You Are Not Behind: How to Start Building a Life You Love TodaySample

Day 1: How Did I Get Here?

I lay on my bed and stared at another popcorn ceiling. The ceiling started to blur as tears ran down my cheeks.

In my mid-twenties, I had just moved into my eighth house in eight years, with my thirteenth roommate—wait, make that fourteenth roommate, another one had just married. I really hoped this most recent move would be the last one for a while. But there I was. Different roommate. Different popcorn ceiling. But the same feelings hovered just beneath the surface:

How did this become my life?

Did I miss something?

Am I ever going to be where I want to be?

The five-year plan I’d mentally made for my life did not include having a million roommates, moving every year, living in my hometown, being single, dumping my life savings into a hand-me-down car, and working a job I sort of hated. It featured a cute husband, maybe a kid or two, a house we owned, a golden retriever, and a white SUV with tan leather interior and a sunroof.

I couldn’t understand why God wasn’t cosigning the life plan I had written—especially since he seemed to be doing that for everyone else I knew. That simultaneously made me question him and myself.

Have you ever felt this way? As though you got stuck with a life you never wanted? As if everyone but you seemed to have gotten the memo on how to get what you want?

Though it’s been years since I cried and stared at that particular popcorn ceiling, I’ll confess something to you: My life still doesn’t look anything like I thought it would at this point.

Many days I’m disappointed by my reality because my circumstances haven’t yet been tied up in a pretty bow. Maybe you have similar circumstances you wish were different. Or maybe a gap exists between where you are and where you want to be, but you just aren’t sure what you can do about it. If this is true for you, I want to invite you to go there with me, because I think we may both come out the other side a little better than we started.

Because today, I can say with full confidence that even though I don’t have everything I want, I deeply love my life.

While I was busy wishing for so many things to be different, God filled my life with more joy than I could’ve dared to imagine possible. Not because I cracked the code to happiness or manipulated myself into delusional optimism with Band-Aid Bible verse answers. But because I realized true satisfaction can be found between where you are and where you want to be.

What if we are missing the best parts of our lives because we are too busy looking around us?

Hebrews 12:1 says God has marked a race for us to run, but we get exhausted from chasing the lives of people around us. We’re running endless laps around a track trying to keep up with people who had different starting points. Not to mention, we have our own junk—that is, our sin—weighing us down and making us want to numb out.

The race of life is not actually a competition. We’re not stacked up against each other. You aren’t losing, and the person running their race near you isn’t winning. The race features runners going in different directions, at different paces, facing different hurdles along the way. But the finish line is the same: eternity with Jesus. When we take our eyes off him to focus on the racers around us, we can trip, get hurt, or throw ourselves off course.

But when we focus on what God has given us, we find a better way to live—a way to stop endlessly striving to catch up.

Right here in the middle of the messy and mundane, something bigger is at play.

Your life matters.

Right now. Today. Not tomorrow. Not someday. Not when you get to another season or destination. And I don’t want you to miss it.

In these next seven days, we will explore how to begin building a life you love without having everything you want.