There are moments in life that divide our stories into a before and an after.

Sometimes we recognize them immediately. Other times, it takes years of looking backward to understand that we were standing at a crossroads, that something was shifting beneath our feet, that the trajectory of our lives was changing in ways we could not yet comprehend.

I’ve been reflecting on the hinge moments of my life lately. The moments that changed me. The ones that formed me, stretched me, broke my heart, deepened my faith, and ultimately brought me to the woman I am today.

As I trace the lines between them, I see a story that is both more painful and more beautiful than I could have imagined.

And woven through every chapter is the quiet, persistent presence of God.

Not always in the ways I expected. Not always with the answers I wanted. Not always by changing my circumstances. But there.

The God who met me in my searching has also met me in my unraveling. And He is meeting me still in my becoming.

When Faith Became My Foundation

My story of faith began with an extended season of searching. I had questions, longings, and a desire to understand what was true. Eventually, my search became something more personal and enduring: a relationship with God that would become the foundation of my life.

I could not have known then how much I would need that foundation.

I couldn’t have anticipated the grief that would come, the relationships that would fracture, the questions that would have no easy answers, or the seasons when the life I thought I was building would look nothing like the life I was actually living.

But God knew.

I don’t say that because I believe I can explain every turn in my story or understand all the reasons behind what has happened. I can’t. I say it because, looking back, I can see how foundational that early faith became. It gave me somewhere to turn when I had nowhere else to go. It gave me a place to bring my questions when answers were elusive. It gave me a truth to hold when my feelings and circumstances were anything but steady.

I found faith before I knew how desperately I would need it.

And perhaps that is one of the quiet mercies of God: sometimes He establishes our roots long before the storms arrive.

The Grief That Changed Me

Some losses divide our lives into a before and an after in ways we never would have chosen.

The suicide of my former partner and the father of my two children brought a grief that cannot be neatly explained or easily resolved. There are losses that leave us not only mourning the person but also wrestling with questions, unanswered conversations, and the ache of what can never be changed.

There is a particular helplessness in loving someone whose pain you cannot fix. There are questions that may never receive satisfying answers. There is the painful recognition that love, even when sincere, cannot give us control over another person’s life or choices.

I have learned that grief does not always need an explanation. Sometimes it needs room. Sometimes it needs people who are willing to sit beside us without trying to make the pain disappear. Sometimes it needs the reminder that God is near to the brokenhearted, even when our hearts cannot yet feel His nearness.

I would never call that loss good. I would never pretend that faith made it painless.

But I can look back and recognize that the story did not end there. My children and I had to keep living, keep grieving, and find our way through a reality we had not chosen.

God’s presence did not erase the loss. It gave me somewhere to bring it.

And there were more chapters ahead, each carrying its own heartbreak and its own invitation to trust.

When the People I Love Began to Struggle

Watching my son-in-law spiral and seeing my daughter navigate the end of her marriage brought another kind of grief. It was the grief of watching someone you love struggle, of wanting desperately to protect your child, and of discovering that you cannot make another person’s choices for them.

A mother’s heart naturally wants to intervene. We want to help, repair, restore, and somehow shield the people we love from the consequences of what is unraveling around them.

But life has a way of teaching us the limits of our reach.

I can love someone without being able to rescue them. I can pray without controlling the outcome. I can offer wisdom without guaranteeing that it will be received. I can show up without possessing the power to make everything right.

These are difficult lessons for someone who cares deeply and wants to make a difference.

Perhaps God was teaching me that love is not measured by how many broken things I can fix. Perhaps He was teaching me to distinguish between the burdens I am called to carry and the outcomes I must entrust to Him.

I am still learning that distinction.

I suspect I will be learning it for the rest of my life.

When the Life I Knew Began to Unravel

And then came the unraveling of my own marriage and the implosion of the family life I had spent decades building.

There are losses that happen all at once, and there are losses that happen slowly, in increments, as you watch something you love become something you no longer recognize.

For me, this was not simply the unraveling of a marriage. It was the unraveling of a story.

Twenty-eight years of shared history. A family. A home. A future I had imagined. Expectations about what our later years would look like and what it meant to grow old together.

I had invested so much of myself in the life we were building. I wanted connection. I wanted restoration. I wanted the things that had become broken to be made whole again.

And I had to confront the painful reality that I could not rebuild a relationship by myself.

There is grief in realizing that love and effort cannot guarantee a particular outcome. There is grief in discovering that commitment, however sincere, cannot substitute for the participation of another person. There is grief in accepting that you can do your part and still lose something you desperately wanted to preserve.

For a long time, I wrestled with what faithfulness required of me. What did it mean to honor God? What did it mean to persevere? What did it mean to release something I had fought so hard to hold together?

I do not pretend those questions were simple, and I do not have a tidy explanation for every part of that journey.

But I am beginning to understand something important: faithfulness is not the same as control.

I can be faithful without being able to determine the outcome. I can love without being able to make someone love me in return. I can pray for restoration without possessing the power to bring it about.

And I can grieve the ending of something without concluding that my life, my faith, or my worth has ended with it.

When my marriage officially ended, I was not simply closing a legal chapter. I was learning to inhabit a life I had never planned to live.

And that brought its own questions.

Who am I now? What does family look like now? How do I navigate relationships that have changed? How do I move forward when the future I imagined is no longer the future in front of me?

I am still finding my way through those questions.

Loving People When the Story Changes

One of the deepest griefs of this season has been navigating the changes in my relationships with my adult children.

There is a particular ache in wanting connection with your children while recognizing that they have their own experiences, wounds, perspectives, and processes to work through. It is painful to hear that someone you love has experienced the past differently than you did. It is painful to acknowledge that the people who share your history may carry memories and interpretations you do not fully understand or share.

