It hasn’t turned out like I expected.

I had dinner and coffee with a friend the other night.

A dear friend with whom I can be absolutely honest and not feel like she’s going to run away or think any less of me. And while we talked and laughed about little things in our lives, our conversation invariably turned toward the deeper topics.

And somewhere in the middle of it, she whispered the words I think we’ve all said at one moment or another:

It hasn’t turned out like I expected.

Life in general. The job you thought you wanted. The dreams you just knew would be fulfilled. Marriage. Singleness. Parenthood—or the fact that you desperately want children and it hasn’t happened.

I often tell people—and truly believe it—that God writes great stories.

But it would be somehow less than honest to say that I always like His stories or understand them. Because I don’t. Because in four days, I’ll be 33. And I’m not even close to being married. And if you’d asked me when I was 16, 20, or even 25, I would have told you by the time I was 27, I would be married. If life had followed my own plotline, by now I’d be a parent.

It hasn’t turned out like I expected.

And sometimes, if I’m being honest, that hurts. Sometimes, the knowledge that God has plans to profit me and not to harm me falls on deaf ears. Or ears that don’t want to hear. Or a heart that feels broken. Or someone who wants those plans on her timetable and according to her plot rather than His.

I think there is beauty in brokenness. I think there’s beauty and truth in saying “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m trying with everything I’ve got to trust You.”

It doesn’t mean it’s easy or that it doesn’t leave scars. It might. It does. Sometimes, it hurts.

My life—like yours—hasn’t turned out like I expected. But don’t stay mired in that. Trust that God writes great stories and is at work in and around you somehow.

It just may not be how you expected.