I have met with many women along this journey.  My need to process aloud, to seek comfort from the qualified and to make sense of this great weight has brought me into the presence of amazing ladies that I now admire and respect in ways that I would never have considered had I not known their personal stories.  What a position of privilege!

We are all of us unique individuals who react and respond differently.  None of us will walk the exact same path or respond in the same way. God meets our needs in a way that only He knows best.  I have witnessed, experienced and marvelled at the traits that unite these women: courage, faith, strength, compassion, love, dignity; a hunger for more of the Father, a desire to become more like His son.  Verses in the Bible for these women are not words on a page but a lifeline to survival. I have been comforted by their innate mother’s hearts, their honesty and vulnerability; the warrior’s way of picking oneself up and carrying on no matter how tough it gets; the humility to share the ugly as well as the brave moments; the reassurance that so much of how I am in this time is normal.

I have benefitted from shared wisdom that only comes from experience and advice that only comes from knowing.  I see the warrior’s spirit in each one of these women because they wear their armour of God with a sense of familiarity and they teach me how to use mine to greatest advantage.  They hold my arms up when I am battle weary and want to give up. They are not blind to the wily ways of the enemy any longer and they know how to defend the vulnerable like a lioness protecting her cubs.

Anyone who walks this particular pathway is in the best of company.  It is one of the toughest of times; labelled one of the “major adult crises” and whether you come to understand how or not, this season will leave you changed.  Some of those alterations will be the inflictions of the battleground and some will be the unexpected transformations that our Father has prepared in advance for you.  But it will change you.  And in time you wouldn’t have it any other way. The call to the uncommon – to be truly beautiful in the eyes of heaven – is a strong one and a surrendered one and the only decision worth making whether or not you saw it coming.

My prayer and hope for every woman who has walked and will walk this same road is that God will invade the darkest places and bombard each aching heart with all that they mean to Him so that as they too look back, not a second of this great sadness will seem a waste.