The Time Is Now

Dreams don’t always come true overnight. Sometimes an answered prayer is a slow burn that grows and grows until one day you wake up and realize this is it. This is the life you dared to hope for.

I quit my job last month after what was planned to be a six-week maternity leave. It was a job that came into my life at just the right time and one I’m deeply grateful for. I learned a ton about business, bravery, and the value of taking risks and starting before you’re ready.

And I certainly didn’t feel ready for this step. But the more I prayed, the more it became clear that it was time.

Now is the time to enjoy and care for my family. It’s time to share my art, to take risks, to try, to trust. And even more importantly, it’s time to embrace parts of myself that I’ve lost touch with over the past couple of years.

This season feels like a call to synthesize what I’ve learned with who I am—to take the skills I’ve gained and apply them in a way that feels authentic to me, my heart, my values.

I was standing in the kitchen the other day waiting for a baby bottle to heat up, and I heard a “cha-ching” notification. Another beautiful soul had been touched by my work to the point of purchasing it.

And I realized, this is it. This is the life. I’m not a millionaire, and I don’t need to be. I don’t have a big house. I’m not traveling to Europe every summer. 

But I am lacking nothing.

I have freedom in how I spend my time. I get to create every day. I have the great privilege of spending my days with my sweet daughter, who is herself an answered prayer and a dream come true. I am here in my kitchen full of food, feeding my baby and getting paid to make beautiful things with my hands that touch people’s hearts. 

What else is there? What more could I possibly want?

This is the life I’ve dreamed of.

There is a verse in Luke that has always captured my attention. It describes ten men with leprosy who left an encounter with Jesus and “as they went they were being healed.” The progressive tense, to me, is quite meaningful here.

It wasn’t a sudden miracle, as some were. It happened over time, without being noticed. That is, until one of them “saw he was healed.”

The miracle was gradual. The noticing happened in a moment—a moment of wonder and, importantly, of gratitude.

Unlike the other nine, that one man went back to thank Jesus for what he had done. And that is the posture with which I’m approaching this transition. I suddenly see what God has been slowly and intentionally working out in my life for several years. And I don’t want to miss the beauty of that moment wishing for something different.

This is a season of putting my trust in the Lord’s provision and getting to follow his lead into the unknown. It’s not comfortable, but that’s how the best and most fruitful and fulfilling periods of my life have always started.

The older I get, the more deeply I come to understand that happiness isn't something that's waiting just on the other side of the next goalpost. It's in the air we breathe, in the way we move.

Life is simply a collection of todays, a series of right nows continually passing into the next—and not one of them can we ever get back once it's gone.

The time for joy is now.