Your One Given Life

Finding who you were always meant to be in the middle of what you’ve been given

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

We were all asked what we wanted to be when we grew up.
None of us were asked if we wanted the life we’re now living.

You had a picture in your mind.

Maybe you’ve had it since you were a little girl. Maybe it formed slowly over years of hoping and praying and believing. Maybe you’ve never said it out loud because saying it makes the gap between that picture and your actual life feel even wider.

But it’s there.

The life you thought you’d be living by now.

And this isn’t it.

Maybe you’re still waiting for him—the one you’ve prayed for, believed for, saved yourself for. And the waiting has started to feel less like faith and more like foolishness.

Maybe you’ve been trying to have a baby and every month feels like another small grief you don’t have words for.

Maybe you’re in the middle of raising your family—buried in the beautiful, exhausting dailiness of it and somewhere underneath the laundry and the lunches and the logistics you’re quietly wondering if this is all there is.

Maybe you lost your husband too soon. And the life you built together is still everywhere around you but he isn’t.

Maybe you’re carrying a child who is struggling. A diagnosis you didn’t see coming. A weight that has quietly reshaped everything you thought motherhood would be.

Maybe the house is empty now and so are your days and you are standing in the silence wondering who you are without the role that defined you for so long.

Maybe you’re just lonely. And the loneliness has a specific kind of ache because it’s not just the absence of people, it’s the absence of the life you believed was coming.

Different circumstances. Same feeling.

This isn’t the life I planned.

Photo by John Money on Unsplash

Esther knew that feeling.

Orphaned. Displaced. Living in a land that was never supposed to be hers. If she had a picture of her life it certainly didn’t include exile.

And then suddenly—she was chosen. Brought into the palace. Made queen.

And I wonder if she did what we all do. Looked around at where she had landed and thought…

This is it. This is why I’m here. This is my purpose.

The palace. The position. The role she never expected but had finally arrived in.

Until Mordecai found her.

And what he said wasn’t a celebration. It was a correction.

Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this.

He was saying: Esther, the palace was never your purpose. It was God’s positioning. And He didn’t put you here for your own comfort. He put you here because He has something for you to do that only you in this position, in this moment can do.

She thought the palace was the whole point. The pinnacle of her purpose but it was God working all along, positioning for her to accomplish His purpose.

And here friend, is what I want you to hear, really hear:

So is yours.

The waiting isn’t punishment. It’s His positioning. The chaos of raising your family isn’t a detour from your purpose. It is your purpose right now, in this season, for these people this is who you were always meant to be. The grief you are carrying isn’t evidence that God forgot you. It is the very place He is meeting you. The quiet house isn’t the end of your story. It might be the beginning of the one you were always meant to live.

Every heartache. Every hard season. Every role that has cost you more than you expected. Every dream that hasn’t come yet or came and looked different than you hoped.

That is not your life going wrong.

That is your position.

And God doesn’t waste positions.

Esther almost missed hers. She was comfortable in the palace. Safe. And when Mordecai called her forward she was afraid.

If I go to the king without being summoned I could die.

Sound familiar?

Because stepping into the life God actually has for us, the one hiding inside the one we have can sometimes be uncomfortable or even terrifying. It asks us to release the picture we’ve been holding onto. To stop waiting for the life we ordered and start showing up fully in the one we have.

But here is what Esther found on the other side of her fear:

She didn’t just save her people. She found out who she was.

That’s what I want for you.

Not a better life somewhere out ahead of you when things finally look like you planned.

But eyes to see the one you’re already living.

Because you didn’t end up here by accident.
This is your position. And somewhere hidden inside it is exactly the woman you were always meant to be.

For such a time as this. Not someday. Not when it looks different.
But right now.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash