Your growth as a person is not contingent upon everything unfolding perfectly.
Your growth as a person is not dependent on how seamlessly you can manage all the moving parts around you.
It is not going to be the result of whether or not the entire world bends to your will at all times.
It will not be born out of your sheer desire to move what’s unmovable, change what’s already been done, or control what’s distinctly out of your hands.
Your growth is contingent upon your response to those things. It is contingent upon how you learn to adapt. It is contingent upon whether you see setbacks as failures or opportunities.
Growth is not always a constant forward motion.
Sometimes, growth is staying still.
Sometimes, growth is deep rest.
Sometimes, growth is stopping to reconsider where you’re headed.
Sometimes, growth is letting yourself settle, sometimes it is letting yourself blossom, sometimes, it is learning how to appreciate what’s already good in your life — because there is so much that you forget about.
It’s hard to imagine that we’re on the right course when everything is upended and we don’t know which direction is forward.
It’s hard to imagine that we aren’t forever going to be at the whim of the world around us and everything that can go right and wrong within it.
We often think that we can measure and manage our progress in life by how many things we can do correctly in succession of one another.
What we don’t realize is that it is the gaps, the stops, the pauses, the unexpected that gives us the real fertile breeding ground of our lives.
Even if you are not where you thought you’d be, you are still where you are meant to be.
That’s what you have to remember.
Every single season of your life presents a purpose, a lesson, a step toward your ultimate destiny.
What really measures our progress in life is whether we see the valleys as failures or simply pathways to the peaks.
What really shifts in our consciousness is whether we think of our lives separated into pieces that were “right” and pieces that were “wrong,” and instead viewing the entire thing as this interwoven, living experience that offered us a different type of breakthrough at each turn.
The truth is that everything you went through before this was preparing you for right now.
Everything you are going through right now is preparing you for the future you asked for.
I know that it is easy to feel as though your life has been irrevocably changed because, in a way, it has.
But you are going to decide what that change means for you.
You are going to decide whether in this season you find gratitude and connection and deep rest and healing. You are going to decide whether in this season you find bitterness and resentment and the readiness to give up.
Sometimes, the path bows in a direction we didn’t expect.
That does not mean we have to change our final destination.
It only means there is something in the wilderness that it is imperative for us to see.
