stand alone at your kitchen window at two in the afternoon and wonder how you got here.

But here’s what nobody tells you: Sometimes the detour is actually the destination.

I didn’t know, then, that my son would grow up to be the kind of man who wanted to raise his family on the homestead. I didn’t know my daughter would do the same.

I didn’t know that five years into retirement, my grandbabies would be living on the same homestead I grew up on.

I didn’t know that stepping away from teaching at fifty-four would look like this: grandbabies buzzing around, unhurried mornings, the freedom to write as much as I want, and the luxury of picking up hobbies I’d abandoned in my twenties—photography, embroidery, and journaling.

I didn’t know that a close walk with God would feel like this; not because the plan worked out, but because the plan broke and I finally stopped trying to fix my way out of it.

I didn’t know that presence would feel like this.

When you’re chasing the blueprint, you’re never really here.

You’re always ahead of yourself, always measuring your progress against the timeline, always waiting for life to start. Even when good things happen, you’re not fully in them because part of you is still worried about whether you’re on schedule.

You’re the woman in the office thinking about everything waiting for you at home. You’re the woman at home thinking about the business emails you haven’t responded to yet. You’re the woman in the marriage thinking about whether this is how it’s supposed to feel. You’re standing in your own life like you’re visiting someone else’s.

The grief broke that for me.

When my brother died, I couldn’t pretend the plan was solid anymore. When my marriage fell apart, I couldn’t keep performing the life that was supposed to happen. When my parents passed, I stopped measuring my success against their hopes for me. When I stepped away from the career that had defined me for three decades, I finally asked myself: What do I actually want?

And I realized I’d been so busy building the life I was supposed to have that I’d never actually asked that question.

The woman sitting in that auditorium—the one who’s completely unhurried because she doesn’t have to ask anyone’s permission—that woman doesn’t exist because the plan worked out.

She exists because the plan shattered. Because she picked up the pieces and built something else instead. Because she stopped waiting for her real life to begin and realized she was already living it.

It’s not the life I thought about having when I was twenty years old. It’s quieter than I expected. Smaller in some ways: no big career achievements, no marriage that lasted, no brother or parents to call with good news.

But it’s also bigger. More spacious. More mine.

I’m not grateful for the losses. I’m not one of those people who believes everything happens for a reason, or that God needed my brother in heaven more than I needed him here, or that my marriage fell apart because it was “meant to teach me something.”

That’s the kind of spiritual bypassing that I don’t agree with. The losses are losses. They hurt. They broke me. They changed the shape of my life in ways I wouldn’t have chosen.

But gratitude and grief can coexist.

Yes, I grieve for my losses, but I’m also grateful for what happened on the other side of the breaking.

I’m grateful that I didn’t have to ask a boss for permission to sit in that auditorium yesterday. I’m grateful that my children chose to build their lives near mine. I’m grateful that I get to fold laundry when I want to, at my own pace, without it being another one of those many overwhelming tasks that swallowed me whole for thirty years. I’m grateful that I have time to write now, that words are coming back to me after being quiet for so long. I’m grateful that I’m here—actually here, not somewhere else in my head—for the people I love.

The life I didn’t plan turned out to be the one I actually wanted.

I know that sounds like an ending, like some kind of redemption arc where everything works out and you learn the lesson. But the truth is messier than that.

I still think about the brother and parents I should have had here. Some days I wonder what that happily married version of me would have become, and there’s a little twist of grief in it.

But mostly, I’m here. Unhurried. Completely present. Sitting in an auditorium, happily watching my granddaughter on that stage, and thinking: My life is so full of love and happiness. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

This is exactly what I didn’t know I needed.

If you’re still measuring your actual life against the blueprint you handed yourself years ago, I want you to know something: Disappointment is real. Grief over the life you didn’t get to live is real. Anger that the plan didn’t work out is real.

You’re not ungrateful when you feel those things. You’re not broken. You’re human.

But here’s what I’m learning: Sometimes the detour demands a strength the original route never could have uncovered.

Sometimes the breaking is what finally lets you be present.

Sometimes the life you end up with—the one that looks nothing like you planned—is the one you were actually looking for all along.

You just didn’t know it yet.

Leave a comment

Join Now!

FOR DEEPER REFLECTION & APPLICATION

How To Apply This Today

So what does this actually look like when you’re standing at your kitchen window at two in the afternoon, comparing your actual life to the one you thought you’d have?

It doesn’t look like forcing gratitude for things you didn’t choose.

