For everyone I once loved who could not love me back the way I deserved—I could not see it then, because I was still asleep to my true purpose in life: God’s plan.
The seasons I lost to what could not hold me were part of my growth. What matters now is what matters most: our children—and I don’t care if they are forty years old. Every one of us can be led away from ourselves. And every one of us can be reached by the God moment—the instant God speaks to you, and you rise and walk out of the life you were only surviving.
That is the truth at the center of this book. It is the truth at the center of every story you have read in these pages. Katie’s moment was a bracelet unclasped. Carissa’s was two words from a three-year-old. Darius’s was a text that revealed the emptiness of a false family. Elena’s was a question no one wanted her to ask.
The God moment is different for everyone. But it is the same in one way: it is the instant you wake up. The instant the fog lifts and you see—with terrible, beautiful clarity—that you were asleep, and that the life you were living was not the life you were made for.
And from that moment forward, nothing else matters except the truth: you were designed for more. Your children were designed for more. Your grandchildren were designed for more. The cycle ends the moment you open your eyes.
God speaks in a thousand ways—through a child’s hand on your face, through a friend’s burned grilled cheese, through a teacher’s quiet question, through a stranger’s book that finds its way into your hands at exactly the right time. The message is always the same: Wake up. You are loved. And it is time to go home.