Reflection

It is one thing to grieve what was lost in your life, and it is another to grieve what never even had the chance to exist, what never even had the chance to anchor in your heart. The version of your life that felt so close, so possible, so right — until it slipped through your fingers. The job you almost took. The relationship you thought would last. The dream you gave everything to, only to watch it break down. It’s the ache of an unlived life, of a future you imagined down to the most intimate details, now living quietly in the background, a version of your life that never fully arrived but still somehow remains.

This kind of grief is hard to name because it lives in the imagined. You don’t have pictures or memories, only hope deferred and expectations that never got to root. When you try to move forward, when you try to honor the blessing that did come to fruition in your world, part of you still wonders — 

What if it had worked out? 

What if it had stayed? 

What if that door had opened? 

You start playing out alternate timelines in your mind, trying to rewrite a story that was never yours to live.

But God doesn’t exist in the “what ifs” — he exists in the “what is.”

He is not looking back towards the life you never had the chance to live. He is still writing beauty into the one that you are. The fact that something didn’t happen the way you envisioned doesn’t mean he failed you. It means that his plans are still unfolding, even if they don’t look like the ones you held onto, the ones you had hoped for. Your future isn’t lost, it’s just different, and in time, it may become something far more beautiful than what you thought you needed, than what you almost settled for.

God doesn’t just deal in what could have been, he deals in redemption, in the sacred reworking of what you thought was the end into a beginning you never expected. You don’t need to have it all figured out to trust that he’s still leading you. Even now. Even here.

Prayer

God, I’m still carrying grief for a life that I never had the opportunity to live. I keep replaying the possibilities, imagining how things might have looked if only they had gone differently. Help me to stop searching for you in the past, and to start trusting you with my future. Quiet the “what ifs” that stir restlessness in me. Remind me that no missed opportunity can cancel the plans you’ve spoken over my life. I choose to believe you’re still writing a beautiful story — even if it doesn’t look like the one I expected. 

Amen.