It doesn’t look like spiritual bypassing — “everything happens for a reason” — when your reason is that life broke you and you had to rebuild.

Here’s what actually works:

Start with what’s honestly in your heart, not what you think you should feel.

You didn’t plan this life. The pharmacy degree didn’t happen. The marriage didn’t last. Your brother and parents aren’t here.

Those are facts. Not failures. Not lessons wrapped in meaning. Just the actual shape of your one life. Say it out loud: “This is not what I planned.”

Build from where you actually are. The woman you are now is working with different materials than the girl who made that plan.

She wasn’t wrong. She’s just not here anymore. Start with what’s in your hands today, not with what you wish you were holding.

Notice where you actually feel present. It’s not everywhere. Not all the time. But there are moments — sitting in an auditorium, watching your granddaughter. Writing early in the morning when nobody needs you yet. Folding laundry in your own home at your own pace. Picking up photography again after thirty years.

These aren’t distractions from your real life. This is your real life. Start there.

Grieve what didn’t happen without erasing what did. You can be sad about the brother you lost and grateful for the grandbabies you have. You can mourn the marriage that didn’t work and celebrate the children you raised. You can miss the pharmacist version of yourself and love the writer you’re becoming. Both things are true. Grief and gratitude aren’t opposites.

This is the life. This auditorium, this moment, this woman. Live it like it’s exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Because it is.

Questions For Personal Reflection

Looking back at the girl who made that plan, what did she want most underneath all the specifics? Security? Love? Purpose? Do you see those things showing up in your actual life, even in unexpected forms?

What was the first moment you realized you were building something different than you planned, and what did you discover about yourself in that building?

What has the unplanned version of your life given you that the original plan never could have?

Where do you find yourself most present in your actual life — not thinking about what should be happening, but fully here? What makes those moments different?

What does your actual life make possible that your planned life would have closed off? Start small if you need to.

Scriptures To Meditate On

Jeremiah 29:11 (KJV): “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

Romans 8:28 (KJV): “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Psalm 139:13-14 (KJV): “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”

Proverbs 19:21 (KJV): “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the purpose of the Lord that prevails.”

Psalm 31:14-15 (KJV): “But I trust in thee, O Lord: I say, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand.”

Your Action Checklist

☐ Write down three things your actual life has made possible that the original plan never could have. They don’t have to be big. They just have to be true.

☐ Identify one moment this week when you felt fully present in your actual life. What made that moment different? Write it down.

☐ Find one small thing you’re grateful for that you never would have chosen. Just one.

☐ Tell one person (or write) the truth about something you’re grieving. Don’t soften it. Don’t spiritualize it. Just say it.

☐ Write one sentence about what you’re choosing to build from here. Not from where you wish you were. From exactly where you are.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Further Reading on Substack

::: i’m 59 and i still don’t know what i want to be when i grow up —

::: from the teacher’s desk to the front porch

::: what I stopped explaining about my life (and what that did for me)

A Few Interesting Tidbits

Psychologists call the grief of an unlived life ‘counterfactual grief’—mourning the person you would have become. It’s real. It’s valid. It’s not weakness.

Studies on midlife adults show that those who stop comparing their actual lives to imagined alternatives report significantly higher life satisfaction and presence.

Presence isn’t something you achieve. It’s what happens when you stop measuring yourself against something else and start actually living what’s in front of you.

The marriage, the brother, the parents—these losses don’t get ‘resolved.’ They get integrated. You learn to hold both the grief and the gratitude at the same time.

Women who shift their attention from the life they didn’t get to the life they’re actually living report significantly higher joy and presence. That shift is a choice you can make today.

Let’s Pray Together

Somewhere along the way, you started believing you needed permission to live. Not permission to do big, scandalous things, but permission to want things, to take up space, to say no without explaining yourself into the ground. Permission to spend money on yourself without justifying every dollar, to have opinions that differ from your family’s, to rest without earning it first.

Here’s what I need you to hear: Nobody’s coming to give you that permission. Not your husband, not your kids, not your mother or your pastor or your best friend. They’re not withholding it because they’re cruel—they’re just living their own lives, and they’ve gotten used to you asking. They’ve gotten comfortable with you waiting. They’ve gotten comfortable with you putting their wants/needs/desires above your own.

But the waiting has cost you.

The Permission Trap

Most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it. We frame it differently in our heads and call it being considerate… being flexible… being a team player who doesn’t rock the boat. We tell ourselves we’re keeping the peace and being Christ-like.

