A NOTE TO YOUR FUTURE SELF
Years ago, I watched a film about a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I have never forgotten it. Knowing that her condition would only worsen with time, she did something. She created a collage of photographs, and beside each face, she wrote a note in her own handwriting.
“This is Mary. She’s your friend. You can trust her.”
“This is John. You dated once, but now he’s a good friend and colleague.”
She was not writing these for the woman she was that day, as she already knew who Mary and John were. She was writing them for the woman she would become. Her diagnosis had given her a strange sort of gift, a piece of insight most of us never receive. She knew, with certainty, that a day was coming when she would no longer be able to make sense of complex decisions on her own. So while she still could, she made them for herself in advance. She left a light for the version of her that would one day be standing in the dark.
I have been thinking about that a great deal lately, because I do not believe her situation is as far removed from ours as we might assume.
There are seasons in life when clarity feels effortless. When your confidence and your faith sit at their absolute peak, and you feel capable of moving mountains. You can see the vision clearly, and you know the next step. You believe, without hesitation, that it is possible. And then there are other seasons. Seasons of discouragement, of feeling overwhelmed, of not trusting yourself enough to take even a single step forward. The vision that once felt so obvious suddenly feels distant, almost foolish, and you find yourself questioning everything you were once so sure of.
This is what I want you to do. Use those clear, capable, faith-filled moments while you have them. Do not let them pass by unused. Make your plans then. Write your vision down then. And add a note to yourself, the way that woman did, that simply says: whatever happens, however you feel later, do not change this.
Because decisions made from a place of strength carry you forward, even long after the strength itself has faded. But decisions made from a place of fear rarely survive the season that produced them. They fizzle out. They talk you out of the very things you once knew that you were meant to do.
So if you find yourself in a season of clarity right now, do not waste it. Take fifteen minutes today. Jot down your vision, your next steps, and a short, honest message to your future self. Something to hold onto for the day the clouds inevitably roll in, because they will. When they do, you will not be starting from nothing. You will have a light already waiting for you, written by the version of you who could still see clearly.
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