Did your life turn out the way you planned?
Really think about that question and be honest.
When I was a kid, I had it all figured out. I was going to be a truck driver, travel the country, and get paid to see the world. It sounded like the perfect life.
Of course, as I grew up, my dreams changed.
I started noticing houses instead of highways. I loved seeing how people decorated them and imagining what I would do differently. So naturally...I joined the Army.
I know. That doesn't make much sense either.
But I knew the Army would pay for college, and at the time it seemed like the best path forward. Life has a funny way of taking us places we never expected.
Seventeen years later, I found myself medically retired from the military. I had served my country, led soldiers, deployed three times, and suddenly I was trying to figure out who I was without the uniform.
I became a realtor in El Paso, Texas. My husband and I owned a beautiful five-bedroom, three-bathroom home with a pool. We could swim for months out of the year, and from the outside it looked like we had everything.
I thought I had finally made it.
But appearances don't always tell the whole story.
The real estate business was okay. Not great, not terrible. My husband and I had slowly drifted into living separate lives under the same roof. I spent hours every day at the gym and even more hours at the real estate office. We weren't building a life together anymore—we were simply existing alongside each other.
Then life changed again.
My mom needed knee surgery. My stepdad was working on a farm while also going through dialysis three times a week. They needed help.
I packed my things and came back to Kansas to take care of them.
If I'm being truthful, helping my parents wasn't the only reason I came back.
It also gave me the courage to leave a marriage that had already been over for a long time.
Looking back now, I couldn't have planned any of this.
I never planned to join the Army.
I never planned to become a realtor.
I never planned to move back to Kansas.
I never planned to become a life coach.
Yet here I am.
Sometimes we spend so much time grieving the life we thought we were supposed to have that we miss the purpose waiting for us in the life we're actually living.
If you had told that little girl who wanted to drive a truck across America that one day she'd be coaching people through life's hardest transitions, writing books, and helping others discover their purpose, she probably would have laughed.
But God saw a path I couldn't see.
Maybe that's true for you too.
Your life may not have gone according to your plan.
That doesn't mean it has gone wrong.
Sometimes the detours become the very roads that lead us to our purpose.