Forty
This month, I turned forty.
Like many milestone birthdays, it has invited me into a season of reflection. We often treat the changing of a decade as though it marks the end of one person and the beginning of another, but that isn’t how this feels to me. I carry the younger version of myself into this new decade: the dreamer, the risk-taker, the woman who said yes before she knew exactly how it would all work out. I also carry the woman shaped by disappointment, grief, unexpected joy, restoration, and quiet faithfulness. I wouldn't trade either of them. They both belong here reminding me that growth rarely happens the way we imagine it will.
The woman I was in my twenties and thirties still has a place here. I wouldn’t trade any version of her because each one has shaped the woman stepping into forty.
I had been thinking about this birthday long before it arrived. Even six months ago, as we welcomed the new year, I had already imagined how I wanted to celebrate. I had a picture in my mind of what would make this milestone meaningful and memorable. It all seemed so clear.
As it turns out, almost none of it happened.
Instead, life unfolded in ways I couldn’t have planned. Schedules shifted, opportunities emerged, conversations happened, relationships deepened, and what I thought I wanted quietly gave way to something entirely different. Looking back now, I can honestly say that what I experienced was better than anything I could have orchestrated myself because it was exactly what my soul needed, even if I didn’t know enough to ask for it. This realization has lingered with me.
The older I get, the more I recognize how often I mistake what I want for what I need. I make plans, create expectations, and imagine outcomes, only to discover that experience has a way of revealing something deeper. It isn’t until I’ve lived through a season, taken the time to reflect on why it unfolded the way it did, and paid attention to what it awakened in me that I begin to understand the gift that was waiting beneath the surface all along.
Reflection has become less about looking backward with nostalgia and more about asking better questions.
The question I keep coming back to: What does your soul need from you today?
Not next month when life slows down. Not after the next project is finished or the next milestone is reached. Today.
Some days the answer is courage. Other days it is rest, presence, forgiveness, discipline, or simply making enough space to notice what is happening around me instead of rushing toward whatever comes next. The answer changes, but the practice of asking has become one of the greatest gifts I can give myself.
This year will undoubtedly hold significant milestones. There will be moments worth celebrating, opportunities I cannot yet see, dreams fulfilled, and new challenges waiting just beyond the horizon. Yet woven between all of those moments will be the beautiful ordinariness of everyday life: early mornings before the house wakes up, conversations around the dinner table, school schedules, work meetings, long to-do lists, practices, emails, and the countless routines that rarely feel remarkable while we’re living them. It is these ordinary moments that sustain me.
The day-to-day is where trust is built, where relationships are strengthened, where character is formed, and where future opportunities quietly take root long before anyone else can see them. We often celebrate the breakthrough while overlooking the thousands of faithful moments that made it possible. Mountains are rarely moved in a single dramatic moment; they are moved through consistent steps taken over time.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons I am carrying into forty.
I don’t need to have every answer before taking the next step. I don’t need to force every outcome or cling too tightly to the version of life I imagined six months ago. More often than not, life has proven that what unfolds is richer, wiser, and kinder than anything I could have designed for myself if I remain open enough to receive it.
As I reflect on this month and this new decade, I don’t see forty as a finish line or even as a fresh beginning. Instead, it feels like another invitation to continue becoming the person God has been shaping all along, carrying forward every lesson that has brought me here while remaining open to everything still ahead.
And if there is one truth I hope never to forget, it is this: we rarely leap into the life we are meant to live. We arrive there exactly the way we always have, one faithful, ordinary, grace-filled step at a time.