I was lamenting to the husband how this year has deviated rather dramatically from what I thought it to be on January 1st.

And I’m still pivoting with each “surprise” that come my way. But if I were to look back on what my twenties had taught me about living unconventionally is so that my life would be full of story, His story.

We talk about the idea of empathy a lot in this day and age. I do think it has been a bit misconstrued. Empathy is not quite some kind of a nice positive feeling. It’s reaching into your own personal story, one laced with pain, and be able to lend it to someone to see faith, hope and love in their current darkness. Compassion, is the resulting cognitive action, because you have been through it you can take others through it.

For you’ve chosen to live that pain head on once and many times — even when you have run out of tears, to get to the other side, and when you have seen and tasted how He has taken you out of it over and over… and over.

It blows you away every time how little you know, or you really don’t know better, and hopefully desire for lesser control each time and let Him. In this perennial pain, it’s hard to see but there is, and there is, also an endless depth and deepening of a love story like no other.

And so yes, I was so ready to jump.

Entering 2019, I was so ready to build this next year, next season in Denver — I had it all so lined up, falling in love with Colorado and making dreams for it. Until I was told in March we were to be moved to the other side of the country, it’d mean we’d be back living out of our suitcases until Fall or who knows.

I had thought I would be wrapping up my documentary of two long years in April, and I was so ready to get on with my new business venture and season, but I was informed in April the film will need more time before we could wrap in summer, at least. It’s hard to fully articulate the implications of this for me, but there is a reason why most women called to media or leadership have to do life, marriage, babies differently, but often also judged for ‘falling out of line’. A woman’s calling is far more nuanced.

So no, nobody died or nothing is quite the end of the world. Incomparably bad things are happening around the world. It’s kind of just like the first half of 2019 has gone by for me like a time warp — and the word that comes to my mind is working through “false starts” — to regain the composure to start again without losing your sharpness, fight, resilience or belief.

This is not quite the same as waiting. As there is nothing like the pain of one who had worked hard for years to be wrongly passed on a promotion, or a woman who had miscarry, or to lose a young child to cancer, or be widowed as a newly wed, or an athlete at his peak then losing a limb. They were all so ready to jump. There is often no words to say to these anguish.

To each their own, this is journey, without which there is almost no point of being on earth. One thing I’ve learned — and as the Word says — to count it pure joy, for the journey should always lead you back to that very pure and sweet joy between you and Him. For me, I find that on the road with Him. It’s why I travel — for there is nothing the road cannot heal. Especially in all that feels like false starts in life. When I am at that place, I take to the road raw. What is yours? That go-to thing that brings you to that pureness.

As for me, the nearness of my God is my good.