There is more than one chapter of my life I could title “The Hard Years.”
There were the years after my mother died. There were the years when my dad’s health and life were changing in ways I could not fix. There were seasons of uncertainty, loss, disappointment and the quiet ache of wondering whether certain dreams were ever going to come true.
But if I had to choose one chapter, I think it would be the years when love pulled in two directions.
That was the season when I married Daryl, moved to Jacksonville, left the Atlanta area, and started over at an age when a lot of people are supposed to be settled.
I was 48, almost 49, and my life changed almost all at once.
Some of that change was beautiful. I married the woman I loved. I moved into a new life with her. I found a church. I eventually found my way into a classroom. I began to discover that God had not run out of ways to use me.
But none of that erased the hard part. The hard part was leaving Lizzi behind.
She was grown, yes. She had her own life, yes. I knew all of that. But knowing the facts did not make the ache go away. I had been her dad from the beginning. I had been close enough to see her, hug her, laugh with her, eat with her, and be part of the ordinary rhythm of her life. Then suddenly I was several hundred miles away, trying to build a new home while grieving the distance from one of the deepest loves of my life.
That is a strange kind of hard.
It is not the hard of knowing you made a bad decision. It is the hard of knowing a right decision still cost you something.
That is one of the things I learned during those years. Sometimes the hard chapters are not punishment. Sometimes they are not proof that you missed God or ruined everything or chose the wrong road. Sometimes life changes because love calls you forward, and even when love is right, it can still stretch you until you feel every inch of the distance.
I loved Daryl. I wanted to be with her. I believed our life together mattered. And I loved Lizzi. I missed her. I hated being far away. Both things were true.
That was the ache.
I also had to start over professionally. I had been a journalist. I had worked in church ministry. I had an old identity, an old rhythm, an old sense of where I fit. Then I moved, and much of that did not come with me.
I do not think people always understand what it feels like to start over in the middle of your life. When you are young, starting over can sound like adventure. When you are almost 50, it can feel like evidence that you should have figured things out by now.
I wondered where I belonged. I wondered whether the best parts of who I had been were still useful anywhere. I wondered whether I had left too much behind.
Then, slowly, God opened a door I had not expected.
Teaching was not the life I had imagined when I was young. It was not the career path I spent decades planning. It was not the dream I had chased. But it became a calling.
A classroom full of students has a way of demanding that you stop staring backward all the time. They need you in the room. They need your attention, your patience, your humor, your standards, your stories, your red pen, your grace, and occasionally your ability to say, “No, you cannot go to the bathroom again. You just went seven minutes ago.”
They needed parts of me I thought might have been left behind. And in giving those parts to them, I found out they were still there.
That did not make the distance from Lizzi easy. It did not make the old life painless to lose. It did not turn the hard years into easy years. But it helped me see that God was not finished with me simply because my life had changed shape.
That may be what got me through more than anything. Jesus did not make those years painless. But He was present.
Daryl helped me through them because she was the reason Jacksonville became home. Lizzi helped me through them because she kept loving me across the miles. Prayer helped me through them because some feelings are too tangled to think your way out of. Writing helped me through them because words have always been one of the ways I sort through the mess. Teaching helped me through them because the classroom gave me a place to be useful again.
And eventually, Sully came along and made love stretch even farther. And now I have a granddaughter – Aurelia – which has made my heart grow at least another size.
Being Papi from several hundred miles away is not ideal. I would rather be close enough for random lunches, last-minute visits, ordinary Saturdays and all the little moments distance steals. But distance has not erased love. It has not thinned it out. It has not made it less real.
It has only made me more grateful for every visit, every picture, every FaceTime call, every “Papi,” every moment I get.
So, yes, I could title that chapter “The Hard Years.” But I would not call it “The Mistake Years.” I would not call it “The Lost Years.” Too much love was there for that. Too much grace was there for that. Too much was found there for that.
Those were the years when love pulled in two directions. Those were the years when home became complicated. Those were the years when my old life no longer fit and my new life had not quite taken shape.
They were hard. But they were not empty.
What got me through?
Jesus did. Daryl did. Lizzi did. Prayer did. Writing did. The classroom did. And somewhere along the way, I learned that God does not always make life easier by keeping everything close.
Sometimes He teaches love to stretch.
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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.
