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Jules | Midlife & Meaning

@juliekayhager

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✍🏼 Writer
📷 Photographer
🌿 Midlife • Motherhood • Faith
✨ For women wondering what’s next & how to live fully now
↓ Creator of the PAUSE framework

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It’s been said by many people in different ways that the only we out is through. I believe it is originally credited to Robert Frost. He’s most famous for his poem, A Road Less Traveled, and this quote —
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Those are the last lines of his poem. He spends the first few stanzas describing the two paths in the woods. The first is well worn, predictable. The second, full of overgrown grass. Not so much a well worn path as much as it is an invitation into the unknown. He tells us he took that road and it made all the difference.

I’ve pictured this scene many times recently. Regardless of how we reach our metaphorical forks on the road, we still get to choose which path to take. We can keep with what is familiar, safe, and maybe even adding to our unhealth, or we can head down the other one, stomping down knee high grass, facing uncertainty, perhaps even getting to places so far in, that the only way out is through. Through pain, and discomfort and grief. Through day and night and shadows and light.

Maybe that path is less a lush forest full of life and more a wilderness with seemingly no provision. The book of Exodus describes a road less traveled long before Robert Frost ever did. When Pharaoh let the people go, God took them on a journey that made no sense but came with a promise. If you don’t know the story, you should read it. It’s a doozy. The point is, these folks wandered for a long time before they understood why.
They got to a place where the only way out was through.

I doubt provision will come for any of us in the form of pillars of clouds or the parting of a sea or bread raining down from heaven, or water coming out of a rock. But I do know that there is provision in days of the road less traveled. I’ve witnessed it first hand.

I look at this picture of my sweet boy, his head in my chest, and I see it. We are on a road less traveled and I see God showing up in ways I could never have imagined. You feel it more acutely in desert. The only way out is through. And God is with us. by @juliekayhager

October, the month of remembering.
A year ago, I miscarried.
The holiness of that moment
was being surrounded by women —
none of us knowing we’d arrive there together.
It became a birthing room,
not of life, but of grief.
And I don’t think any of us quite knew what to do with that.

I still don’t.

But maybe that’s the truest picture of what we’re all doing here —
birthing and releasing,
loving and losing,
holding space for what can’t yet be understood.

I sit with women weekly now,
and we’ve quietly named our circle The Birthing Room.
Nothing could be more fitting.
Because in every gathering,
we’re still practicing the same sacred work —
breathing life into what is,
grieving what was,
and trusting what’s still being formed.

This morning, I reread the pages that held me then — words that still do.

Jerry Sittser wrote, “We experience the ambivalence of living simultaneously in the night and in the light.”
And again, “The valley of suffering is the vale of soul-making.”

A year later, I understand both a little more.
The darkness hasn’t disappeared,
but it’s changed shape — softened at the edges, named, blessed.
I’m still here.
Still grieving.
Still being remade in the valley.

For every woman who has carried both life and loss,
for the ones who have labored in grief —
I see you.
God sees you.
And I pray that something is birthing in you, even now.

This year, the same house sits quiet again.
Only I’m not the same.
The deep grief will never go away, but neither will the grace that met me there.
Both live on — sacred reminders that love never ends, it only changes form.

I never memorialized that loss last year —
I simply couldn’t look at the pain surrounding it.
But today, I mark a moment of remembrance. I rest in the hope of that day when, as Revelation promises,
He will wipe away every tear from our eyes,
and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.

To every soul who has carried me through this year, you are evidence of heaven on earth. by @juliekayhager

This week, I got divorced.

It’s not the kind of announcement I ever imagined having to make. I never wanted this. I fought to keep my family together. And still, here I am—standing inside a story I didn’t choose.

I feel a mix of things I’m still trying to name—
grief, failure, betrayal, heartbreak, and an ache most people will never see. And yet, underneath all of that, I have foind a kind of quiet strength I didn’t know I had.

I keep thinking about my kids—my two beautiful, resilient, adopted babies who have already known what loss feels like. I wanted so badly to give them a different story. A steady home. A whole one. And now we’re here, rebuilding in real time, doing the best we can together.

I don’t know exactly what the future looks like.

But I do know this:
we’re still a family.
We’re still loved.
And we’re not done.

I wish I were writing an anniversary post this week.
Instead, I’m marking a different kind of milestone—one I never wanted, but one I’m learning to walk through with as much honesty and tenderness as I can.

If you’re someone who’s been through this kind of ending, I feel you. If you’re someone in the middle of it, you’re not alone.

