“It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
—Rumi
When we’re young, we spend a lot of time planning our lives. We look for someone to plan it with. We look for friends to complete it, kids to enhance it, careers to enrich it. We work hard at making all that happen. But life has a way of upending our carefully made plans, and all of a sudden, we can find ourselves having to redesign our lives all over again.
There are examples of that everywhere you look. I have friends whose worlds were pretty much destroyed by addiction, but who then put the drugs down and learned for the first time how to live without destroying themselves and others. No matter how old they are when they stop, they learn the tools to turn everything around. I’ve also seen women leave abusive marriages and learn that being loved doesn’t have to mean being hurt. I’ve seen kids overcome poverty and be the first in their families to go to college. I’ve seen people who’ve lost everything pick themselves up and start over. I’ve seen people make huge life mistakes, but then recognize it, take responsibility, make amends to those they’ve hurt, and move on, stronger and better.
In each of these cases, turning their lives around required the courage to face the fear of the unknown. It takes courage to push up against the way it is or the way it has been. It takes courage to push back and be creative with the gift of life. But that’s exactly what building a life of our own requires: thinking outside the box, being creative, being flexible, facing the fear of the unknown, stepping into it, and being willing to start over.
Several years ago, I found myself having to re-create my own life. I had to step into the unknown and sit there. It was terrifying. I can’t tell you I enjoyed it, but I can say I learned that I could re-imagine, re-construct, and re-build my life. And every day I continue to do it.
As Steve Jobs pointed out, life can either be limiting, safe, and secure or it can be wide open, creative, and sometimes scary.
Your life is yours to create and then re-create. As Mr. Jobs said, “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it.”
And once you realize that, he said, “you’ll never be the same again.”
Dear God, you are the God of transformation. Help me to be brave. Help me to trust you and believe that I am here to write my life story in a way that brings glory to you and joy to myself and to others. Amen.