It is July and you are not behind.

Somewhere around the middle of July, a particular kind of guilt shows up. The year is more than half gone. The list you wrote in January is mostly untouched. The version of yourself you were going to be by now has not arrived, and the calendar is starting to feel like an accusation.

I want to say something plainly about that word. Behind assumes a schedule. It assumes there was a correct pace, that you knew what it was, and that you failed to keep it. So before you accept the guilt, it is worth asking who set that timeline. Because most of the time it was not God. It was a January version of you who did not yet know what this year would ask.

She did not know what was coming

The woman who wrote those goals had not met the six months you just lived. She did not know about the loss, or the diagnosis, or the job, or the season of caring for someone who needed you more than your plans did. She was making an educated guess in a quiet week, and she was working with less information than you have now.

You are not behind her. You are ahead of her. You know things she did not.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.Ecclesiastes 3:11

Count what does not fit on a list

Try this instead of reviewing your goals. Write down what has actually changed in you since January that you would never have thought to put in writing. The conversation you finally had. The thing you stopped explaining. The relationship you let go quietly instead of fighting for. The morning you got up when it would have been easier not to.

None of that shows up on a list. All of it is growth. And most of the real work of a year happens in exactly those places, where nobody is keeping score and there is nothing to check off.

You are not behind. You are in it. Those are different things.

With you on the journey,
Autumn