And if you’re someone rebuilding after everything fell apart, I’m right there with you.

Here’s to holding on to hope, even when it feels thin. I still believe this. Maybe now more than ever.

Psalm 27:13 by @juliekayhager

Nearly 350 years ago, a French monk named Brother Lawrence wrote, “You are not the only one that is troubled with wandering thoughts.”

I find this endlessly fascinating.

He wrote this three and a half centuries ago on an almost unrecognizable world. And yet here we are, still struggling to be present for what’s happening in our own kitchens.

Apparently, the wandering mind isn’t a modern invention. It’s part of the strange and sometimes perplexing business of being human.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of my life trying to understand my life. Looking backward for explanations, forward for some assurance of what comes next. Turning things over and over, as though enough understanding might finally give me permission to settle into the life I’m actually living. I wonder how much I’ve missed in the meantime.

I read Brother Lawrence’s little book, The Practice of the Presence of God, during one of the most disorienting seasons of my life. I understood it intellectually. Living it was another matter entirely.

But lately I keep coming back to that one word.

Practice.

Not mastery. Not arrival. Just the ordinary, repeated act of returning our attention to the God who is already here.

Perhaps understanding isn’t a prerequisite for participation. The children keep growing. The seasons keep changing. The light moves across the floor whether I notice it or not. Life keeps moving.

I like that he called it practice. Perhaps we can loosen the grip a bit and start locating ourselves right where we are…

———

I’m beginning a larger conversation about presence, paying attention, and learning to live fully in the lives we’re actually living.

If you’d like to follow along, comment PAUSE and I’ll send you a link to The Evergreen Letters, where I’m writing my way through all of it. by @juliekayhager

October 2026.

My first October in 23 years where my freedom was louder than my fear.

“He brought me out to a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭18:19‬ ‭

As we begin a new month, I also want to share a little something I’ve been working on behind the scenes.

For a while now, I’ve been writing and developing a framework called PAUSE, which is also at the heart of a book I’m working on, The Sacred Pause. It’s really an exploration of what it means to live fully in the middle of life, especially when we’re asking questions about who we are, what’s next, and how to make meaning of it all.

One of the things I’ve been learning is that we don’t have to understand our entire lives to actually live them. And that presence isn’t something we finally arrive at. It’s something we practice returning to, again and again.

I’m going to start sharing a lot more about this here, along with all the usual motherhood, photography, ordinary life, and probably a little too much enthusiasm for my Land Cruiser. 😂

I’ve also been writing over at The Evergreen Letters for the past four years, and I’d love to bring more of you into that conversation.

If any of this resonates, comment PAUSE and I’ll send you a link to read along. 🌿

Here’s to whatever comes next. And to not missing what’s right in front of us while we’re figuring it out. by @juliekayhager

A little more about how Diana came to be.

I’ve always been a car girl. My first car was a ’66 Mustang that my dad spent years restoring before my sister drove it, and eventually, me. Looking back, we probably had no business driving something that powerful at our age, but goodness, was it fun.

I’ve owned a lot of cars since then. Some practical, some fun, and some that felt a whole lot more like me than others.

I’ve had my eye on these old Land Cruisers for years. Something about them has always felt right. The simplicity. The character. The idea that something can get better with age rather than becoming less desirable. (There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.)

Then about a month ago, someone hit me and totaled my car.

And suddenly, I needed another one.

The funny thing is, I knew exactly what I wanted. What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be to give myself permission to actually have it.

There’s something strange about finding yourself single in midlife, free to make your own decisions, and realizing that freedom doesn’t necessarily mean you know what to do with it.

For a long time, I became very good at weighing every possibility, anticipating objections, and looking for permission outside myself. Somewhere along the way, even the simplest desires started feeling like things I needed to defend.

And the guilt. Goodness, the guilt. As though wanting something for myself somehow required an explanation.

Maybe that sounds ridiculous. Maybe some of you know exactly what I mean.

Now, before anyone gets concerned about my decision-making abilities, Diana underwent a full professional inspection before I bought her. I may be learning to overthink less, but let’s not get carried away. 🫠

She’s almost 20 years old, has 144,000 miles on her, and rides like the beautiful old tank she is. Every time I walk out to the driveway, I smile.

I’m learning that I can be thoughtful without being afraid. That I can take my responsibilities seriously without making every decision an exercise in self-denial. That sometimes, after considering what matters, I can simply choose.

