Five Years Ago

Five years ago, I was broke, broken, and lost.

It was not just that I had no money and no work. I had a tumor in a vein in my brain. I had no spleen and no gallbladder anymore. I had degenerative disc disease, which means my spine was sixty years old inside the body of a thirty-year-old woman who was supposed to be at the beginning of her career. I would get up in the morning and my back would tell me I was not allowed to.

But the hardest part was not the body.

The hardest part was that I did not know who I was or where I was going.

Those days were dark in a way I did not know how to name. Three things hit at once. No money, no job, a body that kept failing. And the voice in my head got louder and quieter at the same time. Louder because it would not stop. Quieter because no one else could hear it.

It kept saying things like, you are a lost child walking on the side of the street. Everyone else is moving forward. You were supposed to be somewhere by now. You are behind. You are alone. You are never going to catch up.

I was so lost I kept changing my hair color. From blonde to red to violet to pink. I was trying to find myself in a mirror.

If three things have hit you all at once and you are not sure how to get up, I know that feeling. I know how it sounds when the voice in your head makes a case against your own life.

This is what I want to say to that version of you, the way someone should have said it to me.

You are not behind. You are not alone. And the Lord is not surprised.

When I finally stopped waiting to be rescued and started moving, my first reason was not noble. I will not pretend it was. I needed to earn despite my health. I am not going to be a hypocrite about that. I learned digital marketing because I could not keep lifting things. I got certified because I was out of options.

But somewhere along the way, the work started to change me back.

You cannot give what you do not have, and I had nothing. So I focused first on building myself. One small thing. Then the next small thing. Then the next. Slowly, the sick woman at her desk started looking like someone who might be able to help someone else one day.

Looking back, the promise is true. Our sufferings are His blessings in disguise. “Suffering yet always rejoicing,” the Bible says, and I did not understand that sentence until I had lived inside of it. When we have nothing, that is when we learn who actually loves us. And that is when we start to see ourselves the way the Lord sees us. A small dot in His vast universe, held.

Today I am a Certified Facebook Blueprint Creative Strategist, a Google Educator, and the founder of a community of thousands. None of that is the point of this story.

The point is that five years ago, a broken woman who was changing her hair color every week was already being carried.

If this is where you are right now, please stay on the road. Just today. Just this one small step. Just the next honest thing.

It is not about perfection. It is about direction.

For the glory of God.

— Lala