The Miles Between Who We Were and Who We’re Becoming

She’s asleep in the backseat as the miles roll by.

Her head leans gently against the window, bundled in blankets and sweaters, the way you do when you’re tired in a way sleep doesn’t quite fix. I look at her and see every version of her I’ve ever known, the tiny flutter inside me that changed my life forever, the little girl who reached for my hand without thinking, the woman brave enough to build a life far from what’s familiar.

We’re driving her toward a new beginning.

She’s thirty now. And somehow, she is still that little girl who stole my heart the first moment I felt her move early on in my pregnancy.

This move is exciting, she’s stepping into work she is deeply gifted at, guiding international students who are far from home, learning how to belong in a new place. She learned a great deal in her last role, about responsibility, resilience, and what it feels like to grow under leadership that didn’t always know how to lead with kindness.

This next chapter is bigger.

More responsibility. More students. More trust placed in her hands.

And yet, what I notice most isn’t the scale of the job. It’s the quiet courage required to leave what’s known.

We don’t talk enough about how growth carries grief alongside joy. How becoming often means letting go, of proximity, of ease, of the comfort of being able to show up at the kitchen table unannounced.

Watching your child move into her calling is a humbling thing. It reminds you that preparation rarely announces itself while it’s happening. The hard seasons, the unfair ones, the stretches that almost broke her, they were shaping her all along.

There is a tenderness in this kind of moment.

You celebrate. You ache. You trust.

And you learn, again, that bravery doesn’t always look bold. Sometimes it looks like sleeping in the backseat while the road hums beneath you, conserving strength for what comes next.

If you are standing at the edge of something new, a move, a decision, a season you didn’t quite plan, let me say this gently:

You don’t have to feel ready. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You only have to be willing to take the next mile.

So maybe this is the invitation, to pause long enough to notice the moments as they pass.

To gather them gently, the joy and the ache, the pride and the letting go.

Not to rush through them. Not to explain them away.

But to let them shape us into people who love more intentionally, listen more closely, and choose to do good with what we’ve been given.

Because every season leaves something in our hands.

And when we slow down long enough to feel it, we just might learn how to carry it forward for ourselves, and for others.

My sweet Kelsey,

Please give yourself permission to pause.

Honor the moments that shape you, even the bittersweet ones.

And, carry what you’ve lived into the world with quiet courage, choosing, again and again, to do good with it.

P.S. In this season of transition, I hope you know this, you’re not behind. You’re becoming.