Giving up the life I thought I wanted

Finding the life I actually love (and how you can too)

In my junior year of high school we did this activity where we answered a questionnaire about our futures and someone received the questionnaire anonymously and made us a “story of our life” type of book. Mine was so perfect I held onto it for a long time.

In my imagined future I was sipping lattes on rooftop cafes and living in a condo in New York City (hello, publishing central) with floor to ceiling windows. Of course, this life would be full of exotic travel but New York was home base. I was a New York Times best-selling fiction author in dreamland busy writing adorable romantic books. I had a wardrobe that perfectly matched the “light academia” working woman aesthetic on Pinterest. I was married to someone who looked like Justin Bieber. (Or maybe actually…it was him.)

High school me would be horrified to learn that the career woman she dreamt of being at that time now lives in the land of front porch swings and sweet tea. Not only that, but I married a man who says, “y’all” and shoots a shotgun. With a baby on my hip most days, I consider it “exotic travel” when I get to run a few errands alone.

I traded in those big dreams slowly while making little decisions about who I wanted to become.

I love the way I get to say goodbye to my husband at the door every day and the way our dog runs and baby crawls to greet him eagerly when he gets home. One of the most beautiful views to me will always be the way the sun shifts through the leaves of the trees each night right before sunset in our backyard. My kitchen table is always adorned with fresh flowers from my flower garden that gets bigger and wilder each year. I write nonfiction because while I was getting a Creative Writing degree I realized I just couldn’t stop telling the truth. I worked in an office once—and hated it. I prefer my sweatpants, coffee and candles burning in my home office.

The life I have now was a life I couldn’t have thought to dream of in highschool. I know this now. But it also scares me that the life I may have later is one I can’t dream of right now.

When we look back on our lives we all know that life often takes us to unexpected places. Most of us have moments that defined us in unexpected ways. Moments we never anticipated that made us take a sharp turn in direction. That clear vision we thought we had turns fuzzy. Something that we used to think of as foreign or wrong is suddenly what we choose. We surprise ourselves.

I think about biblical examples of transformation and think of stories like the epic Saul to Paul transformation. On the road to Damascus, Saul encounters Jesus and is radically changed forever. Sometimes, I think we expect transformation in our lives to look like this.

Instead, I think it’s usually slower, less radical, and painfully longer. Our minds are renewed and we are transformed day by day, moment by moment.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

Transformation tends to happen against the backdrop of ordinary life.

We decide to pick up the phone when a friend calls even when it’s an inconvenient time. We apologize to our spouse for something we would normally let slide. We forget the to-dos and dive into creative work (worship, really) instead. We pause and listen instead of interrupting someone who we disagree with.

Instead of hitting milestones or climbing a ladder of transformation it’s more like a sunrise—it keeps getting lighter even when we can’t measure it.

Change isn’t always changing where we work, who we hang out with, or where we live. It can be a shift in our values, a change in our desires or longings, a new lens we see the world through or a new way to feel a sense of purpose. The internal shift might change those external things but it might not be so obvious in the day to day.

The dreams I had at eighteen were big and bold. But the life I have now is rich in a way that I never could have dreamt of back then.

And perhaps that is the beauty of giving ourselves permission to change—to let go of what we thought we wanted and embrace the unexpected gifts that come when we allow ourselves to surprise ourselves.

In our backyard in Franklin, TN celebrating our son’s first birthday!