If you’re honest with yourself though, you know the difference between genuine consideration and the bone-deep belief that your wants don’t count unless someone else approves them first. You can feel it in your body when you’re about to do something for yourself… that tightness in your chest, that voice asking what they’ll think, that impulse to explain and justify before anyone even questions you.

That’s not wisdom. That’s a lifetime of training that taught you to shrink.

What the Bible Actually Says

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV)

Let’s get something straight: God didn’t create you to spend your entire life waiting for human approval. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he was addressing a young leader who was likely battling self-doubt and intimidation. The remedy? Remember what God gave you… not fear, not insecurity, not a need for constant validation, but power, love, and a sound mind.

This isn’t just for church leaders. This is for every woman who’s been taught that her thoughts don’t count unless someone else validates them first, for every woman who’s been trained to wait and ask and defer automatically.

You have a sound mind. That means you’re capable of making decisions about your own life – good ones.

We’re called to submit to authority and to love others and consider their needs, but nowhere in Scripture does God say to make yourself so small that you disappear or to wait for every human around you to approve before you move.

Look at the women in the Bible who actually did something. Esther didn’t wait for permission to approach the king, and Ruth didn’t wait for permission to follow Naomi or to go to the threshing floor. The woman with the issue of blood didn’t wait for permission to touch Jesus’ robe, and Mary didn’t wait for permission to break that expensive perfume. They moved, they acted, they trusted their sound minds and the Spirit’s leading even when it made other people uncomfortable.

When There’s No One Left to Ask

I know this struggle intimately because I lived it just a few days ago. God had laid This Sacred Season on my heart – this ministry, this mission to write for women like us who are rebuilding after everything changes. The call was clear, but I kept waiting for someone to say it out loud: “You can start writing now.”

And then I realized there was no one here to give me that permission. My kids are grown with their own kids now. I left a suddenly abusive marriage over a decade ago and I don’t have a partner now. Both my parents passed away a few years ago. I took early retirement after 2020, so there’s no principal hovering over my shoulder. There was literally no one standing there waiting to approve my next move.

So I sat with this dream God gave me, feeling like I needed someone’s blessing to begin. But who? My grown children navigating their own lives? My parents who are with Jesus? A husband who’s no longer in the picture? The boss I no longer have?

A few days ago, it hit me: I’m free. Completely, terrifyingly free to just start. And even though I didn’t feel ready… even though the permission I’d been waiting for never materialized… even though my plans weren’t complete… even though I’m scared to lay myself bare in front of strangers on the internet… I picked up my pen and started writing.

Starting Small

So what do you do when you’ve spent 40-plus years operating like you need permission for everything?

You start small and you start honest.

You make a decision without asking your husband’s opinion first… not a huge decision like selling the house, but about where to go for lunch or what time you’re meeting your friend or whether you’re going to that church event you don’t want to attend.

You buy something you want without justifying it… again, not a huge purchase like car but a book or a plant or a candle that costs more than $5.

You say no without explaining, because “I can’t make it” is a complete sentence and you don’t owe anyone a detailed breakdown of why you’re not available.

You have an opinion that differs from your family’s and you don’t apologize for it. You don’t need to argue or convince – you just let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Here’s what’s going to happen: People will be surprised, some will be uncomfortable, and a few might even be upset. Let them. Their discomfort is not your emergency, and their adjustment period is not your responsibility to manage. You’ve spent decades managing everyone else’s comfort at the expense of your own existence, and that stops now.

When It Feels Selfish

I know what you’re thinking – this sounds selfish… this sounds unsubmissive… this sounds like the world’s message instead of God’s.

But answer this: Is it selfish to believe God when He says you have a sound mind? Is it unsubmissive to steward your own life instead of handing the reins to everyone else? Is it worldly to take up the space God created YOU to occupy?

Selfishness is believing your needs trump everyone else’s, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about believing your needs matter at all, that you’re allowed to have preferences, that your time, energy, and resources have value even when they’re not being poured into someone else.

You’re not responsible for being everyone’s permission-giver or the Holy Spirit for your entire household. You’re not the mediator between God and every person in your life. You’re a woman with a sound mind, created in God’s image, responsible for stewarding your one life well. That’s not selfish… that’s obedience.

Living Without Permission

What would change if you really believed you didn’t need permission? You’d stop rehearsing conversations in your head, preparing your defense before anyone even asks. You’d stop feeling guilty for wanting things and waiting for someone to tell you it’s okay to rest, to play, to spend, to say no, to take up space.

