the striving years

There was a season when everything looked shiny from the outside. Google searches filled with business hacks. Calendars jammed with flights. Late nights, long hours, back-to-back calls. And in the middle of it all, I thought: this is what success feels like.

Except it wasn’t.

what I thought success would fix

I believed achievement would finally prove I was enough. That hitting milestones, earning more, and being seen as “important” would silence the insecurity I carried since I was a kid trying to perform her way into belonging.

But striving didn’t heal me. It only made me more restless.

what it cost me

That season drained me in every direction.

• Emotionally: I was anxious and constantly exhausted.

• Relationally: My work consumed my friendships and family rhythms.

• Spiritually: I was running on empty, convinced I could hustle my way into wholeness.

  
  

The irony? I was chasing “freedom” through work but my schedule and my worth were chained to achievement.

the loss that became freedom

Then came the moment I never saw coming: getting fired. The career I had poured my whole identity into was gone in a single day.

It felt like failure at first. Like I had lost the very thing holding me together. But slowly, I realized that the loss was actually a release. Striving was stripped away. And in that empty space, God began to whisper something different: you were made for more than performance. You were made for Me.

faithful reflection

That season was my unraveling. It felt painful and humiliating at the time, but looking back I see it as holy. God was stripping away everything I had been clinging to so He could reorient my life around Him.

I had spent years chasing success, believing the next milestone would finally make me feel whole. But no achievement could quiet the thirst that only God was meant to fill (Psalm 42:1–2).

Losing my job—the very thing I thought defined me—was the loss I never wanted. And yet, it’s the one that set me free.

I’m learning that with Jesus, success isn’t about what I build, but about who I am becoming in Him.

closing thought

If you’re in the striving years right now, maybe your loss isn’t a firing... maybe it’s the end of a relationship, the missed opportunity, the door that slammed shut. It might feel like failure...

...but could it be freedom?