Living a Purposeful Life: 10 Ways to Be Brave, Keep Showing Up, and Become Who You Were Created to Be

Posted on September 22, 2026September 18, 2026 by mrsmonarch

Originally published in 2018. Completely revised and expanded for our lives in 2026–Because we all are growing and changing, and Built To Be A Butterfly is, too! 🙂

Have you ever spent time with a group of first graders and asked them that age-old question:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

If you haven’t, you should try it sometime.

It is a glorious way to spend a few hours.

The answers come flying out of those little mouths with absolutely no concern for whether their dreams are practical, profitable, impressive, or even remotely possible.

Astronaut.

Veterinarian.

Teacher.

Professional athlete.

Artist.

Marine biologist.

Somebody inevitably wants to be a princess.

And why not?

At that age, the possibilities still feel wide open.

They haven’t learned yet to measure their dreams against their failures. They haven’t accumulated years of other people’s opinions about what they’re capable of. They haven’t built a mental Rolodex of every reason something might not work.

They simply imagine a future—and believe they might have something to do with creating it.

But here’s what has always struck me about that question.

I’ve never had a child look at me and say,

“When I grow up, I want to be miserable.”

Nobody says they want to spend their adult years buried under resentment, fear, exhaustion, loneliness, regret, or the constant feeling that they’re living somebody else’s life.

Nobody dreams of waking up one morning and realizing,

“How in the world did I get here?”

And yet…

For some of us, that’s exactly what happens.

Not because we woke up one morning and deliberately chose a life we didn’t recognize.

For most of us, it didn’t happen in one solitary choice.

The process happens slowly.

Here a little. There a little.

One compromise.

One fear-based decision.

One relationship we knew wasn’t healthy.

One dream we talked ourselves out of.

One opportunity we were too afraid to pursue.

One more time saying yes when everything inside us wanted to say no.

One more year spent surviving instead of becoming.

Until one day, we wake up and don’t recognize the life we’ve built.

We’ve talked about this before.

Our choices become patterns.
Our patterns create precedents.
And eventually, those precedents can become the life we’re living.

But that realization raises another question.

A really important one.

If our choices are helping create the life we’re living… what are we intentionally creating?

Because here’s the thing:

You don’t accidentally build a purposeful life.

You build it through the things you repeatedly choose to give your time, attention, courage, energy, and love to.

And that doesn’t mean you need a five-year plan.

It doesn’t mean you need to quit your job, sell your house, move across the country, and reinvent yourself before breakfast.

It means you occasionally need to stop long enough to look at your life and ask:

Is the life I’m building actually the life I want to be building?

That’s a question worth sitting with.

So let’s sit with it.

1. Admit when you’ve gotten off course.

You can’t change what you refuse to see.

Sometimes the first step toward a purposeful life is simply admitting:

“This isn’t where I want to be.”

Not because your entire life is terrible.

Not because you’ve failed at everything.

Maybe you’re simply tired of drifting.

Maybe you’ve spent so much time responding to whatever was screaming the loudest that you’ve forgotten to ask what actually matters to you.

Maybe you’ve spent years being everything everybody else needed and somewhere along the way, you stopped listening for God’s direction in your own life.

Whatever the reason, you don’t have to defend it.

You don’t have to produce a ten-page explanation for how you got here.

Just tell yourself the truth.

I’m off course.

That’s not the end of the story.

It’s the moment you finally know where you are.

And you can’t redirect a life until you’re willing to admit its current direction.

2. Decide what actually matters.

This sounds simple.

It isn’t.

Because we’re surrounded by an astonishing amount of noise telling us what should matter.

Be successful.

Be productive.

Have more.

Do more.

Look younger.

Stay relevant.

Make everybody happy.

Keep up.

Don’t disappoint anyone.

And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, we can lose track of a very important question:

What actually matters to me?

More importantly:

What matters to God?

What kind of woman do you want to become?

What do you want your life to stand for?

Who do you want to love well?

What gifts have you been given?

What keeps tugging at your heart?

What would you regret never attempting?

You don’t have to have all the answers.

But you do need to start asking better questions.

