Hey love… just curious…Did you have a picture in your head of what your life would look like at 39??
I did!!
It was so clear!! So certain!! So perfectly mapped out in the way that only a younger version of myself could have pictured…with total confidence and absolutely no idea what is actually coming!!
I thought I would be happily married. Watching my kids grow up. Spending birthdays surrounded by the people I loved most in the world…
Instead I am sitting here at 39 in a brand new city where I barely know anybody. My kids are across the country and we don’t really speak. The life I planned looks nothing…not even a little bit…like the life I am actually living!!
And somehow??
I am more hopeful than I have ever been!!
What I Have Learned About Life at 39
It does not go as planned…Not even close!!
But here is what I know with everything in me…
God has a bigger plan than anything we could ever imagine or come up with on our own!! His vision for our lives is so far beyond what our human minds can conceive that sometimes the only way He can get us there is by dismantling everything we thought we wanted.
That is not punishment…That is redirection!!
And sometimes redirection looks like loss. It looks like starting over. It looks like packing up your entire life and driving cross country to a city where you know nobody…with nothing but faith, a fresh start and a coffee addiction you have zero intentions of breaking!! 😄
The Things I Did Not Plan For
This year I got a phone call from my daughter!!
Five years of silence and then one day…her voice!! An hour and a half of conversation that felt like coming home. I did not plan for that. I did not see it coming…But God did!!
This year I walked into a cathedral on one of my hardest mornings with nothing in my pockets and everything heavy on my heart…and a stranger stopped me in the parking lot. Prayed over me and told me God sees me and has a plan!!
I cried like I have not cried in years!!
Not from sadness…From grace!!
Because in that moment I understood something that 25-year-old Renée could never have understood…
The best things in my life have never been the things I planned…They have always been the things that surprised me.
What I Would Tell My Younger Self
If I could go back and say one thing to my younger self it would be this…
Don’t put yourself in a box. Don’t put yourself on the back burner. You deserve happiness!! You deserve true love!! You deserve a life that feels like YOU…not the life you think you are supposed to have!!
Stop waiting for permission to be exactly who you are.
Stop making yourself smaller so other people feel comfortable.
Stop saving your best self for someday!!
Someday is now!! Someday is 39!! Someday is this exact moment…messy and uncertain and more beautiful than anything planned!! 🌸
What 39 Actually Feels Like
39 feels like new beginnings.
It feels like doors that are slowly opening.
It feels like possibilities I have never dreamed of.
And if this birthday has taught me anything it is this…
The chapters that start with no plan at all are always the ones worth reading. 🌸🩷
Pull up a chair love. There’s coffee, and the best chapter is just beginning!! 🩷
Xoxo, Renée