I have had to sit with my own grief while recognizing that their experiences matter, too.

I cannot rewrite the past. I cannot dictate how someone else remembers it. I cannot force reconciliation or determine when another person’s heart will be ready for connection.

But I can continue to examine my own heart. I can listen. I can take responsibility for what is mine to own. I can seek wisdom about how to love well in the present, even when the future of a relationship remains uncertain.

I can also acknowledge my own hurt without requiring someone else to resolve it before I begin healing.

This is difficult work. It is humbling work. It is unfinished work.

And it is work I must bring to God repeatedly.

I am learning that loving someone well does not mean controlling the shape of the relationship. It means remaining willing to pursue truth, humility, compassion, and grace, even when the outcome is beyond my reach.

I do not know how every relationship will unfold. I cannot promise myself a particular ending.

But I can ask God to help me love faithfully in the chapter I am living today.

The Year That Tried to Break Me

Looking back, 2025 was a year of extraordinary detours. Grief, family estrangement, the unraveling of my marriage, the weight of ministry responsibilities, and the uncertainty of what lay ahead seemed to converge all at once.

I chose Resilience as my word for that season.

At the time, resilience meant continuing to put one foot in front of the other. It meant getting up, doing the next necessary thing, showing up for the responsibilities in front of me, and trusting God when I could not see very far down the road.

But I am beginning to see that resilience is more than the ability to withstand hardship.

Sometimes resilience means admitting that you are tired. Sometimes it means allowing others to help you. Sometimes it means releasing the expectation that you should be able to carry everything without being affected by it.

And sometimes resilience means refusing to let your worst season become the final definition of your life.

I do not want to romanticize suffering or suggest that every painful experience was a necessary step toward some grand revelation. Some things are simply heartbreaking. Some losses remain losses. Some questions remain unanswered.

But I can look back and see that I was not abandoned in those seasons.

God met me in the people who showed up. He met me in the Scripture that steadied me. He met me in the prayers I could barely articulate and in the ordinary strength required to get through another day.

Sometimes His provision was obvious. Sometimes it was only visible in retrospect.

I am learning that the absence of an explanation is not the same as the absence of God.

Becoming

My word for age 57 is Becoming.

It feels fitting because I am no longer simply trying to recover the life I had before. I am learning how to embrace the life I have now.

I am single after twenty-eight years of marriage. I am learning new rhythms, navigating changed relationships, and discovering what it means to build a future that does not look like the one I once imagined.

There is grief here. There is uncertainty. There are days when I wish things had unfolded differently.

But there is also possibility.

I am still a woman with gifts to offer, people to love, work to do, beauty to notice, and a calling to live out. I can continue investing in ministry. I can encourage women in their faith. I can use the experiences I have accumulated to offer compassion to others who are navigating their own difficult chapters.

I can make room for joy without betraying my grief.

I can build a meaningful life without pretending that everything is resolved.

And I can trust that God is not finished with me.

Perhaps becoming is not about turning into someone who is no longer affected by what happened. Perhaps it is about becoming someone who can carry the story honestly without allowing the story to dictate every possibility for the future.

Someone who can acknowledge what was lost while remaining open to what is still possible.

Someone who can hold conviction and compassion together.

Someone who can release what is beyond her control without surrendering responsibility for the life she has been given.

Someone who can trust God not only to sustain her through hardship but also to lead her into seasons of renewed purpose, connection, and joy.

I do not know exactly what this next chapter will hold.

But I no longer believe I need to know every detail before I can begin living it.

The God Who Was There All Along

When I trace these hinge moments, I see a life marked by both extraordinary grief and enduring grace.

I see the woman who searched for God, the woman who grieved devastating loss, the mother who wanted to protect her children, the wife who hoped to preserve her marriage, and the woman who now finds herself learning how to begin again.

I see moments when I felt strong and moments when I felt painfully inadequate. Moments when I could articulate my faith with confidence and moments when I had to cling to what I believed because I could not understand what I was experiencing.

And I see a God whose faithfulness was never dependent on my ability to understand the chapter I was living.

I cannot tell you why every loss happened. I cannot explain every broken relationship or make sense of every detour. I cannot promise that every story will resolve the way I hope it will.

But I can testify that God has remained the foundation beneath my feet.

He was present in the searching that led me to faith. He was present in the grief that left me without answers. He was present in the seasons when my instinct was to fix what was breaking and in the painful realization that some things were beyond my control.

He is present now, in the unfinished work of rebuilding.

And perhaps that is what I am learning to recognize most clearly: God’s faithfulness does not always look like the preservation of the life I imagined. Sometimes it looks like the grace to endure its unraveling. Sometimes it looks like the courage to release what I cannot repair. Sometimes it looks like the willingness to wake up to a new day and remain open to what He might do with the life still in front of me.

I once thought the goal was to arrive at a place where everything made sense.

Now I think the deeper invitation is to know God well enough to keep walking with Him when it doesn’t.

To trust Him with the unanswered questions.

To let Him meet me in the grief without demanding that the grief disappear.

To keep my heart open to love, to service, to beauty, to possibility.

To believe that the end of one chapter is not necessarily the end of the story.

And to remember that the God who was faithful then is the God who is faithful now.

I am not the same woman I was before these experiences. I have been changed by what I have loved, what I have lost, what I have learned, and what I am still learning to surrender.

Some of those changes came through joy. Others came at a cost I would never have chosen.

I am still grieving some things. I am still asking questions. I am still learning how to live well inside a story that has not unfolded as I expected.

But I am also still becoming.

And today, that is enough.

I do not need to understand every chapter to trust the Author. I do not need to see the whole road to take the next faithful step. And I do not need to return to the life I once knew to believe that God can bring purpose, beauty, and new life out of the one I am living now.

The story is not over.

By God’s grace, neither am I.