The Hard Years

I used to think the hardest years of my life were behind me.

They were the years of hiding. The years of trying to become the person everyone else needed me to be. The years spent earning love, proving my worth, and convincing myself that if I could just be enough, I would finally belong.

I was wrong.

The hardest years are these.

They are harder because they came after I finally told the truth.

There is an unspoken promise our culture likes to make about authenticity. Tell the truth. Be yourself. Live courageously. Everything will fall into place.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it falls apart.

No one prepares you for the grief of becoming yourself.

No one tells you that liberation can feel lonely before it feels free.

No one warns you that you can lose people who once promised they would always love you—not because you stopped loving them, but because you finally stopped pretending.

If I were naming this chapter of my life, I would call it The Hard Years because I am living in a place I never expected to be. I have spent my entire adult life caring for others. I preached hope to grieving families. I stood beside hospital beds. I baptized babies. I buried saints. I reminded people that God was still with them when life made no sense.

Now I wake up some mornings needing to hear those same sermons myself.

There is a peculiar loneliness in discovering that the words you once preached with confidence have become prayers you whisper simply to make it through another day.

The losses have not all come at once. They have arrived quietly, one after another, like waves that never quite stop reaching the shore.

Some relationships disappeared.

Others became polite versions of what they once were.

Dreams I had spent decades building suddenly belonged to someone I no longer was.

Even my reflection changed.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and smile because, after sixty-three years, I finally recognize the person looking back.

Other times I wonder why becoming myself had to cost so much.

Those two truths somehow coexist.

That is what these years have taught me.

Life is rarely one thing.

Joy and grief often sit at the same table.

Hope and despair sometimes share the same heartbeat.

I wish I could tell you this essay ends with everything resolved. I wish I could write about reconciliation, about dreams fulfilled, about the moment every piece of my life finally settled into place.

But that would be dishonest.

I am still in the middle of the story.

I am still trying to find my way through it.

Some mornings it takes everything I have just to get out of bed.

Not because I don’t want to live.

Because living requires courage I didn’t know I would need every single day.

There are days when taking a shower feels like climbing a mountain.

Days when answering the phone feels impossible.

Days when silence becomes so loud that I turn on music simply to remind myself that beauty still exists somewhere in the world.

Those are the days I have stopped trying to conquer.

I simply survive them.

For years I believed survival was a disappointing goal.

Now I know survival is sacred.

Survival is what makes tomorrow possible.

People often ask what has gotten me through these years.

The truthful answer is that I am still discovering it.

Some days, it is writing.

Writing is where I stop performing and start telling the truth.

Every sentence is another refusal to disappear.

Every page reminds me that my life is more than the worst thing I have experienced or the deepest loss I have endured.

Stories have become a way of believing that broken things can still become beautiful.

Other days it is my camera.

Photography has taught me something I never expected.

Light is patient.

It waits.

It slips through clouds when you are convinced the sky has forgotten how.

It finds cracks in old buildings and turns ordinary streets into something holy.

Perhaps grace works the same way.

It doesn’t erase the darkness.

It simply refuses to let darkness be the only thing we see.

And then there is faith.

Not the certainty I once admired.

Not the polished faith that answers every question before anyone has time to ask it.

That version of faith no longer interests me.

These days my faith is smaller.

Quieter.

More honest.

It often sounds less like a sermon and more like a sigh.

Sometimes all I can pray is, “God, I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

I have come to believe that God is not disappointed by prayers like that.

I think God has always preferred honesty over performance.

Perhaps that is why the Psalms contain so much anger, confusion, grief, and doubt.

Perhaps God has never asked us to pretend.

Hope has changed too.

It is no longer an emotion.

It is a decision.

Hope is making coffee when I would rather stay in bed.

Hope is answering one email.

Hope is taking one walk.

Hope is beginning another chapter.

Hope is believing that even if I cannot see the road ahead, there is still a road.

I have stopped waiting for the day when life becomes easy.

Instead, I have begun looking for moments that remind me life is still beautiful.

A child laughing in a grocery store.

Rain against the window.

The smell of fresh coffee.

A text from a friend who remembered.

A photograph that captures exactly what my heart couldn’t describe.

These moments do not solve anything.

But they remind me that despair is not the whole story.

If these are indeed The Hard Years, then perhaps they are also becoming the honest years.

The years when I finally stopped pretending to be fearless.

The years when I learned that strength sometimes looks like simply staying.

The years when I discovered that authenticity is not a destination but a daily decision.

I don’t know what comes next.

I don’t know whether the relationships that have fractured will ever heal.

I don’t know where I will live, where I will serve, or what the next chapter of my life will be called.

I only know this.

I have survived every day that once convinced me I wouldn’t.

Not perfectly.

Not gracefully.

But faithfully enough to greet another sunrise.

So if you ask me what is getting me through The Hard Years, my answer is surprisingly simple.

I keep believing there is another chapter.

I haven’t read it yet.

I haven’t even written it.

But somewhere beyond these pages is a version of my life that I cannot yet imagine.

Until I meet her, I will keep writing.

I will keep searching for light.

I will keep praying prayers that are more honest than polished.

And I will keep trusting that the Author of my story is still turning pages I cannot yet see.