Kellie Alexander

There are some things you don’t learn because someone teaches them to you. You learn them because life takes something from you that you never imagined losing. You learn them because the life you thought you were going to live doesn’t turn out to be the life you actually have. You learn them because sometimes the only way forward is to pick yourself up, look around at what remains, and ask yourself, What do I do now?

I’ve had to ask that question more than once.

I’ve had seasons when I thought I knew what my life was going to look like, only to discover that I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. I’ve experienced loss, disappointment, broken relationships, and dreams that didn’t turn out the way I expected. I’ve had times when I felt completely lost about who I was and what I was supposed to do next. And somewhere along the way, through all of the unraveling and rebuilding, I began to understand something that I wish I had understood much earlier: rebuilding a life isn’t about getting your old life back.

Sometimes the old life is gone. Sometimes the person you were before the loss is gone, too. That doesn’t necessarily mean something has gone terribly wrong. Sometimes it means that life has changed you in ways you never would have chosen but can eventually learn to understand. Rebuilding isn’t about pretending the loss didn’t happen or trying to recreate the life that existed before everything changed. It is about learning how to live honestly in the life that exists now and discovering who you are becoming in the process.

I Have Learned That I Cannot Build My Life Around Things I Cannot Control

This may be one of the hardest lessons I’ve ever learned. For a very long time, I believed that if I could just say the right thing, do the right thing, love people well enough, work hard enough, pray hard enough, or somehow figure out what everyone else needed from me, I could keep things from falling apart. I thought, perhaps without even realizing it, that if I could manage enough of the circumstances around me, I could protect the things and people I loved. But life has taught me otherwise.

Other people’s choices belong to them. Other people’s opinions belong to them. Other people’s approval—or disapproval—belongs to them. I can love someone deeply and still not be able to make them love me in return. I can do my best and still be misunderstood. I can pray for someone and still not be able to make their choices for them. I can do everything I know to do and still watch something fall apart.

What I have finally begun to understand is that I am responsible for what I do with what God has placed in my hands, but I am not responsible for controlling everything that happens around me. There is an enormous amount of freedom in finally understanding the difference.

I Have Learned That Other People’s Opinions Don’t Determine Who I Am

For much of my life, I allowed other people’s responses to me to become evidence about me. If someone rejected me, I wondered what was wrong with me. If someone was angry with me, I assumed I had failed. If someone didn’t approve of me, I questioned my worth. I spent far too much time looking outward for information about myself when I already had access to the most important answer.

I’ve had to learn to ask a different question: What does God say about me?

People can misunderstand you. People can reject you. People can disappoint you. People can even tell you things about yourself that simply aren’t true. Sometimes the people closest to us can have the loudest opinions about who they think we should be. But God’s Word doesn’t change because somebody doesn’t like you, misunderstands you, or decides they don’t want you in their life. My worth cannot be determined by someone else’s willingness to recognize it.

And I’ve learned something else along the way: if I spend my life trying to make everybody approve of me, I will eventually spend my life becoming whatever everyone else wants me to be. You cannot rebuild your life while making other people’s approval your foundation. At some point, you have to decide that being obedient to God is more important than being accepted by people.

I Have Learned That Rebuilding Begins With the Mind

You can change your circumstances and still carry the same broken beliefs into the next season. You can move to a new place, start a new relationship, find a new job, begin a new ministry, or make a hundred external changes and still feel trapped inside the same story because the circumstances aren’t necessarily what are keeping you stuck. Sometimes the thing that needs rebuilding first isn’t your circumstances at all. It’s the way you think about yourself, your circumstances, and God.

I’ve had to learn to recognize the thoughts that keep me stuck and compare them with what is actually true. That doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine or denying what happened. It means learning the difference between what happened to me and what I have decided that event means about me. Those are not always the same thing.

A loss can be real without meaning that my life is over. Someone else’s rejection can hurt deeply without meaning that I am unworthy of love. A dream can die without meaning that I have no purpose. A season of failure doesn’t have to become an identity. And a painful chapter doesn’t have to determine the ending of the story.

