For many years, I measured success largely by how hard I worked and what I could accomplish.

Then life began rewriting my definition of success.

I grew up a preacher’s daughter in Texas and Alabama, surrounded by faith and the church. I loved Jesus early. But knowing about faith as a child and learning to depend completely upon God as an adult proved to be very different things.

Heartbreak, financial loss, the crumbling of a 20-year marriage, periods of housing uncertainty and 15 moves in six years stripped away many of the things I had once used to measure security and success. There were seasons when polished answers no longer worked and determination could not fix what was broken.

At what I have called “wit’s end corner,” I surrendered.

And God met me there.

Not with a tidy explanation for every painful chapter, but with His presence. Slowly, the God I had known since childhood became the One I learned to trust with the steering wheel. I began to understand that surrender was not defeat. It was dependence. The heartbreak I would never have chosen deepened my compassion, strengthened my faith and opened my eyes to the private stories people carry behind perfectly presentable lives.

What once looked like disconnected chapters began to look like threads.

Today I am still a strategist and consultant. I am also a speaker, author, Encouragement Coach and Experience Architect. I wrote The Intentional Journey: A Playbook for Living a Life of Purpose to encourage others to make intentional choices, seek wise counsel, navigate uncertainty and live purposefully. I speak to people walking through seasons of “it’s not supposed to be this way,” creating honest conversations about heartbreak, faith, purpose and hope.

At 70, I am less interested in accumulating accomplishments and more interested in using whatever God has placed in my hands. My heart is drawn especially toward young adults searching for direction, people carrying heartbreak, and people who are overlooked or need someone to see possibilities in them.

Interestingly, the gift God seems to have woven through every season has never really changed.

I connect people, ideas and possibilities.

I once used that gift primarily to help organizations grow. Today, I also use it to help people recognize hope, purpose and possibility in their own stories.

I have learned that success is not a title, an award, a bank balance or an impressive list of accomplishments. Success is living faithfully aligned with God’s purpose—using our gifts well, loving people generously and leaving lives better because we answered His call.

And I have learned something else: no experience has to be wasted when we place it in God’s hands.

The joyful chapters. The impressive ones. The embarrassing ones. The heartbreaking ones. The chapters we would happily tear from the book if given the chance.

He can use them all.

Looking back, I can see a tapestry I certainly could not see while I was living one thread at a time. Looking ahead, I do not know what He will weave next.

I know only that the weaving belongs to Him.

I am simply one thread He has chosen to use in the lives of others.

Soli Deo Gloria.