Day Seventy-Nine

BLAZE A TRAIL

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

—PSALM 119:105 ESV

A few years ago, I sat across the table in a coffee shop here in Nashville as a young single girl told me of her aches and pains and the faith issues that, in her mind, were directly related to her singleness. (I hear ya, sister.) She didn’t cry, but I held a napkin in my grip because I thought for sure she would at any moment. She told me stories—many that I felt she was pulling from my own journal as a twentysomething single Christian gal—and I told her what I never knew to tell myself.

“I know. It hurts. But God has not forgotten you. He is showing you His love for you, even now. Believe Him. Believe His Word. Believe His heart.”

I had just started writing publicly about my single life, and this girl had noticed. And she asked me, “Why now? What is it about this year that made you finally want to talk about it?”

“God,” I said. “He just made it clear this was the right time.”

Without hesitation, she said, “I’m so glad. We all need trailblazers. Now that I see that you’ve done this, I genuinely think I can do it too.”

I almost laughed. Trailblazer? Sister, if this is trailblazing, I am the most cut-up, ill-equipped, whiny leader a team has ever encountered.

“Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” I sing in my head as the tears pour and I push forward on this trail. To be honest, I never meant for this to be my path, but can my pain make it easier for someone else?

“We all need trailblazers. Now that I see that you’ve done this, I genuinely think I can do it too.”

You, my friend, married or single, female or male, you are blazing a trail with your life for the younger women and men behind you. They will have their own overgrowth to challenge them, and they will lead the way for others.

Because you are making a way for them, saving them some pain that your bloodied arms prove is real, and honoring their footsteps by providing a clear path.

You get the chance to live courageously. You were meant for it. You were born for it. It never feels easy, and it never is free. But it is what we want more than anything else.

Never forget as you step forward with your life that you are a trailblazer.

BE BRAVE: Where are you trailblazing?