I think one of the quietest thieves of joy is comparison.

Not the kind where we compare ourselves to other people.

The kind where we compare our lives to the lives we imagine we could have lived.

It happens more often than we realize.

We wonder what would have happened if we had made a different decision.

Chosen a different career.

Married someone else.

Moved to another city.

Taken the opportunity we were too afraid to take.

Or perhaps said yes when we said no.

The mind has a remarkable way of filling those unwritten stories with possibilities.

In our imagination, the road not taken is often smoother.

The other life seems happier.

The other version of ourselves seems more fulfilled.

But there is something we rarely stop to consider.

Nobody knows the outcome of the life that didn’t happen.

We only know the version our imagination created.

We never see the disappointments that might have come.

The losses we might have carried.

The prayers we might have prayed.

The tears we might have cried.

We imagine the blessings.

We never imagine the burdens.

Perhaps that is why those imagined lives can feel so appealing.

They have never been tested by reality.

Only this life has.

The one we are living.

The one that has known both joy and heartbreak.

The one that has shaped us in ways we never expected.

The one where God has met us again and again, often in places we never would have chosen for ourselves.

I sometimes wonder if we spend so much time looking over our shoulder that we forget to notice what God is doing right in front of us.

Not because we are ungrateful.

But because we are curious.

Curious about who we might have become.

Yet perhaps the better question is not who we might have been.

Perhaps the better question is who God is inviting us to become today.

Right here.

In this life.

The one that actually happened.

The one with all its unexpected turns.

The one with unanswered questions.

The one marked by both blessings and scars.

The one that has taught us things the other life never could.

I don’t believe God asks us to live in imagined stories.

He asks us to be faithful in the story He has entrusted to us.

To notice His presence here.

To discover His purpose here.

To find beauty here.

Because this is where His grace meets us.

Not in the life we wonder about.

But in the life we have been given.

And maybe peace begins the moment we stop mourning the story that was never ours…

…and start embracing the one that is.

Because nobody knows the outcome of the life that didn’t happen.

So be here.

In this life.

The one that actually happened.

Nobody knows the outcomes of the life that didn’t happen.
So be here.
In this life.
The one that actually happened.

Until next time,