Recently, my youngest of five got married, and with that joyful milestone came a quiet realization: a season of my own life had ended too.

I’ve had children for 35 years.

For three and a half decades, my days had purpose built into them. Someone needed me. Someone was coming home. Someone had a game, a lesson, a problem, or a story to tell.

And now, my identity feels challenged.

It feels a little like retirement.

I think one of the most overlooked griefs in life is the loss of routine.

My routine feels like a deck of cards I’d carefully sorted, organized, and played for thirty-five years. I knew where everything belonged. I knew what came next.

Then, in what seemed like a moment, someone swept their arm across the table and sent every card flying.

The cards are all still there.

But nothing is in order anymore.

I’m left standing there, wondering where to begin.

Maybe that’s why so many people struggle after retirement, after the kids leave home, after a diagnosis, after divorce, or after losing a spouse. It’s not only the person or the title we grieve.

It’s the rhythm.

The familiar.

The ordinary moments that quietly held our lives together.

Life is a series of griefs.

Some arrive with funerals and tears.

Others come wrapped in wedding dresses, retirement parties, moving trucks, and graduation caps.

They’re beautiful endings.

They’re painful beginnings.

And perhaps healing isn’t about finding the old routine again.

Perhaps it’s about slowly picking up one card at a time, trusting that God can create a new rhythm from what feels like chaos, and believing that the next season can be just as meaningful as the last.

Maybe that’s the beauty of seasons.

God never asked us to stay in one forever.

The routines that once gave us purpose eventually change, not because they were unimportant, but because they prepared us for what comes next.

The cards may be scattered across the table today.

The picture may look nothing like it did yesterday.

But the One who has faithfully ordered my steps for thirty-five years hasn’t stopped now.

Perhaps my purpose was never found in the routine.

Perhaps the routine was simply the path that led me here.

And maybe, just maybe, He’s inviting me to pick up the first card of a brand-new season.

leslie kay simpson