Because if you don’t decide what matters, something—or someone—will decide for you.

3. Pay attention to what gets your life energy.

Here’s where things get uncomfortable.

We all say certain things are important.

But our calendars, our bank accounts, our attention, and our energy often tell a slightly different story.

And I’m not suggesting you need to turn your life into a spreadsheet.

I’m asking you to pay attention.

What gets the best of you?

What gets your leftover energy?

What occupies your thoughts?

What do you make time for?

What do you consistently say yes to?

What do you consistently put off?

Because your time is voting for something whether you realize it or not.

So look at your actual life—not the one you intended to have.

What is getting your life?

And is that what you want to be giving it to?

4. Remember that your value comes before your accomplishments.

This one matters.

Because purpose can get twisted into performance awfully fast.

We start thinking:

If I accomplish enough, I’ll matter.

If I become successful enough, I’ll have value.

If I finally do something important, then my life will mean something.

No.

Your value isn’t something you earn by performing well enough.

You were fearfully and wonderfully made before you accomplished a single thing.

Your worth isn’t waiting at the finish line.

It’s already there.

And that changes the way we approach purpose.

We’re not scrambling to prove that our lives matter.

We’re learning how to faithfully use the life we’ve been given.

There is a difference.

A big one.

5. Start.

Eventually, thinking about it isn’t enough.

You’ve got to move.

Start before you’re ready.

You don’t need confidence.

You don’t need a five-year plan.

You don’t need to know exactly how this turns out.

You need a next step.

Maybe it’s a phone call.

Maybe it’s a class.

Maybe it’s a conversation you’ve been avoiding.

Maybe it’s pulling an old dream out of the drawer and looking at it again.

Maybe it’s finally admitting that something needs to change.

Maybe it’s ten minutes spent doing something you’ve been putting off for ten years.

It doesn’t have to be dramatic.

It just has to be movement.

Because purpose isn’t discovered entirely through thinking.

Sometimes you discover it by moving.

6. Do it scared.

I wish I could tell you that once you figure out what matters, the fear disappears.

It doesn’t.

Sorry.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Fear will show up.

It will have questions.

It will have scenarios.

It will remind you of every time you failed before.

It will point out everything that could possibly go wrong.

And sometimes it will make a very convincing argument.

Listen to it if you need to.

Then don’t necessarily obey it.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear.

Sometimes courage is simply deciding that fear doesn’t get to make the final decision.

You can be afraid and still take the step.

You can be uncertain and still begin.

You can be terrified and still show up.

Have fear—and do it anyway. (And yes– It CAN be done. I’m doing it every time I push “publish” on this blog!)

7. Let “good enough” be good enough sometimes.

Perfection has stolen enough already.

I used to live by the rule:

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

Age and experience have taught me something different.

Sometimes:

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing—even if I get it wrong.

Because here’s what perfectionism does.

It convinces us that waiting is wisdom.

It tells us we’re not ready.

Not qualified.

Not polished enough.

Not knowledgeable enough.

Not certain enough.

So we wait.

And wait.

Meanwhile, somebody with half our experience and twice our willingness to look foolish has already started.

Trying and getting it wrong is still movement.

It teaches you something.

It gives you information.

It builds courage.

It gets you five steps farther than standing still waiting for perfection to arrive.

And besides…

Perfection is a terrible traveling companion.

She makes you late for everything! Including the discovery of your best life!

8. Let your past teach you.

This one may be especially important if you’ve spent any time recently looking honestly at the choices you’ve made.

Look at your past as a teacher, not your taskmaster.

Don’t deny it.

Don’t romanticize it.

Don’t pretend it didn’t hurt.

And don’t let it become the place where you live forever.

Learn from it.

Even the things that were completely outside your control can teach you something.

Pain can deepen compassion.

Loss can change your priorities.

Failure can expose what wasn’t working.

And sometimes, if we’re being really honest, we have to look at something we did and say:

“Yep. I screwed that up.”

That’s painful.

But you don’t have to waste a mistake.

You can learn from it.

You can make amends where necessary.

You can change your behavior.

You can choose differently.