Renewing the mind is not about positive thinking. For me, it has become about learning to recognize the lies I’ve believed and replacing them with truth—particularly the truth God has already given me through His Word.

I Have Learned That Grief and Rebuilding Can Exist at the Same Time

One of the things I wish more people understood about rebuilding is that it doesn’t mean you’re no longer grieving. It doesn’t mean you stop missing what was, and it doesn’t mean you suddenly become grateful for the painful thing that happened. It certainly doesn’t mean you have to hurry because everyone around you has decided that you should be “doing better” by now.

Sometimes rebuilding looks incredibly ordinary. Sometimes it looks like getting out of bed when you don’t particularly want to. Sometimes it means taking a shower, making dinner, answering an email, or finally making a decision you’ve been avoiding. Sometimes it looks like laughing again and realizing you haven’t laughed in a long time. Sometimes it looks like discovering that you actually want something again after a season when you didn’t want much of anything.

I’ve learned that healing doesn’t always look like progress from the outside. Sometimes it is simply choosing to participate in your own life again. Sometimes it is making the decision that what happened to you will not have the final word about what you do with the life you have left.

I Have Learned That God Doesn’t Waste the Ruins

I wouldn’t have chosen some of the things I’ve walked through, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend suffering as a life strategy. There are losses I would undo in a heartbeat if I could. There are chapters I would gladly remove from my story if given the opportunity. But I have also learned that God can take the pieces of a life that looks ruined and build something I couldn’t have imagined before.

That doesn’t necessarily mean He gives us back what we lost. Sometimes He doesn’t. Sometimes rebuilding means accepting that something is gone and allowing God to show us what can grow in the space it left behind. The new life may not look anything like the old one. In fact, it may be better precisely because it isn’t the old one.

There is a strange kind of freedom that comes when you finally realize that God doesn’t need your life to look the way you thought it would in order for Him to use it. He isn’t limited by our plans, our timelines, our mistakes, our losses, or the opinions other people have formed about us. He is still God in the ruins, and He is still God in the rebuilding.

I Have Learned That I Don’t Have to Know the Whole Way Forward

Perhaps the biggest thing I’ve learned is that I don’t have to know the whole way forward. I just have to take the next faithful step.

I’ve spent enough time in the valley to know that sometimes the next step feels impossibly small. We want God to show us the whole path. We want to know where we’re going, how long it will take, who will be with us, and whether everything is going to work out. But more often than not, I’ve found that God gives me enough light for the step I’m standing in.

So I’ve learned to stop demanding the entire plan and start looking for the next thing I can do.

Sometimes that next step is getting up. Sometimes it is telling the truth. Sometimes it is setting a boundary. Sometimes it is opening your Bible when you don’t feel like it. Sometimes it is asking for help. Sometimes it is trying again after you have failed. Sometimes it is simply choosing hope when you don’t feel hopeful.

Small steps count.

Getting up counts. Setting a boundary counts. Telling the truth counts. Trying again counts. Choosing to believe God when your circumstances are screaming something different counts. One faithful step may not feel like much when you’re standing at the beginning of a long road, but one step becomes another, and another, and another.

And eventually, you may look around and realize something you weren’t sure would ever happen:

You’re living again.

Not the life you thought you would have. Not the life you had before everything fell apart. A new life.

A life that has scars and stories. A life that knows loss but also knows hope. A life that understands that some things cannot be controlled, some things cannot be restored, and some things cannot be explained. A life that has finally learned that God is not diminished by the things I cannot understand.

And perhaps that is what rebuilding really is.

It isn’t putting everything back exactly the way it was.

It is allowing God to take what remains and teaching you how to build something new.

I’ve learned that I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to understand every loss. I don’t have to make everyone happy. I don’t have to control what other people do or think about me. I don’t have to know exactly where this road is going.

I just have to remember Who is walking it with me.

God is still here.

And if He is still here, then there is still a next step. There is still purpose. There is still hope.

And there is still life to live.

You don’t have to stay stuck in the life that broke you.

You can rebuild.

You can hope again.

You can live again.