When I walked away from the bench after more than twenty years in the law, I wanted the new thing God was stirring in me.
I just had no idea how to become it.
I had spent seven years as a trial attorney and fourteen years as a judge. Law was not simply something I had fallen into. It was a career I had dreamed about since I was twelve years old.
So when God began stirring something completely different in me, a very reasonable voice started whispering.
You are too far down one road to start another career.
The women who do this kind of work started in their twenties and thirties.
You already spent your best years doing something else.
Your season has quietly slipped past you.
The voice did not sound negative or destructive. In fact, it sounded a lot like common sense.
That is what made it so easy to believe.
But I am so glad I didn’t.
Because I am living proof that the voice was lying. The most purpose-filled chapter of my entire life began on the far side of fifty.
Missed Moments
Maybe you know that voice too.
Perhaps you look at your age and wonder whether you waited too long. Maybe there is something you have wanted to pursue for years, but life kept getting in the way. You raised children. Built a career. Took care of family members. Survived a difficult marriage. Walked through grief. Dealt with circumstances you never expected.
And somewhere along the way, you started wondering whether your moment came and went while you were busy living your life.
If you have ever felt that way, you are standing in front of the second mindset that keeps women from trusting God’s plan: I think I have already missed my moment.
And underneath that fear often sits another one: I do not even trust myself to hear God clearly anymore, so what if I step out and get the whole thing wrong?
Both fears do the same thing. They pile the entire weight of your future on your shoulders.
Suddenly, God’s plan becomes a tightrope. You have to hear perfectly, choose perfectly, move at exactly the right moment, and never make a wrong turn.
One mistake, and somehow you have ruined God’s plan for your life forever.
Friend, that is not the God of the Bible.
You Can Still Hear God’s Voice
Let’s start with the worry that you cannot hear God.
Jesus said something beautiful about His people. In John 10:27 (NIV), He says, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
Notice what He did not say.
He did not say His most spiritual sheep hear His voice. He did not say the ones who never get confused hear Him. He did not say only the women who have mastered discernment, completed enough Bible studies, or always make the right decisions can recognize His voice.
He said, My sheep.
If you belong to Him, hearing His voice is part of your relationship with Him.
Think about how sheep learn the voice of their shepherd. They do not study a manual. They learn through nearness. They spend day after day close enough to the shepherd that his voice becomes familiar.
We learn God’s voice the same way.
If His voice feels faint right now, you may not need to try harder. You may simply need to draw closer.
Spend time in His Word. Make room for quiet. Pray honestly. Stay near the Shepherd.
And then be willing to move.
Isaiah 30:21 says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”
I love the picture in that verse because the guidance comes while you are walking.
We want God to give us the entire map before we leave the house.
God often says, Take the next step.
Then He meets us there.
The clarity you are waiting to receive before you move may come only after you begin moving.
God Can Restore What You Thought You Lost
Now let’s deal with the other fear.
What if my moment is gone for good?
God makes an extraordinary promise in Joel 2:25 (NIV)“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.”
Think about what locusts do to a field. They strip away what took months to grow and leave behind what looks barren and useless.
Maybe you have years that feel that way.
Years lost to the wrong relationship.
Years spent in a career you now wonder whether you were ever supposed to pursue.
Years consumed by fear.
Years spent caring for everyone except yourself.
Years swallowed by circumstances you never chose.
You may look back and see wasted time.
God sees something else.
He sees years He can redeem.
I have watched Him take experiences that seemed completely disconnected from a woman’s calling and use them as preparation for exactly where He was leading her next.
God wastes nothing.
The experience, wisdom, resilience, compassion, skills, and even scars you carry from previous seasons may become part of what equips you for your next assignment.
What you have been calling lost time, God may be calling your training ground.
Remember Moses
If you still think you are too late, remember Moses.
Moses was eighty years old when God met him at the burning bush.
Eighty!
He had spent forty years in Pharaoh’s household and another forty years tending sheep in the wilderness.
Imagine what his life must have looked like at seventy-nine.
The palace was decades behind him. His youthful dreams were probably long gone. He was tending another man’s sheep in the desert.
By the world’s clock, the important part of his life was over.
But God said, Now.
The greatest assignment of Moses’ life began at an age when most people would have expected him to settle quietly into the background.
And those forty years in the wilderness?
They were not wasted either.
God used them.
The wilderness Moses probably thought had nothing to do with his future became preparation for the wilderness through which he would eventually lead an entire nation.
Be careful about calling a season wasted simply because you cannot yet see what God plans to do with it.
You May Be Using the Wrong Clock
This is the heart of it.
You may have been measuring your life by a clock God is not using.
The world has a timeline.
You should accomplish this by thirty.
Have that figured out by forty.
Reach your peak by fifty.
And by a certain age, you are supposed to stop expecting new beginnings altogether.
But God’s timetable has never operated according to our cultural expectations.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV) tells us, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
In its time.
Not necessarily your time.
Not according to somebody else’s timeline.
Not according to the age printed on your driver’s license.
His time.
You are standing in the middle of a story whose final chapter you have not read yet. From the middle, it can certainly look as though you are behind. It can look like someone else got the opportunity you should have had. It can feel as though the best part already happened.
But you cannot see everything God is weaving together.
He can.
You Haven’t Missed Your Moment
So, if you have been telling yourself that you waited too long, I want you to replace that thought with something else: I have not missed my moment.
You don’t have to know the entire plan.
You don’t have to trust yourself to hear every instruction perfectly.
You don’t even have to understand how all the years behind you fit into what God is doing next.
You simply have to trust the Shepherd.
Trust the One who said His sheep know His voice.
Trust the One who promises to guide you as you walk.
Trust the One who restores the years the locusts have eaten.
Trust the One who called Moses at eighty.
Trust the One who makes everything beautiful in its time.
And then take one faithful step.
Make the call.
Sign up for the class.
Start writing.
Apply for the opportunity.
Explore the idea you keep pushing aside because you think you are too old.
Have the conversation.
Pray the prayer.
You don’t need the whole map to take the next step.
You haven’t missed your moment, because your moment was never yours to lose in the first place.
It is held by a God who has been faithfully leading you all along.
You are not behind, friend.
God isn’t bound by your calendar, and He has never once been late in all of history.
He isn’t about to start being late with you.