You’d move through your life with the confidence of someone who actually believes she has a sound mind – not arrogant, not bulldozing, just present and decisive and clear. You’d realize that most of the permissions you’ve been waiting for were never coming anyway, not because people are withholding them but because they’re not theirs to give.

God already gave you permission to live… to really live instead of shrinking into the smallest, quietest version of yourself and calling that holiness. So stop waiting, stop asking, stop justifying. You have a sound mind, so use it.

Maybe you’re like me and the people you used to ask aren’t there anymore. Maybe they’ve moved on or passed on or walked away. Maybe you’re staring at an empty nest or a changed life and realizing there’s no permission-giver left in sight.

All that quiet? That’s your life waiting for you to claim it. Pick up your pen. Start that business. Take that class. Book that trip. Say what you think. Do the thing God’s been whispering to your heart for months or years.

You don’t need to feel ready. You just need to start.

What’s one small decision you’re going to make this week without asking for permission? Share it in the comments—I’d love to pray over it with you.

If you’re new here, welcome home. Pull up a chair. The coffee’s always on.

Leave a comment

Reflect & Review

1. Where in your life are you still waiting for someone else’s approval before you move forward?

2. How can you begin trusting the sound mind God has already given you in one small, practical way this week?

3. What fear or belief is keeping you in the permission trap—and is it actually aligned with what Scripture says about you?

Join me each week for thoughtful essays, writing prompts, and quiet encouragement for a beautiful, intentional life.

Join Now!

A few weeks ago I sat on the front porch in the soft chaos of an April morning, watching the grandbabies chase a frog through the grass, while a half-written post sat open on the iPad in my lap. The article I was working on felt very polished.

Tidy.

Safe.

The kind of thing that sounds pretty but doesn’t really ask much of you.

And somewhere between the squealing, the smell of the freshly cut grass, Cluck Norris crowing proudly, and the way the light was falling across the yard, something in me just… quit.

::: the box had gotten too small

This Sacred Season gave me a place to write about faith and midlife and the questions that rise up somewhere around 2 a.m. — the ones most Christian writing smooths over or answers too quickly. I’m grateful for that.

But somewhere along the way, the edges started to feel too tight. Something began to feel smaller than the life I was actually living.

And when a thing feels too small, you notice.

I found myself pulling back. Not because I stopped caring, but because I could feel what was missing.

I don’t want to sound polished into sameness when I’m writing with dirt under my nails and a lifetime of memory in my bones.

I don’t want to write as if memory, labor, grief, family, land, and ordinary days are somehow beside the point.

My faith is central to me. But it isn’t the only thing about me.

It took me a long time to understand I wasn’t meant to be reduced to one thing.

My life was always wider than that.

::: I’m not here to write inside the lines

I’ve been told, like every writer is, to pick a lane. And for a while I tried.

I trimmed away the parts of my life that didn’t fit. I wrote inside the lines because that’s what I was told writers are supposed to do.

But I don’t want a smaller life on the page anymore.

I want faith and land and kitchen tables and grandbabies and grief and beauty and the ordinary holy things that make up a life.

There’s a whole essay I never wrote about the shadow box hanging on my daughter’s wall — the one with my grandmother’s driver’s license from 1970, gas rationing coupons from the 1940s, my grandfather’s appointment card as Honorary Deputy Sheriff, gin receipts and checks from the 1920s, and my daddy’s employee handbook from Boeing Aircraft.

A hundred years of one family’s ordinary life, framed and hung where the grandbabies walk past it every day.

It didn’t fit a category. So I set it aside.

That’s the type of essay I’m going back for.

::: from teaching to living

If I was going to write the whole life, I knew I needed a name that could hold all of it.

The name came the way most true things do—quietly, and without much effort. It’s simply what I want to write about: a whole life, captured in ink on the page. This particular, unrepeatable life on this patch of land, within this family, and in this specific season. It’s the life of a grandmother, a writer, and a woman who is, finally, beginning to take up the full space of herself.

It came easily because, in some way, it had been with me all along.

I spent decades teaching others to put their lives in ink—showing them how to write their way toward authenticity and find their voices on the page. I taught them that writing is how we make sense of what we are living. And then, for a long time, I stopped doing that for myself. I wrote inside the lines because I thought that was what an author was supposed to do.

::: sixth generation is me finally practicing what I preached all along. It’s the space where I’m finally writing as if my own lessons are true. All of it belongs here: the faith and the land, the grief and the ordinary holy things, the grandmother and the writer, and the woman still becoming herself.

