I have often heard it said that the year before a major milestone becomes a reflective one. A year of looking backwards as much as forwards. Of taking stock. Of remembering who you were, who you became, and all the versions of yourself that existed in between.

It has certainly been that kind of year for me.

In less than four months, I will turn sixty.

Sixty.

Even writing the number feels strange. Not frightening, exactly. Just significant. Six decades of living. Six decades of beginnings and endings, ordinary days and extraordinary ones, people loved and people lost, choices made, roads taken, dreams fulfilled and others quietly laid down.

And lately, I have found myself looking back over all of it.

Perhaps that is partly because I have taken up a new hobby: restoring old photographs.

There is something almost surreal about bringing an old photograph back to life. Faded colours become clear again. Faces sharpen. Creases disappear. Light returns to places that time had dulled.

But what I did not expect was how much those photographs would stir in me.

I have spent hours looking at images of my childhood and teenage years. And somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing them merely as old photographs.

I started seeing her.

The girl I once was.

Sometimes she is smiling confidently at the camera. Sometimes awkwardly. Sometimes she looks carefree, sometimes uncertain. She has no idea what lies ahead of her.

She doesn’t know who she will love.

She doesn’t know the people she will one day have to say goodbye to.

She doesn’t know which dreams will come true or which ones will quietly disappear.

She doesn’t know how many times life will surprise her.

Or frighten her.

Or break her heart.

She doesn’t know how many times she will have to begin again.

And she does not yet know something I understand now with painful clarity — that life can change in the blink of an eye.

One phone call.

One diagnosis.

One moment.

One unexpected goodbye.

One piece of news you never saw coming.

Sometimes there is no gentle transition between what was and what is. Sometimes life simply divides itself into before and after, and you find yourself standing in a reality you never imagined would be yours.

And as I have looked into that young face, one question keeps rising inside me:

If I could warn her, what would I say?

There is so much I could tell her.

I could tell her not to worry so much about things that will one day seem very small.

I could tell her that some people she thinks will be there forever will only walk beside her for a season.

I could tell her to hold certain people a little closer, because one day she will wish desperately for one more conversation, one more moment, one more ordinary afternoon.

I could tell her that parents grow old.

That children grow up frighteningly quickly.

That homes change.

That friendships change.

That bodies change.

That life changes even when you desperately want it to stay exactly as it is.

I could warn her that there will be days when she feels wonderfully strong and others when she will hardly recognise herself.

There will be moments when she will wonder whether she has anything left to give.

There will be seasons she never imagined when she was young.

Things she would never have chosen.

Things nothing could have prepared her for.

And perhaps, if I could reach through all these decades and speak to her, I would want to protect her from some of it.

I would want to whisper, Don’t go that way.

Don’t trust that person.

Don’t waste so much time worrying.

Say what you need to say.

Take that photograph.

Stay a little longer.

Tell them you love them.

But the longer I think about it, the less certain I am that I would warn her at all.

Because every joy and every disappointment, every wrong turn and every unexpected blessing, every heartbreak and every healing has somehow become part of the woman looking back at her now.

Take away the difficult chapters and perhaps I would also have to take away the strength they grew in me.

Take away the losses and perhaps I would lose some of the tenderness they taught me.

Take away the uncertainty and perhaps I would never have learned what it means to keep walking when I cannot see very far ahead.

No, perhaps I would not tell her what is coming.

Perhaps I would simply sit beside her for a while.

I would look at that young woman with her whole life still stretching out before her and tell her the things she cannot possibly know yet.

I would tell her that life will not unfold the way she imagines it will.

It will be far more beautiful in some places.

Far more painful in others.

There will be chapters she will want to hold onto forever and chapters she will pray will end.

There will be laughter she never saw coming.

There will be tears she never thought she could cry.

There will be people who become part of the very fabric of her life.

And God will send people into her life at exactly the seasons she needs them.

Some will stay for decades.

Some will stay only for a little while.

Some will walk beside her through ordinary days, and others will appear in the moments when she feels least able to walk alone.

She will not always understand why certain people arrive, why others leave, or why some relationships change. But looking back, she will see that she was so often given the right person for the right season.

And there will be blessings too.

So many blessings.

Blessings greater than she could possibly imagine while sitting there at the beginning of her life.

That young girl dreams of becoming a mother.

She does not yet know the indescribable love that dream will bring into her life.

She does not know the joy, the worry, the exhaustion, the pride, the fierce tenderness of loving her children.

And she certainly cannot imagine that one day there will be another generation.

Beautiful grandchildren to hold.

To laugh with.

To watch grow.

To love with that extraordinary kind of love that somehow feels both completely new and wonderfully familiar.

There are gifts ahead of her she does not even know to ask God for yet.

There will be moments when everything feels wonderfully full and moments when she will feel terribly empty.

And through all of it, she will keep becoming.

She will change her mind.

She will lose things.

She will find things.

She will make mistakes.

She will forgive.

She will need forgiveness.

She will love deeply.

She will grieve deeply.

She will discover that the two often belong together.

And somewhere along the way, she will learn that courage rarely looks the way she once imagined.

Sometimes courage will be bold.

But sometimes courage will simply be getting out of bed.

Making the phone call.

Walking into the hospital.

Sitting beside someone you love.

Starting again.

Choosing hope when hope feels very small.

And she will discover something else too.

That she was never carrying all of it alone.

There will be times when God’s presence feels unmistakably close, and other times when she will have to trust that He is there even when she cannot feel Him.

There will be prayers answered in ways she hoped for.

There will be prayers answered differently.

And there will be prayers whose answers she may never fully understand.

But through every season — the beautiful ones, the bewildering ones, the heartbreaking ones — God will remain.

And if I could tell her only one thing, perhaps it would be this:

With God’s help, you will make it through. All of it.

Not untouched.

Not unchanged.

But through.

There will be times when you think you won’t.

There will be moments when the road ahead seems impossibly long.

There will be days when you feel lost inside your own life.

There will be moments when everything changes in the blink of an eye and you have no idea how you are supposed to live in what comes next.

But God will meet you there too.

He will give you strength you do not yet know you possess.

He will send people to walk beside you.

He will place unexpected kindness along the road.

And among the difficult chapters, He will give you blessings so beautiful that the young woman in the photograph could never have dreamed them for herself.

Somehow, one day at a time, you will keep going.

And decades from now, a sixty-year-old woman will sit looking at your photograph.

She will study your young face and realise how little you knew about what was waiting for you.

And she will feel something almost unbearably tender toward you.

Because she knows what you don’t.

She knows the story.

She knows how many times your heart will break and mend.

How many people you will love.

How much life you will live.

She knows the children you will hold in your arms.

She knows the grandchildren who will one day climb into those same arms.

She knows the people God will send when you need them most.

She knows the blessings you cannot yet imagine.

And perhaps she will wish she could reach through the photograph, take your young hand in hers and say:

I wish I could warn you.

I wish I could spare you some of it.

But perhaps, more than anything, I just want you to know this.

With God’s help, you will make it through. All of it.

And one day, you will look back at this photograph and realise that the girl you once were had absolutely no idea how much courage she carried within her — or how faithfully God would carry her when her own courage was not enough.