Loss redirected me.
I thought I knew what life was about — until loss hit me in the face. And then it came again. And again. For years I was alone and wondering what all of it was meant to teach me.
Why? Why so many? Why all the people who really knew me? How do I start again? What is the purpose of all this pain? How do I turn it around?
I prayed the only prayer I had left: Please, God — make sense of this for me. Move me forward. Create something beautiful out of my ashes.
For a long time, I stayed stuck in that question. I kept looking backward — at everything I'd lost, everyone who was gone, the woman I used to be. I thought healing meant sitting in the pain until it finally made sense. So I sat. And I waited. And I waited to be rescued from it.
But here is what I slowly came to understand, and what I want to give you today:
The rescue I was waiting for was never going to come from behind me, in the form of an explanation for the pain. The rescue was ahead of me. The future itself — the life still waiting to be built — that was the rescue.
I had been seeing my future as more of the same pain. But the day everything began to change was the day I started to see the future differently: not as a place where the hurt continued, but as the place where I would finally be free of it. A place worth walking toward.
Healing, it turns out, isn't found by staring at your wounds. It's found by lifting your eyes to something beyond yourself. Beyond your pain. When you can see something bigger than what you've lost — a purpose, a calling, another person who needs you — that is when your feet finally start to move again.
For me, it was another woman. Somewhere in all of it, a quiet, insistent thought grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go: How can I help another hurting woman? That question pulled me out of the pit when nothing else could. Because the moment my pain became something I could give — instead of only something I carried — it stopped being wasted. It became the very thing I had to offer.
Around that same time, I came across a line that hit my heart and never left it:
That was it. That was the whole shift, in one sentence. I had spent so long waiting — to be invited, to be chosen, to be rescued, to be handed a reason. And I finally understood: no one was coming to hand me a new life. I was meant to build one.
So I did. Not the life I lost — that one was gone, and no amount of waiting would bring it back. A different one. A bigger one. Built on everything the pain had taught me, and poured out toward the women walking the road I'd already traveled.
If you are stuck right now — looking backward, waiting to be rescued, waiting for the pain to make sense before you're allowed to move — hear me gently:
You don't have to be over it to move forward. You just have to take the next step.
Stop begging for a seat at a table that was never going to feed you. Lift your eyes to the future — not as a place of more pain, but as the place where your rescue is waiting. Then take one step toward it.
That step is the beginning of your healing. And the beautiful thing God makes from your ashes? It's already on its way. 🤍
If the grief ever feels too heavy to carry, please reach out — to someone you trust, or a counselor who can walk closely with you. Moving forward doesn't mean moving alone.