None of it gets left behind.

::: what still belongs

This Sacred Season isn’t disappearing. It’s being folded into something wider, something more honest.

The spiritual questions are still going to be here, the ones about dryness and doubt, church hurt and calling, what it means to be a woman of faith in the second half of life.

But there will also be the poetry written by firelight. The essay about finally setting a boundary that needed to be set. A psalm that came out of watching a honeybee buzz around the front porch. A letter at the end of the month about what I’ve read, what I’ve made, what I can’t quite stop thinking about.

You’re being invited into my whole house now, not just one room.

::: the parts of me you haven’t met yet

Yes… I’ve been hiding.

Not in some dramatic, theatrical way. Just in the quiet, careful ways women learn over decades, tucking whole parts of themselves behind roles and expectations until they almost forget they’re there.

I hid inside roles for over five decades. When I finally started writing, I hid inside a narrow place I thought I was supposed to stay in. And somewhere in all that careful narrowing, I forgot that a life can hold more than one true thing at a time.

I’m the grandmother on the front porch.

I’m the woman in the kitchen trying to remember how my mother made that dish.

I’m the writer of prayers I don’t always understand.

I’m the teacher who became a student again.

I’m the country girl who never left.

I’m a woman of faith who still has questions.

I’m someone who believes feeding people is its own kind of prayer.

I am all of it. And ::: sixth generation is where I’m finally writing as if that’s true.

If you’ve been reading for a while, thank you. Truly. You’ve been part of the reason I kept showing up, even when I wasn’t sure what I was building. I hope you’ll stay.

If you’re new here, welcome. Come on in. The coffee’s always on.

Leave a comment

Join me each week for thoughtful essays, writing prompts, and quiet encouragement for a beautiful, intentional life.

Join Now!

Daylight is useful. It makes lists, folds laundry, and convinces me I’m fine because I’m moving.

It also gives me a thousand bright reasons not to sit still long enough to hear what’s waiting underneath the noise.

Grief is patient. It waits for the house to go quiet.

That December night in 2024, four years after my daddy died and two after my momma, the fire had settled into embers.

I was working on a women’s fiction draft about a woman who loses her husband and her mother in the same impossible moment. I gave her that loss because I didn’t know what else to do with mine.

Fiction can hold what the body can’t.

I’d been typing for hours when the words started to thin. My fourth cup of cocoa had gone cold. Outside, the Arkansas night pressed against the windows. On the page, my protagonist was still in chapter six… still trying to remember how to be brave.

I knew the feeling.

That’s what nobody tells you about writing through grief: it doesn’t heal you neatly. It doesn’t tie anything up. It doesn’t hand back your people with a bow on top.

Sometimes it just gives the ache a place to live for a while.

I didn’t finish the story that night. I still haven’t. Maybe that’s not what the night was for. Maybe it was for the sitting. The fire. The cold cocoa. The page.

And then, somewhere between one more thought and one more breath, the prose gave way.

A poem came instead.

ember + verse

tonight my bare feet curl against  
the hardwood floor, and the fire  
spits embers like small stars  
coming loose in the dark

my iPad glows blue-white  
against the honey of the room  
and my cocoa has gone cold again  
forgotten beside chapter six

outside, winter presses  
her face to the window  
while my protagonist learns  
how to be brave

so do I

the fire doesn’t ask questions  
when I read the lines aloud  
or when I delete them  
or when my hands shake

it only burns  
steady and unafraid  
as if it knows  
what I keep forgetting:

that grief can sit beside me  
without breaking me  

that words can still arrive  
when I’m not ready for them  

that something holy lives  
in the making

and maybe that is all this is:  
a woman, her ghosts,  
a half-written novel,  
learning how to turn  
what hurts  
into light

~ Mary Kaye Chambers 
   12/4/24

That night, the story stayed unfinished. The grief stayed too, the way it always does now that I’ve made my peace with it.

But, for that one night, the time spent in prayer with my pen and the fireplace was enough.

If this firelit night stirred something in you, I’d love to hear. What’s one way you’ve let grief speak through your own creativity? Drop a comment below.

If you’re new here, welcome home. Pull up a chair. The coffee’s always on.

Leave a comment

Join me each week for thoughtful essays, writing prompts, and quiet encouragement for a beautiful, intentional life.

Join Now!

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

Proverbs 3:5-6 (KJV)

I am sitting in my living room on the land my daddy and his daddy cleared decades ago. My calendar for next week is completely empty. Not “light.”