So I guess this isn’t a post about a car, really. Although, look at her 😍. by @juliekayhager

meet Diana.

a 2007 original. a little preppy, a little rugged. classic lines. old-school luxury. particular about a few things. not especially interested in keeping up with the times. built for the long haul.

almost 20 years old and just getting started. 🤍

#LandCruiser100 #100SeriesLandCruiser #UZJ100 #ToyotaLandCruiser #LandCruiserLife by @juliekayhager

October has always had a way of announcing itself to me. The light changes first, falling differently through the trees, and the mornings arrive carrying memories of other years. There is something about the beauty of this month that has always felt complicated, perhaps because so much of my life has come apart beneath it. Two years ago, within the span of a single week, I lost both my marriage and a baby. I will never attempt to tie a bow on the pain and confusion that caused me.

There have been other Octobers, other wounds, other things that have settled into this particular stretch of the calendar. For a long time, I could feel autumn approaching in my body before I could explain what was happening in my mind.

There is a promise in Joel I’ve returned to for years: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.” I’ve underlined it, prayed over it, wanted desperately to believe it. But somewhere in the accumulation of grief, my expectation of restoration quietly disappeared. I still believed in the goodness of God. What I struggled to believe was that much goodness remained for me.

Because how do you restore a year? How do you recover the time spent grieving, surviving, or waiting for your life to become recognizable again? We can rebuild homes and replace possessions, but time is a different kind of loss. There is no gathering it back into our hands and living it another way.

But reading further into Joel, I find something I had overlooked. The restoration isn’t ultimately about the harvest. It’s about the relationship between God and His people. Beyond the replenished fields is a more intimate promise: “You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel.” His presence, even in the years that appeared to have been consumed.

And something about this October has been different. Not easier, necessarily. There have been accidents, expenses, and all the ordinary demands of a life still being rebuilt. But beneath it all, something has shifted in my soul. A capacity for delight has returned. An eagerness for the days ahead. A growing affection for the life I’m actually living, rather than the one I once imagined.

(Cont in comments) by @juliekayhager

I am more content than I have ever been, with less money, less stuff, and less whatever else than I’ve ever had.

Guess that means I’m rich in what matters. And that healing is possible. Thanks be to God. by @juliekayhager

Two years ago today, I lost a baby.

And while that sentence is true, it is nowhere near the whole truth.

The days surrounding that loss were among the most painful of my life, and what breaks my heart most, looking back, is that losing my baby almost became a footnote to everything else that was happening. I have thought about that a great deal lately, about how something so significant could be eclipsed by the circumstances surrounding it, and how little room I had at the time to understand what I was experiencing, much less grieve it.

I had two young children who still needed me, a life that still required my participation, and responsibilities that did not disappear simply because I was struggling to comprehend what had happened. So I continued doing what needed to be done, often without considering what it was costing me. I could get through a day, make decisions, care for my children, and attend to the things that needed my attention, and for a long time I confused that ability to function with some measure of healing. I didn’t understand how much of myself I had learned to set aside in order to keep going, or how easily the extraordinary could become ordinary when there was simply no room to stop and acknowledge it.

There is a strange kind of loneliness in being able to describe what happened to you without understanding what it did within you, and I lived in that distance for a very long time.

—

Today, I’m sharing a longer essay about the two years that followed, the work of recovery, and the slow, sometimes surprising experience of returning to myself.

It’s called Two Years Later, and you can read it in full on The Evergreen Letters.

Link in bio. by @juliekayhager

This week we wrapped up our fall ball season for softball. I slotted in as coach at the last minute alongside a few amazing women (and one dude 🤣) to coach this group, who like it or not, inherited my love for green and yellow (GO DUCKS 🦆!).

I absolutely love this game. I had the honor of playing in college for arguably one of the best coaches of all time in any sport. I know firsthand the impact that a great coach can have on your life. I also now know firsthand just how much of a skill coaching is…I can assure you that it is much easier to coach from the stands than it is to stand in the box!

What was most fun for me was to see how this group all came out of their individual shells, gelled as a team, and found some things in themselves that they may not have know was there a couple months ago. I can’t take any full credit for that, but I hope in some small way at least that I may have helped them along, first as young women who are finding their way in the world, and second, as softball players.

I didn’t get a lot of photos from the season because most of it was spent phone down and present in the moment. Maybe that was the greatest gift of all.

This year in many ways started out heavy, but in a not so small way, getting to be a part of these girl’s lives has been a highlight and in many ways so very redeeming. I’m just grateful for life in so many ways right now. 💛💚 by @juliekayhager

September, in all its heat dome glory of slight weirdness. Forever glad we live one day at a time. by @juliekayhager