You know that saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans?”

Yeah.

I’m pretty sure he gets a really big kick out of me.

I have a love/hate relationship with planning. Largely because I have a LOT of plans—fun plans, ambitious plans, creative plans, adventurous plans—let’s just say I’ve got big, big, BIG plans.

Plans I think I could actually make happen.

So, I’ve spent my life attempting to do just that.

And tbh, I wasn’t doing too bad.

I was still married to my college sweetheart after 20-some years and we had two awesome kids that I didn’t just love, I also really LIKED. I had a successfulish blog I’d written for years and was building a bit of an Instagram following. I’d spent 20 years counseling in a thriving private practice when I took the offer to become a pastor at my church. In my eight years in that role, I had the privilege of preaching and speaking to thousands of people. I had wrote curriculum and group studies. I led an amazing team. I was part of the senior leadership of this church of almost 10,000 people. And I was working, once again, toward writing and publishing a manuscript.

Plans were HAPPENING.

But, unfortunately,

Other parts of my life were falling apart.

Until about twelve years ago, I used to believe that thing that all those hyper-positive life coaches say—what is it? “The only limits are in your mind?”

Yeah—I believed that wholeheartedly.

Until my daughter and I got sick.

And then I learned there are real, actual limits to what my body can and cannot do.

It all began when my daughter, who was in late elementary school at the time, had a couple of significant injuries that didn’t heal properly and began experiencing severe pain and fatigue and weakness that would not go away.

And just like that, at the age of ten, her life was forever shaped by pain and illness in such a way that it would never look “normal” again.

But the devastation didn’t stop there.

A few years after her injury, I also began experiencing odd, “undiagnosable” symptoms that snowballed over time to the point at which I was forced to step down from a job I loved and had worked incredibly hard for.

And I’m not gonna lie:

It SUCKED.

Yes, during that time I grappled with unimaginable losses.

BUT.

I was determined *I* was going to define how these things shaped me. I couldn’t control my daughter’s genetic disorders. I couldn’t control having a post-viral syndrome that attacked my nervous system. I couldn’t control how the toll of these illnesses dramatically affected the people around us.

But I could control how I responded.

THAT was up to ME.

*I* got to choose how this would form me spiritually, emotionally, psychologically.

I am now firmly in the middle years of life, have made an unexpected career change, and am quickly approaching the empty nest, all of which bring with them their own gains and losses.

But these losses don’t rattle me in quite the same way—perhaps because I’ve learned some important truths that serve to anchor me to my truest self, no matter how fast the current is flowing around me.

• I’ve learned that true significance is not building something that will “last forever,” it’s about planting seeds for the future.
• I’ve learned that transformation is a lot like the growth of one of those seeds—it involves death and is done in secret.
• I’ve learned that favor and promise and faith and calling can look different in different seasons.
• And I’ve learned that I can still serve the purpose for which I was designed, even if I never “accomplish” another darned thing.

This is me. Today.

RE|formed in the water and the flame and the layering and the breaking.

And friends, it can be YOU, too.

Join me, and let’s see what this next season has in store for YOU.

—Your RE|formation awaits.—