Empty.

At 59, I thought I’d have this figured out by now. I thought the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” would have been settled somewhere around 1985.

It wasn’t.

And most days, I still don’t know how to answer it.

::: the summer everything changed

The school year from hell ended in 2021. We’d lost my daddy during the first month of that school year. My momma’s health was failing, and we had spent more time in hospitals and doctor’s offices than I had spent in my classroom. We were deep in a pandemic that weighed heavily on me.

Then, because apparently the universe thought I needed one more thing, I had a freak accident and missed the last few days of school.

I woke up on the first day of summer break, and the first thing I heard was God asking me how it felt to be retired.

I went into full panic mode. I was 54. Way too young for this. I told Him so.

He just repeated the question.

So I stepped out on faith, filled out the paperwork, and faxed it in within the hour.

And then I waited for Him to tell me what was next.

I thought He’d immediately say I was supposed to create a website or work at a bank or win the lottery or marry Prince Charming or SOMETHING.

When I asked what came next, He was silent. Not because He’d abandoned me or stopped talking to me altogether. Looking back now, I understand He saw what was coming and knew I had to make it out the other side before I’d be strong enough to tackle what He had planned.

But in that moment? All I heard was crickets about my next steps.

It took me months to feel human again after the accident. I finally had one day without pain. One random weekday where I woke up and thought, “Hey, I actually feel okay.”

By that Friday, I had COVID. And not that “no symptoms” COVID either. I was extremely sick for weeks. I don’t have a lot of memory from that time and when I started recovering, I spent the next few months with my brain seemingly offline.

During all of that, my mom’s health continued to fail. We lost her the next summer in 2022.

My parents were the family’s rock. Losing both of them felt like the final blow. I spent the next year asking God hard questions and going through a complete identity crisis.

“Who am I when life changes and my roles disappear?”

Every version of myself I’d built my life around was gone.

My marriage had ended 15 years earlier after it turned abusive. I wasn’t a teacher anymore. My kids were grown with families of their own, so even motherhood had changed because I had gone from being the daily caretaker to something quieter… something else entirely.

I was overweight, miserable, and sitting in a quiet house with nothing on my schedule. When people asked what I did, I had no answer. When I looked in the mirror, I barely recognized the woman staring back.

So who the heck was I when nobody needed me in the ways they once did?

::: what my life looks like now

Today both of my adult kids have houses here on the homestead, so I get to see my five grandbabies whenever I want. They call me Grandma Honey, and they’re my little honeybees. We have chickens, goats, cattle, peacocks, cats, Cane Corsos, a black lab, and a mini weenie dog running around.

I love to write, journal, scrapbook, and embroider. I enjoy quiet drives and little adventures. HomeGoods is my happy place. I’m in the middle of losing over 100 pounds (42 down so far) and I’m already worrying about the saggy skin that’s coming… and whether I’ll be brave enough for surgery.

I love coffee and chocolate. I’m an introvert who knows she needs to get out more, but it’s just so peopley out there. I’m a hopeless romantic with big trust issues after what my marriage became.

Some days the house is worthy of a Southern Living feature. Other days it looks like a rat pile exploded, and I’m praying Mr. Clean will materialize and come rescue me.

This life is good. It’s full. I’m loved.

And yet… I still don’t know who I want to be when I grow up.

::: why i picked up my pen to write again

At this age, I expected to have it all figured out. Instead, I’m rebuilding from scratch: my identity, my routines, my purpose, what I want my days to look like, and who I am when no one else is defining me by my roles.

I’m writing because I couldn’t find what I needed when I was in the worst of it. There was plenty of “reinvent yourself after 50” content, but very little that spoke to the kind of total life implosion I experienced.

I’ll be completely honest… (whispers) I don’t have it all figured out.

I’m here to walk through this messy, beautiful rebuilding season together with you.

And here’s the vulnerable truth: I need you as much as you might need me. I need to know I’m not the only one asking these questions at 59. I need the accountability of showing up honestly, even when it’s messy.

This isn’t me teaching from a mountaintop. This is me inviting you to come sit with me in the middle of all the beauty and mess while figuring it out together, one day at a time.

Thank you for letting me be honest with you. I can’t wait to hear your story.

Hit reply or leave a comment and tell me what brought you here… or just say hello.

Leave a comment

Join me each week for thoughtful essays, writing prompts, and quiet encouragement for a beautiful, intentional life.

Join Now!