You can mark that particular road on your map:

Been there.
Learned that.
Don’t need to go back.

You paid for that experience with blood, sweat, tears, time, or all four.

Don’t waste what it taught you.

We just spent time looking honestly at the choices that helped create the life we’re living.

Now comes the equally important part:

Don’t use what you discover to beat yourself up.

Use it to become wiser.

9. Make room to become.

Growth doesn’t happen very well in a life with no room for it.

And I’m not talking about adding another obligation to your already ridiculous to-do list.

I’m talking about creating some space where you can actually pay attention to your own becoming.

Read something that challenges you.

Study Scripture.

Journal.

Take a walk without your phone screaming at you.

Learn something you’ve always been curious about.

Listen to someone wiser than you.

Ask God some honest questions.

Get counsel when you need it.

Create something.

Sit quietly long enough to hear your own thoughts.

Try something you’ve never tried before.

Feed your mind.

Feed your spirit.

Feed your curiosity.

Make room to become.

Because you cannot keep pouring from a soul that is never allowed to be replenished.

And sometimes growth isn’t about doing more.

Sometimes it’s about finally making room for something deeper.

10. Practice gratitude without pretending life is easy.

Let’s be honest.

Sometimes gratitude feels ridiculous.

It’s hard to be grateful when you’re standing in the dumpster of life.

I know.

But gratitude isn’t pretending the dumpster doesn’t stink.

It’s refusing to believe the dumpster is the entire landscape.

There can be rain and flowers.

There can be grief and goodness.

There can be disappointment and hope.

There can be a terrible season and evidence of God’s faithfulness right in the middle of it.

Gratitude is a muscle.

We strengthen it by using it.

Not because everything is good.

But because everything isn’t only bad.

So look again.

What is still here?

Who is still here?

What did you survive?

What did you learn?

What are you capable of now that you weren’t capable of before?

What small beautiful thing showed up today?

Don’t let what’s hard become the only thing you can see.

So… where are we going?

Remember last week’s conversation?

We talked about the wagon.

Those horses pulling it.

People Pleasing.

Fear of Rejection.

Avoiding Conflict.

I Don’t Want to Be Alone.

Everybody Else’s Needs Come First.

I’ll Deal With It Later.

And that particularly stubborn one:

But They Did It First.

We talked about what happens when we keep feeding those horses and then wonder why the wagon keeps ending up in the same places.

And we ended with this:

Grab the reins.

But there’s another question waiting for us once we realize we have some say in the direction of our lives.

Where are we going?

Not where everybody else thinks we should go.

Not where fear says we have to stay.

Not where our past tells us we’re destined to end up.

Where are we actually trying to go?

Because grabbing the reins isn’t the destination.

It’s the beginning of intentional living.

And maybe you don’t know exactly where you’re headed yet.

That’s okay.

You don’t have to.

You just need to stop drifting long enough to choose the next road.

You don’t have to waste your life.

I don’t mean that harshly.

I mean it as an invitation.

You have been given a life.

Not a perfect life.

Not a painless life.

Not a life where every circumstance will cooperate with your plans.

We’ve talked about that too.

Sometimes life hands you lemons.

Sometimes somebody else hands them to you.

Sometimes you trip over the stupid things yourself.

Sometimes the storm comes whether you were ready or not.

You don’t get to choose every circumstance.

But you do have a say in what you do with the life that remains in your hands.

That’s where purpose comes in.

Purpose isn’t necessarily some enormous, earth-shattering assignment that arrives with trumpets and a spotlight.

Sometimes purpose looks remarkably ordinary.

It’s showing up.

It’s loving people well.

It’s using the gifts you’ve been given.

It’s doing the work that’s yours to do.

It’s caring when it would be easier not to.

It’s having the courage to try again.

It’s learning from your mistakes instead of building a home inside them.

It’s becoming more of the woman God created you to be.

And maybe, when all is said and done, that’s what I want most.

I want to be able to look back and know that I showed up.

That I cared.

That I used what I’d been given.

That I didn’t allow fear to make every decision for me.

That I didn’t spend my whole life waiting until I felt ready.

