For more than two decades, I have been “Mom.” It’s the name I’ve heard most often, the role I’ve lived most fully, the identity that has shaped nearly every moment of my days. I’ve packed lunches, driven carpool, soothed broken hearts, cheered at games, managed homework and hormones, prayed over sleeping heads, and poured every ounce of energy into growing these beautiful humans. My life has been a rhythm of needs, noise, and nurturing.
And now, the house is quiet.
The last of our daughters just left for college, and while I’m proud beyond words of the woman she is becoming, I find myself sitting in the stillness of our home with a question echoing in my soul:
Now what?
It’s a strange thing to live so long for others and then suddenly be met with space—both physically and emotionally. The calendar is no longer filled with school schedules or team mom things. I don’t have to mentally prepare for a teenager to come flying through the door with a crisis or a victory. The laundry is significantly less. The shoes by the door are only mine and my husbands.
I’ve always known this day would come. I’ve whispered with other moms at graduations and goodbyes about what we’d do when the nest was empty. But nothing really prepares you for the quiet weight of it when it arrives. There’s grief, real and raw. Not because anything bad has happened—but because something deeply meaningful has changed.
And in the midst of this change, I’m realizing that my identity has been so deeply intertwined with motherhood that I didn’t always pause to ask who am I apart from this?
I know I’m still a mom – and I always will be. But the daily, hands-on role has shifted into something more like long-distance support, prayer warrior, and “just checking in” texts. It’s a blessing, yes, but it’s also a deep ache. Because the work I did for so long was mostly unseen, and now the quiet makes it feel like it’s slipping into invisibility.
So I’m asking God – sometimes in tears, sometimes in frustration, always in hope – to help me see who I am now.
In Isaiah 43:19, the Lord says, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” I want to perceive it. I want to step into this next chapter not just surviving, but fully living. I want to uncover what God has for me now that the daily demands of motherhood are no longer front and center.
But it’s not easy.
There are days I feel purposeless. Lonely. Disoriented. There are moments when I walk past an empty bedroom and feel the loss all over again. There are nights when I wonder if I still matter as much as I did when someone called for me from down the hall.
And yet, even in this wrestling, I sense the gentle hand of the Father reminding me that my purpose has never been in a role, it’s always been in Him.
My worth is not tied to being needed in the ways I once was. It’s rooted in being His.
I’m learning to rest in that truth, even as I explore what’s next. Maybe it’s a new project. Maybe it’s serving in ways I didn’t have time for before. Maybe it’s rediscovering my voice, my creativity, my passions. Maybe it’s as simple and profound as waking up each day and saying, “Here I am, Lord. What do You have for me today?”
This season is tender. It’s sacred. And it’s stretching me in ways I never expected. But I believe God isn’t done writing my story just because one chapter has closed.
He’s the author, after all. And He’s still holding the pen.
So, here I am. Still a mom, always a mom. But also a woman rediscovering her heart, her voice, and her God in the quiet.
And I believe, with everything in me, that the best is yet to come.
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