I have a confession

I love reading people’s bios. 

I have this odd curiosity of trying to put together the pieces of someone’s life through the bio of their life’s great achievements.

But there is usually a lot of jealousy mixed in there too.

You’ve been there right? You have goals and you see someone doing what you’d love to do. So you secretly study their trajectory. Truly interested in their work, but always coupled with a tinge of frustration that underlays any real productive analysis that could lead to learning on your part.

It happened to me this week. I found this incredible photojournalist I’d not heard of before whose work was stunning.

So naturally, I clicked to her About page. I wanted to know how she got to where she is today. Kind of like figuring out the road map for how to make that success happen for me.

Her story ticked all my boxes - the things I want to do someday.

Wow! This woman seems perfect. She has it all. How amazing to be at that point in your career, I thought to myself.

But something was weird about her website. Links didn’t work. I couldn’t see many of her project pages. That’s odd, I thought. I must be on an old site.

So I tracked over to her social media account and dove deep into her last 20 posts.

And then reality hit.

Her life was spiralling. She’d announced a divorce. Her daughter was diagnosed with a terminal disease.

My heart sank for her in that moment. I said a prayer for her daughter, and I gave myself a shake.

We hardly ever get to know the battles behind those bios. Lucky for me she was honest about her struggles, for if she hadn’t been open I would have continued to raise her up higher and higher on a pedestal and ungratefulness in my own heart would have continued to grow.

Thankfully God taught me a quick lesson.

We all have places we want to go in our creative endeavours. Our goals and dreams that run deep.

But may we know that God has planned our steps, mine and yours. He knows when I sleep and when I rise. He knows my past and my future. He has great things for me to do, and many not so great things. But EVEN IF when I die the not-so-great things outweigh the great things, what’s important is that I do it all in love and joy.