That I didn’t waste the experiences I paid for so dearly.

That I kept becoming.

And when the sun finally sets on my life, I hope people can say:

The world is a little better because she was here.

Because she showed up.

Because she was brave enough to keep caring—

even when it hurt like Hades.

So, friend…

What do you want?

Not what does everybody else want from you.

Not what would make you look successful.

Not what would make your life Instagram-worthy.

Not what would keep everybody comfortable.

What do you want your life to be about?

Maybe it’s time to start figuring that out.

Not tomorrow.

Not when life settles down.

Not when you’re finally confident.

Now.

One choice.

Then another.

That’s how a purposeful life is built.

Not all at once.

Here a little.
There a little.

One brave step at a time.

Because God isn’t finished with you yet.

And there is still more to your story.

Until Next Time—Keep showing up!

Squeezing the Lemons: Finding Growth in Life’s Bitter Seasons

Posted on September 8, 2026September 7, 2026 by mrsmonarch

Have you ever looked at your life and wondered how you got here?

Maybe there was a younger version of you who imagined life would look very different by now.

She had dreams.

She had plans.

She believed there were beautiful things ahead.

She laughed more easily. She had energy. She was filled with ideas and hope and possibility.

And then… life happened.

Responsibilities piled up. Disappointments came. People changed. Plans unraveled. Things you never imagined having to carry somehow found their way into your hands.

And one day, you looked in the mirror and realized you were tired.

Not just physically tired.

Soul tired.

The kind of tired that makes you wonder where that hopeful girl went.

Friend, if you’ve ever found yourself there, pull up a chair.

I’ve got coffee.

And I think we need to talk about lemons.

You Know Which Lemons I Mean

I’m not talking about the cute little yellow things sitting in a bowl on the kitchen counter.

I’m talking about the ones life hands you without asking permission.

The promotion you didn’t get.

The relationship you thought would last forever that didn’t.

The friendship that quietly disappeared.

The child you love but cannot seem to reach.

The financial struggle you never saw coming.

The diagnosis that changed the way you look at tomorrow.

The grief that rearranged your entire world.

The betrayal that made you question things you thought were secure.

The dream you worked so hard for that simply never happened.

Yeah.

Those lemons.

Life has a way of handing them to us.

And here’s one of the hardest things I’ve learned:

We don’t get to choose how many lemons end up in our basket.

Sometimes our own choices contribute to the mess we’re carrying. There are consequences in life, and wisdom sometimes comes from recognizing our part in them.

But sometimes we do everything we know to do.

We pray.

We try to make wise choices.

We love people well.

We show up.

We do our best to walk faithfully.

And the lemons still come.

That’s not necessarily evidence that we’ve done something wrong.

It’s simply part of living in a world that is not yet what God intended it to be.

Jesus reminded us that the sun rises on the evil and the good, and rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Faith does not give us immunity from hard things.

It gives us Someone to hold onto when the hard things come.

The Temptation to Sugarcoat

Now, if you’re anything like me, your first instinct when life gets bitter may be to figure out how to make it less bitter.

We want the shortcut.

The quick fix.

The explanation.

The five-step plan.

We want to skip ahead to the part where everything makes sense again.

Sometimes we even try to sugarcoat the season.

“Maybe it isn’t really that bad.”

“Other people have it worse.”

“I should be grateful.”

“I just need to have more faith.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

And sometimes those words are offered with good intentions.

But friend…

A lemon is still sour.

Pain is still pain.

Grief is still grief.

Betrayal still breaks something.

And you don’t have to pretend that something doesn’t hurt in order to have faith.

There is room in faith for tears.

There is room for questions.

There is room for disappointment.

There is even room for saying, “God, I don’t understand this.”

You can trust God and still be hurting.

Those things are not opposites.

So What Do We Do With the Lemons?

Eventually, when we’re ready, we have a choice.

We can spend the rest of our lives wishing the lemon had never landed in our basket…

or we can begin asking a different question:

“What can I learn from this?”

Not because the painful thing was good.

Not because we needed the suffering.

Not because God delights in watching us hurt.

But because God is remarkably good at bringing redemption out of things we never would have chosen.

