Episode 41: The Gift of Being Here

You don’t have to put your life on hold while you wait for something to change. Explore presence, longing, and trusting God in an unfinished story.

What if the unfinished thing in your life doesn’t have to become smaller before you’re allowed to receive everything happening beside it?

Seventeen years ago, I was waiting to become a mother. Infertility, fertility treatments, adoption paperwork, disappointment, hope, grief, and prayer occupied enormous space in my life.

Recently, I went back through more than 500 blog posts I wrote while I was living that season—and discovered something I had almost forgotten.

My life wasn’t waiting.

It was happening all around the thing I was waiting for.

In this conversation, we’re talking about what it means to deeply long for what isn’t here yet while still receiving the life that is—without pretending the ache isn’t real, giving up hope for change, or requiring God to show us how the story ends first.

Featured Quote

“The unfinished thing can be enormous without being everything.”

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About This Episode

When I remember 2009, my mind naturally organizes the year around infertility.

It was enormous.

But when I recently exported the archive from my old Faith, Grace & Giggles blog—all 503 posts from that year—I got to see something memory had flattened.

There was waiting.

And there was also a whole life happening around it.

There were friends and work and church. Dogs and dinner. Coffee and laughter. Writing and photography and ridiculous quantities of homemade cake balls. There were good days when I still wanted desperately to become a mother. There were painful days when I was still very much living.

Then I put those blog posts beside another record from that year: the original Red Notebook.

The blog showed me the woman living the story.

The notebook showed me a woman returning to God while she had absolutely no idea what happened next.

Seventeen years later, I know some of what she couldn’t know.

But I’m not at the end of the story now either.

I’m simply in another middle.

There are still things I want to change. Things I’m building. Questions about health and finances and my boys and Healer & Hope Giver. Things I would very much like God to explain—with dates and perhaps a detailed itinerary. 😂

I still don’t have the answer key.

Maybe I don’t need one.

Because presence isn’t pretending we don’t want tomorrow to be different.

Presence is refusing to withhold ourselves from today because we’re waiting for tomorrow.

Key Takeaways

  • The unfinished thing can be enormous without being everything. A real ache and a real laugh can belong to the same life.
  • Presence isn’t preservation. Something doesn’t have to last forever to have been real, good, or worth receiving while it was here.
  • Grief and gratitude can exist together. Receiving something good doesn’t require pretending something else doesn’t hurt.
  • Presence is not passivity. You can go to the doctor, make the budget, set the boundary, build the thing, pursue the dream, and pray for change without making today disposable.
  • You don’t have to know who someone—or something—will become to faithfully love what is here today.
  • Trust doesn’t require an answer key. Sometimes trust looks like staying close to God while continuing to live inside a story you cannot yet explain.
  • Presence isn’t something we master. It’s something we return to. Read. Notice. Pray. Live. Return.
  • Unfinished doesn’t mean incomplete. Not knowing what happens next isn’t necessarily evidence that you’re behind. Sometimes it’s simply evidence that you’re alive.

From the Story

The Red Notebook Journey

In 2009, I opened a bright red notebook while I was living a story I couldn’t see beyond.

I read Scripture. I noticed what stood out. I wrote. I prayed. Then I went back to living—and eventually returned to do it again.

That notebook didn’t give me the answer key to my life.

It became a record of a relationship I kept returning to while I didn’t know what came next.

Seventeen years later, that original practice is becoming The Red Notebook Journey — A Guided Walk Through Prayer & Scripture: a place to read, notice, reflect, pray, live, and return while your own story continues unfolding.

Not a place to find every answer.

Somewhere to notice. Somewhere to return.

Coming this fall.

Continue the Conversation

Devotional 41 — Coming Thursday

There’s one more part of this conversation I want to sit with before we move forward.

What does it look like to remain with God when we don’t know what He will do next?

Thursday, we’ll slow down with Scripture and explore what trust can look like when the story is still unfinished—because trust isn’t knowing the ending.

Sometimes trust is staying close to God in the middle.

Continue the Journey

If this conversation resonated with you, you may also want to explore:

Related Resources

Reflection Question

What unfinished thing has been taking up the most space in your life right now?

You don’t have to make it smaller.

You don’t have to stop wanting it to change.

Instead, ask:

What is also here?

What people, ordinary goodness, work, laughter, rest, beauty, responsibility, or possibility exists beside the unfinished thing?

And what would it look like—not to treasure every second or force yourself to feel grateful—but simply to stop withholding yourself from the life that is here while you continue hoping for what isn’t?

Final Thought

I don’t know what happens next.

For most of my life, I’ve treated those words like a problem I was supposed to solve.

Maybe they aren’t always a problem.

Maybe sometimes they’re simply the place where life is happening.

2009, Kim didn’t know James and Tyler were coming. She didn’t know about the losses, surgeries, relationships, books, Healer & Hope Giver, or what would eventually grow from that little red notebook.

She didn’t need to.

She had a life to live that day.

And so do I.

So do you.

Whatever is unfinished, you are allowed to want tomorrow to be different. You can pray for change. Work toward it. Hope for what isn’t here yet.

And you are allowed to receive what is.

You don’t need the answer key.

You don’t have to wait for hindsight before you’re allowed to live.

You can meet God here.

You can keep becoming here.

Because maybe the gift isn’t finally reaching the part where everything is finished.

Maybe the gift is being here while it isn’t.

And God is here too.