Living An Unfinished Life

I have been thinking about the strange nature of being alive.

Every person walking this earth is carrying an unfinished story. We wake up each morning and continue writing without knowing the ending. We make decisions, form relationships, lose people, discover ourselves, change our minds, dream, fail, begin again, and move forward into chapters whose titles we have not yet learned.

And yet, if I believe in God, there is something even more mysterious about this.

The story is unfinished to me, but it is not unknown to Him.

Before my mother ever carried me, before my first breath, before I had a name, before I knew what I would love or fear or desire, God already knew that I would exist. He knew the woman I would become, the people I would encounter, the places I would go, the things I would create, the things I would lose, and the moments that would eventually become memories.

I do not know how my story ends.

God does.

And there is something almost breathtaking about that thought.

I can open a history book and read about someone whose story has already reached its final page. I can read about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and see the shape of his life from beginning to end. I can study the decisions he made, the obstacles he faced, the people who surrounded him, the work he accomplished, the words he left behind, and the legacy that remained after his final breath.

His story is no longer being written.

Mine is.

That distinction feels profound to me.

Because right now, I am living inside circumstances that could easily be mistaken for the whole story.

I can look at my life and see what is immediately in front of me. I can see uncertainty. I can see things that have not yet come together. I can see dreams that are still ideas. I can see projects that are unfinished. I can look at my current circumstances—even something as simple as a bank account with nothing in it—and wonder how all of this could possibly become the life I imagine.

But perhaps I am confusing a page with a book.

A single page cannot explain an entire story.

The woman sitting here today with unfinished plans, unanswered questions, limited resources, and a dream is not necessarily evidence of where the story ends. She is simply the woman occupying this particular chapter.

And maybe that is one of the most humbling things about being alive:

We are constantly judging our stories before they are finished.

We look at one difficult season and call ourselves unsuccessful. We look at one loss and assume we have been forgotten. We look at an empty account and assume we are behind. We look at an unfinished dream and wonder whether we were foolish to believe in it.

But what if the unfinished nature of our lives is not evidence that we are failing?

What if it is simply evidence that we are still here?

Still becoming.

Still choosing.

Still learning.

Still being shaped.

Still writing.

There are things about my own life that I cannot yet explain. There are dreams I carry that have not materialized. There are things I believe I am called to create that exist only in fragments of thought, sketches, conversations, prayers, and small beginnings.

Even House of PHTH exists in this strange space between what it is today and what I imagine it could become.

And perhaps that is where faith becomes necessary.

Because faith is not always knowing what the next chapter says.

Sometimes faith is turning the page without being allowed to read ahead.

I think about the woman I may become years from now.

I wonder what she will remember about this version of me.

Will she remember the uncertainty?

Will she remember sitting quietly and wondering whether God was really leading her somewhere?

Will she remember the seasons when there wasn't much money, but there were enormous dreams?

Will she remember the first exhibitions?

The first collections?

The first pieces she decided to keep for herself?

The first time something she had imagined became something tangible?

Will she look back at this version of herself with tenderness?

Perhaps.

I wonder what my life will look like when I am no longer here to tell it.

What will remain?

What will people say?

What will they remember?

What will my work communicate about the woman who made it?

Perhaps that question is part of why I want what I create to speak honestly about me.

Not because I need to be famous.

Not because I need everyone to know my face.

Not because I need strangers to know everything about my life.

But because I want something deeper than recognition.

I want expression.

I want the things I create to carry traces of my values, my questions, my faith, my contradictions, my tenderness, my philosophy, my understanding of beauty, my understanding of God, and my experience of being human.

Perhaps one day someone will encounter something I made without knowing the circumstances in which I created it.

They will not know what my bank account looked like.

They will not know what I was afraid of.

They will not know what I was praying about.

They will not know which chapter of my life I was living when I made it.

They will simply encounter the work.

And maybe that is part of the strange immortality of creating.

A person eventually leaves the world, but something they made can remain in it.

A painting can outlive its painter.

A book can outlive its author.

A song can outlive the voice that recorded it.

A thought can travel farther than the person who first thought it.

And suddenly, the question becomes larger than What will happen to me?

It becomes:

What am I leaving behind?