I once thought healing would come with all the answers. That eventually I would understand why certain people hurt me. Why some stayed only long enough to leave a mark. Why I fought so hard for things that were already slipping through my hands.
I thought if I could understand it all, I could finally put it down.
But my healing was never hiding inside the answers.
Maybe it was waiting for the moment I stopped asking the questions.
There are things I may never understand.
Conversations I will never get to have. Apologies I may never hear. Versions of the story that will always belong to someone else.
And now, I can live with that.
Not everything needs to make sense before I am allowed to continue.
Some things simply happened.
Some things hurt.
Some things changed me.
And some things I carried much longer than they deserved to be carried.
So I am putting them down.
Not because they didn't matter.
Because they did.
They mattered enough to become these pages.
But they do not get to become everything that comes after them.
And something did come after them.
I found a job.
I got a place of my own.
A place where my children and I could walk through the door and finally say,
We're home.
Those may sound like ordinary things to someone else.
To me, they are everything.
Because there were days when I couldn't see this life from where I was standing.
There were doors I knocked on that never opened. Times I heard no. Times I wondered how many more disappointments I could take before I stopped trying altogether.
But I kept knocking.
And that is something I want anyone reading these pages to remember:
A door can slam in your face and still not be the end of the hallway.
Knock on another one.
And another.
And another.
Cry if you need to. Rest when you're tired. Be disappointed when something doesn't work out.
But don't mistake a closed door for a finished story.
Keep trying.
Because sometimes life doesn't fall into place all at once.
Sometimes it happens piece by piece, so quietly that you don't realize you're rebuilding until one day you look around and see how far you've come.
I believe God has a plan for each of us.
I also believe his timing doesn't always look like ours.
There were things I prayed for that didn't happen when I wanted them to. There were moments when I couldn't understand why I was being asked to wait. There were losses I would never have chosen.
But looking back, I can see that the waiting wasn't empty.
I was changing inside it.
I was learning.
I was becoming ready for a life I couldn't see yet.
Maybe some doors stayed closed because they weren't mine to walk through.
Maybe some endings had to happen so there would finally be room for something new.
I don't have all the answers.
I don't think I need them anymore.
What I have is a job.
A home.
My children.
My faith.
And another morning waiting for me.
There is still so much of my life I haven't met yet.
For once, that doesn't scare me.
It feels like possibility.
So if you're reading this from a place where nothing seems to be working, where every door seems locked and you're wondering how much longer you're supposed to keep trying,
please keep going.
Your life can look completely different from the place where you're standing right now.
Keep knocking.
Keep believing.
Keep showing up for yourself.
Trust that what is meant for you will find you when the time is right.
And when that door finally opens,
walk through it.
You fought hard enough to get there.