Becoming More Myself, Without Becoming Less Loving

2026/09/30

Reflections on turning 56

January Elisabeth had no idea what was coming.

A few weeks ago, I wrote myself a little note as if the now-me were talking to the January-me. It went something like this:

You're going to make some changes. It's time. Some patterns need to stop. We're going to shake almost everything up. It will be hard. But it's important.

Well.

I wasn't wrong.

I just had no idea how much would actually change.

Relationally. Emotionally. Spiritually. Practically.

I had no idea how many decisions I would make, how many things I would lay down, or how many relationships I would learn to hold differently. I didn't know I would release a novel AND write an entirely other one. (What in the world?!)

I didn't know I would create a six-week mentoring group for young women at my church, which would somehow turn into a 70-page curriculum. I didn't know I would do Rapid Resolution Therapy twice, tackle some of the harder places in my story, and experience a surprising amount of lightness.

I didn't know I would say some significant no's, ask for more solitude, or drastically change how I relate to several very significant people in my life.

And I certainly didn't know that changing some patterns would require me to rethink some of my assumptions about love, marriage, Christianity, family, and even what it means to be a good woman, wife, mother, daughter, person.

But here we are.

I'm turning 56, and these are some things I'm learning.

I can survive other people's disappointment.

This one is big for me.

There have been several people who have been disappointed with the changes I've made this year. I can't tell you the specifics because they're too personal, but I can tell you this:

I've lived with their disappointment.

I haven't melted under the weight of it. And I haven't backpedaled.

For someone who spent a good portion of her life believing that someone else's disappointment was a problem to solve, this is significant.

I'm learning that someone being disappointed with me doesn't automatically mean I've done something wrong.

Sometimes it means I've done something different.

Sometimes it means I've stopped doing something they were accustomed to me doing.

And sometimes it means two people have different needs, expectations, or understandings of a relationship.

I can care about that without automatically taking responsibility for fixing it.

Unresolved doesn't mean bad or wrong.

I've been living inside something unresolved for most of this year.

And yet, here I am.

Still loving. Still praying. Still going to therapy. Still showing up.

This has been particularly uncomfortable for me because I am a find-a-solution-but-if-you-can't-find-a-solution-then-force-a-solution kind of girl.

I like a plan. I like a resolution. I like knowing where things stand.

But this year, I've had to learn to stay in the middle.

Not peacekeeping. Peacemaking.

Not pretending everything is fine. Not rushing toward an outcome just so I can stop feeling uncomfortable.

Just allowing something to remain unresolved.

And I'm discovering something I didn't know about myself:

I can live inside a problem without making myself responsible for solving it immediately.

That's a pretty significant development.

Solitude isn't the same thing as withdrawal.

I've always had my morning quiet time and taken a solo retreat a couple of times a year.

But this year, solitude became something different.

May and June were pure insanity. All good things, but too many huge things in seven weeks. I came home more physically and emotionally exhausted than I'd been in ages.

So I declared July and August my creativity and restoration era. (And eventually my unfawning era, too.)

I walked. Read approximately a million novels. Wrote a little. Created and taught Becoming. Rebranded my ministry and website. Prayed. Watched Indiana Fever games. Drank approximately a million matcha lattes. Watched Five Star Weekend. Went away by myself for a week. Continued therapy.

It was glorious.

But more than that, it was necessary.

I had to learn that needing space doesn't mean I'm withdrawing from people. That choosing solitude doesn't mean I'm rejecting connection. That sometimes the most loving thing I can do for myself and everyone around me is step away long enough to remember who I am.

I don't have to wait to be invited into my calling.

For about eighteen months, I'd been praying a simple prayer:

Lord, is there something you want me to be doing that I'm not already doing? Something in my church? Something in the community? What's next, Lord?

And then, one day, while driving, I had a flash of four young women at my church who sit together every Sunday. I thought of another young woman who had done the Good Friday reading.

And I wondered: Could I mentor them? Could I spiritually mother the women in their twenties at my church?

So I reached out to my pastor, told him what I was thinking, and he basically said, Go for it.

I printed thirty postcards and walked up to young women, awkwardly asking, "Um, weird question, are you in your twenties?"

Low-key stalker behavior.

Ten said yes.

And for six weeks, we met. I created a lesson each week, and by the time we finished, I'd somehow written a 70-plus-page guidebook for women in their twenties to help them find their way with the Lord.

It was the most alive I've felt in ministry in a long time.

And the lesson wasn't necessarily start a ministry.

It was this:

It's never too late to ask the Lord what's next. And sometimes calling looks less like being chosen and more like noticing something God has put in front of you and saying, "Could I?"

Maybe creating is one of the primary ways I minister.

I've started businesses since I was fifteen. I've built ministries from scratch. I've written books, courses, and more than 200 podcast episodes.

And yet, somewhere along the way, I think I began thinking of creativity as something I did alongside my ministry.

This year, I remembered something about myself.

I don't just like participating. I originate.

I see something that doesn't exist and think, What if?

And then I build it.

