To the Woman Afraid She’s Wasting Her Life

When you were younger you dreamed of doing something big, something glorious and meaningful…and measurable.

Your mission might be costly, but it would fit neatly into a memoir of adventurous faith. Your leaps into the foreign unknown would inspire pilgrims to come with vivid miracles, salvation, dazzling like the Northern Lights above the barren tundra He called you to, proving you didn’t waste your life.

But in the mundane, hectic rhythm, there isn’t much to measure, no bottle broken of priceless perfume to pour on His feet for the memory of all to come. Just bits and pieces of fragmented time, sporadic prayers — the anxious inhale and exhale of “Lord, help me” in the hidden spaces of entropy — the laundry, the diapers, the piling bills, the getting out of bed when sadness weighs heavy on your chest.

“God’s work in you is just as glorious as His work through you.”

You dreamed of doing something big, something to accelerate your trajectory toward the “well, done, good and faithful servant." It would earn the A+ of a life lived on purpose, in purpose.

But dear sister, you've confused the goal. Your works aren’t what inspire His embrace; His embrace inspires your heart to rest.

God’s work in you is just as glorious as His work through you.

The good and faithful servant is the woman who chooses trust though she’s fought for control in the past. She’s the woman who lives into obscurity, repeating the promise that He knows her even if others never do.

God’s work in you is just as glorious as His work through you.

She’s the sower who may never see the harvest but whose mouth still speaks the Name. She does it scared — but she does it. She follows the perfect Spirit imperfectly; her goodness and faithfulness are only His.

Her life is not her own. Though she tries to wrest it back, she surrenders again to sanctification, letting Him write her memoir of faith that no one may ever read but He pens with eternal meaning.

Dear sister, God’s work in you is just as glorious as His work through you.

He is doing something big in you in the hidden places, in your wondering heart.

He doesn’t waste anything.