That’s where the squeezing begins.

We squeeze out the wisdom.

Maybe this season taught you something about boundaries.

Maybe it showed you that you were stronger than you thought.

Maybe you learned to recognize unhealthy patterns.

Maybe you discovered that your identity cannot safely rest in another person’s approval.

Maybe you learned how deeply you are capable of loving.

Maybe you discovered compassion for people whose struggles you once couldn’t understand.

Maybe you learned to slow down.

To listen.

To pray.

To wait.

To say no.

To say yes.

To ask for help.

To receive grace.

To give grace.

Some lessons are expensive.

Some are painful.

Some arrive wrapped in tears.

But that doesn’t mean they are worthless.

Don’t Waste What You’ve Walked Through!

I’ve come to believe that one of the most beautiful things God can do with our painful experiences is allow them to become useful.

No—It doesn’t usually happen immediately.

In fact, sometimes the fullness of what He does with our pain isn’t recognized for a very long time.

There are seasons when the only thing we can do is survive the day.

And that’s okay.

You don’t have to turn your pain into a lesson before you’re ready.

You don’t have to find the silver lining while you’re still bleeding.

Sometimes faithfulness looks like simply getting through today with God beside you.

But eventually, the healing process gives us enough breathing room to look back.

And that’s when we may begin to notice something.

The woman who walked through that season isn’t exactly the same woman who came out of it.

Maybe she’s softer in some places.

Stronger in others.

More discerning.

More compassionate.

Less impressed by appearances.

More willing to tell the truth.

More comfortable saying, “I don’t know.”

More willing to sit beside someone else in their pain without trying to fix it.

Maybe she understands grace differently now.

Maybe she understands God differently.

Maybe she understands herself differently.

That’s becoming.

Not becoming perfect.

Not becoming someone who never hurts.

Becoming someone who knows, more deeply than she once did, who she is and Whose she is.

The Lemon Season Doesn’t Last Forever

And here is the part I never want us to forget:

The lemon harvest doesn’t last forever.

There will be seasons when the clouds break.

There will be laughter again.

There will be unexpected blessings.

There will be friendships that feel like sunlight.

There will be mornings when you wake up and realize that something inside you has become lighter.

There will be sweet fruit again.

And when that happens, I hope you’ll remember the woman you were when you were carrying lemons.

Because someday, someone else may sit beside you with a basket full of her own.

And you may be able to look at her—not with judgment, not with easy answers, but with understanding—and say:

“I know.

I’ve carried some lemons too.

You don’t have to walk through this alone.”

Maybe that’s part of what our bitter seasons can become.

Not something we would ever choose.

But something God can redeem.

Something that deepens us.

Something that teaches us.

Something that makes us more compassionate.

Something that allows us to become a safe place for someone else.

So, friend…

If you’re carrying lemons today, you don’t have to pretend they’re sweet.

You don’t have to rush through the season.

You don’t have to understand everything.

And you certainly don’t have to be grateful for the pain itself.

But when you’re ready, perhaps you can begin to ask:

What can I squeeze from this?

What wisdom?

What strength?

What compassion?

What deeper understanding?

What new part of myself is God gently bringing to life?

Because the lemon may be bitter.

But your story isn’t over.

And God is still at work in the becoming.

Until next time,

Want to keep the encouragement going?
Visit the BTBAB Etsy Shop to find encouragement cards and other resources created to meet you right where you are.

Built To Be A Butterfly™
where faith meets the journey of becoming

What Did I Learn About Myself? How Hidden Beliefs Shape the Way We See the World

Posted on August 18, 2026August 20, 2026 by mrsmonarch

NOTE: Hi Everyone!

Just so we’re all on the same page, this article is part 2 of a 4-part series. Since each lesson builds upon what the previous article laid out, I hope you’ll go back to “Look for the Thread” (part 1) before moving forward. It can be found in the right-hand column of the BTBAB home page.

Last week, I asked you to look for the threads.

Not to pull your whole life’s blanket apart.

Not to go digging through your childhood looking for something “terrible” that happened.

I simply asked you to notice the way your body responds to outside stimuli.

