I had coffee with my 20-year-old self.
She wanted a fancy coffee shop.
I said we’d go where the beans are harvested, roasted, and brewed.
She would have wanted a frappe, but she settled for piping hot black.
We sat together for a while.
Then she asked me a question I wasn’t quite prepared for.
“How are we?”
I smiled.
“Two decades past were nothing short of awesome,” I told her. “The journey to forty wasn’t easy, but it was worth every while.”
And it really was.There have been countless peaks and valleys since that last year in college.
We were heartbroken more times than we thought we could bear. We grieved more than once.
We thought we knew grief when Mama passed, but you’ll be surprised how much more we would cry our hearts out.
There would be losses we could never have anticipated at twenty. Some would have names. Some would not. Some would be spoken about openly; others would remain quietly tucked away in the heart.
But there would also be so much life.
We explored the world and its cultures. Our eyes have seen some of the most beautiful beaches and mountain ranges, and we met people speaking languages we never knew.
Our palate has tasted every possible flavor, and we learned that some things in life become an acquired taste.
If we weren’t discerning, we wouldn’t know the difference between artificial and authentic.
We learned that not everything beautiful is good for us.
Not everything that glitters is gold.
And not everything that looks like love is Love.
We had sand on our feet, sun on our face, wind in our hair.
A tattoo on the shoulder.
Solo biking everywhere.
Hiking mountains and mossy forests.
We’ve experienced them all.
But the most precious of all, we experienced – and continue to experience –
Love.
It is what has kept us moving forward.
Love in Every Season
In every peak and valley, there was Love.
Extending a hand.
Even carrying us.
In every grief, there was Love.
Crying by our side.
Whispering that it doesn’t have to make sense.
In every victory, there was Love.
Celebrating.
Cheering.
Smiling, silently assuring.
In every season, there was Love.
Even in the seasons I did not recognize it.
At twenty, we made a decision to live a life of celibacy.
We tried to be faithful, even in our unfaithfulness.
There was the heartbreak of leaving.
The searching for the lost soul.
The healing, and the longing to love again.
The relapses, and the holding on.
There was serving and giving our prime for mission.
There was a season when we thought that perhaps this was what our life would look like: given away in service, belonging entirely to God and to the people He entrusted to us.
And perhaps, in some ways, it was.
But God was not done writing our story.
There came a time when we finally opened our fragile heart once more.
We allowed ourselves to be found by someone suitable.
We said yes to forever.
And we discovered another kind of vocation – not one that replaced what came before, but one that grew from it.
Then came another kind of longing.
The inexpressible grief of barrenness.
There are prayers you pray with your whole body.
There are hopes that become so deeply woven into you that when they are taken away, it feels as though something inside you has been pulled out with them.
And yet, even there, there was Love.
There was becoming a second mother to a child born to another.
There was learning that motherhood does not always arrive through the door we imagined.
There was uprooting and replanting.
Learning to flourish in unfamiliar soil.
Learning that sometimes God answers a prayer in a way we could never have imagined for ourselves.
And sometimes, even an answered prayer has to be surrendered.
There was rejoicing for an answered prayer –
and letting it go.
What I Know at Forty
If I could tell my twenty-year-old self anything now, I don’t think I would warn her about the heartbreak.
I wouldn’t tell her about every valley ahead.
I wouldn’t try to spare her the grief.
Because if I took away every difficult thing, I would also take away some of the things those seasons taught us.
I would take away the discernment.
The courage.
The tenderness.
The capacity to recognize what is authentic.
The ability to love more freely, because we had learned what it meant to lose.
Most of all, I would take away the evidence of God’s faithfulness.
Because looking back, I can see something I couldn’t always see while I was living it:
Love has been the constant in every changing season.
Not every season was good.
Not every prayer was answered in the way I wanted.
Not every goodbye made sense.
Not every loss was redeemed in the way I imagined redemption should look.
But Love remained.
Sometimes Love looked like a person extending a hand.
Sometimes it looked like being carried when I could no longer walk.
Sometimes it looked like a child.
Sometimes it looked like a husband.
Sometimes it looked like a community.
Sometimes it looked like an open door.
Sometimes it looked like a closed one.
Sometimes it looked like being given what I prayed for.
And sometimes it looked like being given the grace to let it go.
But it was there.
Always there.
Looking Ahead
“What do you want me to remember?”
I almost forgot she was there.
My twenty-year-old self was sitting quietly across from me, listening.
Fearful, but hopeful.
I looked at her and thought about all the years she had yet to live.
All the people she had yet to love.
All the places she had yet to see.
All the grief she had yet to endure.
All the joy she had yet to discover.
All the ways God would surprise her.
I could tell her to be brave.
To trust more.
To worry less.
To make better decisions.
To avoid certain mistakes.
But perhaps she wouldn’t listen anyway.
So I gave her the only advice I could think of.
“Get as much caffeine as you can.
And take heart.
It was quite a ride.”
And then I looked toward the next forty years.
Still hopeful.
Still a little fearful.
Still learning.
Still becoming.
God’s favorite daughter, still.
