“I didn’t want to go online to meet someone.” A friend said to me once. I could see hurt and sadness in her eyes. When everyone else seems to naturally “bump into” their soulmate, it feels awful to have to work at it. It’s like you’re that one sock that comes out of the drier without a match.
“This wasn’t the plan.” A former student said to me, when the job she’d counted on, fell through. We often don’t know how much we’ve invested of ourselves into our plans, until they fall a part. Especially when those plans have to do with our career.
When everyone else seems to naturally “bump into” their soulmate, it feels awful to have to work at it.
Then recently, my own words were spoken back to me as a close friend had received some difficult news. I could tell she was crying. Over the phone, she said,
“This isn’t the story I wanted.”
I said those very same words to Tony when I left ministry. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, there is a story we’re all trying to tell with our lives. Only, it doesn’t always go the way we want it to.
After 2020, we all know this.
Yet that doesn’t take the sting out of the stories we don’t get to live. The ones we worked out in our hearts. The ones we envisioned so clearly in our heads.
Many of us have entered into 2021 afraid to dream. Unable to plan. Not only because of the restrictions we all must live under during this time, but also because we’re still feeling the loss of what was “supposed to be.” Some of us are broken hearted and we don’t even realize it.
We’re still feeling the loss of what was “supposed to be.”
The grieving that began with the first plans we had to cancel back in March, still lingers. We miss our people. We miss our pre-pandemic lives. Yet we’re still living. And though none of us chose it, right now,
We are in the story we’re meant to live.
So while we each need to figure out how to give ourselves space to grieve our individual and collective losses, we also need to keep living. To seek out what mental, emotional, and physical healthiness looks like. To show up to the jobs we have the best we can. And most importantly, to stay connected to our people. This is our story right now.
This is our story right now.
It’s not the one we planned. For many of us, it’s not the one we want. But in the midst of all this hard, we do have the opportunity to make it good. To make the most of what is. To redeem what was lost by being open to what can be.
For me, friends, the first step in this process of owning my story in 2021, looks like filling out my Start Here 2021. It’s a free resource I’ve created to give us a space to grieve, a place to be grateful, and also, some questions to help us refocus and return to what is most important for us this season. If you haven’t downloaded your copy, click here to sign up to have it delivered to your email inbox.
