Your Story Isn’t Finished.

When many of us reach our 40s, we often look back on our lives and what we have accomplished up to this point. Where am I at in my career, how many lives have I touched (influenced), do I have the family I dreamed of as a child, have I seen and done as much as I had hoped by this age, do I have a nest egg set aside for retirement, am I as far along in my life spiritually, emotionally and physically as I should be…? Some people could answer that they are pleased with where they are at in their lives at this point. Others of us, however, are left disappointed and not anywhere near where we expected to be.

When I was a little girl I imagined that by age 40, I would still be happily married, have children who thought the world of me and live in a big white picket-fenced home with a couple of dogs. I was going to be a scientist and travel all over the world (I love to travel) and see exotic places I had only read about. I was going to win people to Christ and possibly even write a book and change the world. I was going to take the world on by storm! (I am a first-born, can you tell?)

However, I find myself at age 45, divorced, raising two (wonderful but difficult) boys alone who are at the age where the “You-know-nothing” and, “I-can’t-wait-to-get-out-of-this-house-and-live-on- my-own” attitude takes over. I am in a dead-end job (though I love what I do) and had to take a BIG pay cut (and cut in hours) when my previous employer retired and closed his practice.

In college, I could not pass chemistry though I got very high grades in biology, anatomy and physiology, so there went my chances for the medical technology program and my dreams of being a scientist in a lab. Like many others, we are struggling financially and have to trust the Lord to provide for all of our needs. I have a very small savings and no chance for retirement. Ever. I worked my way up through the first three jobs I had after becoming a single parent and got a pretty decent paying job after all of that hard work and determination, only to have to go backwards several steps. Talk about a collision of reality and dreams!

I did, however, write that book but here it is one year later, and it still has not taken off. Don’t get me wrong, I am VERY thankful that God even gave me the opportunity to share my testimony through my book and that he worked out all of the details for me to (self) publish it. It has reached a few hundred people at most but my dream of writing a book still did come to pass.

To be honest, I have always been a big dreamer. I had big plans for my life. I am a very passionate person and work 200% at everything I do. None of this half-way stuff with me. Nope, I do it all big and I do it right. I always heard that if you work hard enough, have a strong work ethic and do what you are passionate about, then you will succeed. It is clear that someone like me would not be happy with selling a few hundred copies of a book that took 2.5 years to write and sat on my shelf for another 2.5 years unpublished. The countless hours praying for anointing over the book seemed to fall on deaf ears.

I was so discouraged at one point while writing the manuscript that I literally threw it in the trash can. Two days later, I was walking down the hall at church and ran into someone I did not even know very well or even talk to that much and he told me specifically to keep on writing the book I was working on and not to give up because this is what he strongly felt that God was leading me to do and I was on the right path. I then decided that I needed to continue going on forward with it even though I wanted to give up at that point.

Looking back, I am thankful that I listened to that advice and got that book published. Did it change the world? No. However, if it encouraged 100 people and changed one life for Christ, then there was some purpose in it and it was still the right thing to do. I realize now that I probably needed to downscale my huge ideas and aspirations a bit to something more realistic. Sometimes we get carried away in what we think our lives ought to look like. Some of us even feel like we have to fill the shoes of Wonder Woman or Superman in order to make our mark in the world when in fact, God uses us to make our mark in the world in all kinds of ways, big and small.

Over the past ten years of my “career” as a single mom, I have learned quite a bit and come to realize that everywhere God has placed me (my neighborhood, my church, my family & the different jobs I have had), is right where he wants to use me to make an impact. Even if it is as simple as encouraging someone at work who is at the end of their rope or just being a listening ear to someone who needs it or maybe just merely noticing someone’s existence who feels invisible is changing a part of the world. Most importantly, just being there for your children and showing them they mean the world to you and encouraging them has a huge impact on them, which in turn can impact their future as well as many other people with whom they come into contact.

Some of us are so occupied with wanting to make such a huge mark in this world that we forget the small world around us that needs our impact just as much. Great impact starts with one person, then another and then before you know it, the impact of one single person has rippled out and affected many people.

I wasted too many years being disappointed that I have not been able to do more, help more, be more and experience more. I hope that you too learn that where you are in life is exactly where you are meant to be at this point in your life. Nothing more, nothing less. With hard work, determination, prayer and the right attitude, you have the potential to go far. But your idea and God’s idea of what is “big” may be two very different things. He can see so much more than we can see. Our minds are so small in comparison to his. All we can see is the here and now and what we have gone through in the past, but God sees all of that PLUS the future and he is not done with us yet. Life is not over yet. There is still hope and things can change overnight. So, don’t give up.

God gave me a promise earlier this year in Philippians 1:6 which says, “God began doing a good work in you, and I am sure he will continue it until it is finished when Jesus Christ comes again.” What an encouragement to my soul when I really needed it! Just when I thought I had taken so many steps backwards and longed for something more to come out of my life, I began to see with a fresh new set of “eyes” that the story of my life is not yet complete. Even if my life is not what I thought or hoped it would be by now, it will be the story that God wanted it to be when I reach the end of my days. One day, we will be able to say that our lives turned out beautiful, even with all the junk we had to go through.

And that, my friend, is something to be excited about! J