Maybe creating isn't something I do on the side of my ministry.

Maybe creating is one of the primary ways I minister.

That's worth paying attention to.

God may be quieter than I wish—and still be present.

I've been walking with Jesus for forty years.

My faith isn't particularly dramatic. I have a quiet time every morning. I read Scripture. I talk to Jesus all the time.

It's a long walk in the same direction.

I don't hear from God a ton. At least not in the way some people describe hearing from Him.

And this year, I've had to pay attention to the possibility that God doesn't have to be loud for me to be led.

Because there have been breadcrumbs.

Unexpected open doors. People saying yes. People asking me to do things. Ideas that came together in ways I couldn't have orchestrated.

Becoming didn't just come from me.

And maybe God has more grace for me than I have for myself.

Loving my neighbor as myself includes me.

This might be the biggest spiritual wrestle of my year.

I've made some significant relational changes. From the outside, those changes could look like I care less about certain people.

But I don't think that's what has happened.

I've detached with love.

I've stepped back from people who repeatedly blow me off, because it hurts to keep pursuing people who aren't pursuing me back.

For years, I've had a pattern: I pursue, someone disappoints me, I feel hurt, and then I pursue harder. As though my hurt feelings don't get a say in the matter.

But this year, my feelings have been getting a say.

Because feelings make terrible masters, but they make amazing messengers.

And some of the resentment I've been carrying has been trying to tell me something.

In January, I asked the Lord if there were any people I still needed to forgive. Nine names came to mind.

Last month, when I was back on that same beach, I asked the same question.

And I couldn't think of anyone.

Not because nobody had hurt me. Trust me, I've been hurt this year.

But because something about how I relate to people has changed.

I've changed people's access to me. I've changed my expectations. I've stopped trying to make people into someone they're not. I've changed the dynamics of relationships through boundaries, less pursuit, and less overfunctioning.

I've grown in compassion, including the ability to understand someone's wounds without excusing their behavior.

And I've stopped automatically taking on other people's offenses.

I haven't become someone who never gets hurt.

I've become someone less willing to carry the hurt as a grievance.

And I'm regularly praying, almost every morning:

Lord, help me forgive every person of every thing.

I'm learning that forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean reconciliation.

Sometimes it means releasing expectations. Sometimes it means changing access. Sometimes it means accepting reality, having compassion, and refusing to keep watering relationships that aren't growing.

And maybe, just maybe, I've been changing the conditions that allow resentment to accumulate in the first place.

But here's where it gets complicated.

I've also had some difficult conversations this year. Conversations that were prayed through, thought through, and said as carefully as I knew how to say them.

And I know I've hurt some people's feelings.

I've said no to opportunities. I've chosen solitude. I've stopped pursuing certain relationships so relentlessly. I've protected my capacity.

And at one point, I had to ask myself:

Am I being selfish? Am I doing Christianity wrong?

Because I think sometimes we confuse self-denial with self-abandonment.

But maybe they're not the same thing.

Boundaries aren't automatically selfishness.

Telling the truth in love includes telling the truth about what I can and cannot do.

And maybe I am one of the people God has asked me to love.

Other people's pain isn't necessarily evidence of my sin.

This is a hard one.

Because in making the changes I've made, I have hurt some people. I didn't want to. But I have.

And I've had to learn that somebody can be hurt by something I do while I am still acting faithfully.

That is different from being callous.

I still care. I still examine myself. I still pray. I still ask trusted people to challenge me.

But I'm no longer automatically concluding:

They're hurt → therefore I'm wrong.

That little equation has been running my life for a long time.

And I'm learning to interrupt it.

Becoming more myself hasn't made me less loving.

I've worried about this.

Am I becoming cold? Am I cutting everyone off? Am I selfish?

I could tell you what I think, but you might see it differently. We all look at things through our own lens.

So I've started looking at the evidence.

I've had some of the hardest but sweetest and healthiest conversations of my entire life.

The relationships that matter deeply to me are deeper and steadier. They held.

I created space for ten young women. I supported my husband through a hard time. I continued going to therapy. I continued loving the people God has placed in my life.

I'm just becoming more discerning about where and how I give that love.

I didn't become less loving. I became less willing to abandon myself in the name of love.

And I think there's a difference.

So, no. I'm not turning 56 and declaring, "Look how healed I am!"

Absolutely not.

I'm still figuring out when I'm setting a healthy boundary and when I'm simply protecting myself—or, I hate to say it, being selfish.

I'm still learning what differentiation looks like in marriage. I'm still figuring out what several relationships in my life will look like going forward.

I'm still learning how to trust my own voice without assuming every voice inside me is God's voice.

I'm still very much in process.

But I'm not where I was a year ago.

And maybe that's what birthdays are for.

Not proving we've arrived.

Not presenting a polished version of ourselves who has finally figured it all out.

But noticing that we are, in fact, becoming.

More honest. More whole. More ourselves.

More of who God created us to be.

If we keep opening ourselves to Him.

If we keep paying attention.

If we keep doing the work.