A phrase you say when you’re overwhelmed.

A reaction that seems bigger than the moment.

A feeling that seems strangely familiar.

A little voice inside you that says:

“See? There it is again.”

Because once we begin noticing the threads, we can ask a deeper question:

What am I learning about myself?

And perhaps even more importantly:

Is how I interpreted my life experiences eons ago still influencing the way I experience the world now?

Think about my third-grade kickball story from last week.

I wasn’t delusional. Even as a young kid, I knew I wasn’t great at kickball. But I still wanted to play— to be included. To be chosen.

So, when player after player was chosen, while I still stood there, waiting—hoping— it hurt. I was acutely aware that my peers didn’t think I brought much value to the table.

I was embarrassed. And… I remember feeling very… small.

The moment itself lasted only a few minutes. Recess ended. I went home. Life moved on. At first glance, it didn’t seem like a big deal.

But a while back, I felt prodded to ask myself the question: what might a little girl carry forward from something like that?

Maybe nothing.

Or maybe she interpreted the experience as:

I’m not the one people want.

Other people are better than me.

I have to prove myself.

I have to work harder to be chosen.

I’m going to be overlooked.

Maybe even, “Stepping out to try new things will lead to disappointment and maybe even humiliation. It’s safer to not try!”

Notice that I didn’t say, “She learned she wasn’t wanted.”

Now let me be perfectly clear. The experience was real. The hurt was real.

But the conclusion she drew from it was an interpretation.

And interpretations aren’t necessarily absolute truth.

Especially when we’re young, we can come up with answers that make perfect sense to a child—but don’t necessarily tell the whole truth.

A child doesn’t have the perspective or life experience of an adult. She simply knows:

Something happened.

It hurt.

I need to understand why.

And sometimes the explanation she creates becomes a “thread”. A small piece of a growing manifesto that slowly becomes her operation manual.

When a Thread Becomes a Lens

Here’s where things get really interesting.

The thread doesn’t just affect how I see myself.

It affects what I expect to find in the world.

Imagine a woman who interpreted an experience as:

I’m not the one people choose.

Years later, a friend forgets to invite her on an outing.

It hurts.

But something deeper may whisper:

“See? There it is again.”

Someone else gets the promotion.

“See? There it is again.”

A group makes plans without her.

“See? There it is again.”

Someone chooses somebody else.

“See? There it is again.”

Now, this does not mean she imagined those things.

It doesn’t mean other people’s choices don’t matter or impact us.

And it certainly doesn’t mean every painful experience is somehow her fault because she’s “too emotional”.

We’re exploring something more subtle:

The belief may influence what she notices, what she expects, and how she interprets what happens next.

If I’ve interpreted my experiences as evidence that I’m unwanted, rejection may become especially loud to me.

If I’ve interpreted my experiences as evidence that my needs are inconvenient, I may notice every sigh when I ask for something.

If I’ve interpreted my experiences as evidence that love must be earned, I may instinctively begin performing when I feel insecure.

The world hasn’t necessarily changed.

But the lens through which I experience the world has.

And that distinction is enormous.

Because we don’t want to tell women they’re overreacting.

We want to give them a reason their reaction might make sense.

Not to excuse every reaction.

Not to blame everything on the past.

But to become curious about what’s happening underneath the reaction.

“Why Is This Bugging Me So Much?”

You’ve probably said it.

Something happens.

Maybe it really is a little thing.

Someone doesn’t text back.

A friend seems distracted.

Someone criticizes your work.

You’re left out of something.

Someone chooses somebody else.

And suddenly you’re much more hurt, angry, anxious, embarrassed, or rejected than you expected to be.

“Why am I this upset?!”

Sometimes the answer is simply:

Because it hurt.

But sometimes there’s another question worth asking:

Is my reaction entirely about what is happening right now?

That isn’t an accusation.

It’s an invitation.

Because maybe today’s experience has touched an older thread.

Maybe you’ve felt this before.

And before.

See? There it is again.

What Would I Have to Believe About Myself?

Instead of immediately asking:

“What’s wrong with me?”

try asking: