Feeling a Bit Lost in a "Perfect" World—14 Years Later

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Fourteen years ago, I wrote a blog post called Feeling a Bit Lost in a "Perfect" World.

I recently read that post again for the first time in years.

As I read it, I didn't want to change a word. 

She wrote honestly about what she knew then. And she was right. She just wasn't finished.


If I could sit down with the younger version of myself today, I don't think I'd have all the answers for her.

But there are a few things I'd want her to know. 

She couldn't have known then that acceptance isn't a place you arrive. It's something that keeps growing, quietly, often without you even noticing. 

I'd tell her that joy and grief aren't opposites. Sometimes they sit side by side at the same kitchen table. 

One day she'll understand that.

She'll grieve leaving Indiana and the home and life we've built there. At the very same time, she'll receive the priceless gift of helping care for my mom during the last year and a half of her life. Looking back, I can't separate the sorrow from the blessing. They arrived together. 

I'd tell her that "perfect" matters less and less with time.

Most of all, I'd tell her that the life she once mourned would become the life she wouldn't trade.

Not because it became easier, but because somewhere between therapies, graduations, guardianships, losses, and unexpected joys, I stopped wishing for someone else's story.

But I'd need the reminder too.

Fourteen years later, I'm still learning. I'm still growing. I'm still discovering new ways God is widening my perspective.

As I've been writing this, I keep thinking about a T-shirt my mom gave me when I was a young teenager. It said, "Be patient. God isn't finished with me yet."

I was absolutely mortified. 

Over the years, it became a family joke. We'd laugh about that shirt whenever it came up.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped laughing at the message.

I wonder if my mom saw something in me that I wouldn't come to see in myself for many years.

I have no doubt that someday I'll look back on the woman writing these words today with the same tenderness I now feel for the woman who wrote them fourteen years ago.

Because God wasn't finished with her.

And He's not finished with me either.

Maybe that's what I wish I could have told her all along.

She wasn't lost after all. 

Neither am I.


If you'd like to read the original post from 2012 that inspired this conversation, you can find it here:

Feeling a Bit Lost in a "Perfect" World.

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