Resilience used to be a word I spoke about with confidence.
I understood it. I taught it. I teach it. I encourage others to live it.
But resilience feels very different when life touches you in a deeply personal way.
The death of my sister has challenged me in ways I never expected. Grief has a way of shaking your foundation. It slows you down. It makes you question what truly matters. It changes how you see time, relationships, and purpose.
At the same time, I am standing in another life transition. Retirement. A word that sounds like rest and reward. Yet beneath it sits a quiet question that keeps rising in my heart.
What do I do next?
Loss and transition arriving together have stretched me. One season closed without my permission. Another season closed because I chose it. Both have required resilience.
And I am learning that resilience is not about being strong all the time.
It is about being honest.
There are days when I miss my sister so deeply that it takes my breath away. There are moments when I wonder who I am outside of the structure of my career. I have asked myself questions that have no quick answers.
Who am I now
What is my purpose in this new season
How do I move forward while carrying grief
Resilience, for me, has become the willingness to sit with those questions without running from them.
It has become allowing myself to mourn without guilt.
Allowing myself to rest without fear.
Allowing myself to dream again without pressure.
I have realized that retirement is not an ending. It is an invitation. An invitation to rediscover purpose beyond titles. An invitation to explore passions that were once placed on hold. An invitation to serve in new ways.
And grief has clarified something powerful. Life is precious. Time is not promised. Love must be expressed now.
My sister’s life reminds me that impact is not measured in years but in the way we touch others. That truth is shaping how I think about what comes next.
I do not have every answer. But I do have faith. I have experience. I have wisdom earned through years of living, loving, working, and now grieving.
The Bible often speaks of forty as a season of testing, preparation, and stretching. Forty days of rain before the earth was renewed. Forty years in the wilderness before the promise. Forty days of fasting before ministry began. Forty represents the trial.
But forty one represents what comes after.
Forty one represents the step into something new. The promise fulfilled. The beginning that follows endurance.
In many ways, this season feels like my forty. A season of testing, loss, reflection, and transition. Yet I believe I am standing at day forty one. Not because the grief is gone. Not because every question has been answered. But because I trust that God does not bring us through wilderness without purpose.
Faith reminds me that this is not the end of my story. Experience reminds me that every difficult chapter has produced growth. Wisdom reminds me that God wastes nothing, not even sorrow.
Day forty-one is not loud. It is not dramatic. It is quiet courage. It is the first step forward after heartbreak. It is choosing to believe there is still purpose ahead. It is trusting that the same God who sustained me in the testing will lead me into what is next.
Instead of asking, "What do I do now that I have retired", I am beginning to ask, "Who am I called to be in this season?"
Resilience is not rushing into the next thing to avoid the discomfort of change. It is walking through change with courage. It is trusting that even when life feels uncertain, there is still purpose ahead.
I do not have every detail mapped out. But I am standing in faith. I am standing in gratitude. I am standing in expectation.
Getting up each day even when my heart is heavy.
Choosing gratitude while I heal.
Staying open to new possibilities.
Trusting that my story is not finished.
If you are walking through loss, transition, or uncertainty, know this. You are not weak for feeling unsteady. You are human.
Resilience is not about pretending you are unaffected.
It is about continuing forward, even if the steps are small.
My sister’s death has changed me.
Retirement has stretched me.
But neither has defeated me.
I am still here.
Still growing.
Still becoming.
This is my day forty-one.
And I am choosing to rise.
-srt
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