The Purposeful Path — Edition 8
Every newsletter I write draws from what I have lived. This one goes deeper into that story than I have taken you before.
Almost a year ago, my life changed in ways I did not choose and could not have fully anticipated. I want to tell you about that year, what it has cost, what it has produced, and what I am still learning in the middle of it. If you are navigating a transition right now, whether you chose it or it was handed to you, I think some of what I have found might matter to you too.
The Door That Closed
I was 63 years old when the company I worked for was acquired. I had worked in sales and marketing, and during that time I had been selected to speak at international and regional conferences on workplace stress, not because of my corporate role, but because of my certifications in mental health and life coaching. Even then, the work I was really doing was the work I am doing now. I just had not fully made the leap yet.
When the acquiring company came in, I was among the first to go. Over time, many people followed. That is how acquisitions tend to work. But in the moment, what hit me hardest was not just the job loss itself. It was the quiet, dawning realization that at 63, finding another corporate position was going to be a very different proposition than it would have been ten or fifteen years earlier. The market for someone my age, regardless of experience, is simply harder to navigate. That was a difficult thing to realize.
What the acquiring company could not have known, and what I was still figuring out myself, is that I was already becoming something new. I had seen AI emerging and decided not to wait for someone to explain it to me. On my own, I joined an AI community, pursued certifications, and immersed myself in learning everything I could about where this technology was going and how to engage with it wisely. I believed it was going to matter, and I wanted to be ready.
That conviction had already shown up in my professional life: nearly a year before the acquisition, I submitted a proposal to write an article about AI for our industry publication. It was accepted and published. The work I was building toward was already visible, even then.
I had also already earned certifications in mental health coaching and master life coaching through the American Association of Christian Counselors, and I was nearly finished building my first course. I was not winding down. I was becoming something new. I just did not fully know it yet.
The Things You Carry Into the Unknown
When I got the news, my first thought was not what you might expect. It was genuine: this is a great opportunity. I believed that. I still believe it. The door that closed pointed me toward work I had been circling for years, and something in me recognized that immediately.
The harder questions came later, not in the moment of loss, but in the long, unglamorous process of building something new. How will this actually work? Am I heading in the right direction? Every mistake, and there have been real ones, raised the volume on those questions. I have had to learn what it means to fail forward, to treat the missteps as data rather than verdicts. That is easier to say than to live, and honestly, that it has not always been easy.
What has kept me moving is not confidence in my own ability to figure it all out. It is the tools I have spent years studying and teaching, the neuroscience, Biblical wisdom, the practical frameworks for navigating uncertainty, meeting me in my own uncertainty and actually holding up. I am grateful for that in ways that are hard to fully put into words.
The Messy Middle
My first course has gone through three names (currently, God’s Peace Code) before it found its true identity (Renew Your Mind). The process of naming it taught me something I did not expect: I was still figuring out what I was building, and the names kept changing because my own clarity was still catching up to the work itself. The right name has been waiting underneath all the others, and it is finally.
That process of finding the right name for something you are building is a picture of what transition looks like from the inside. You are working with materials that are real and meaningful, but the shape of the finished thing keeps shifting as you grow into it. You try things. Some of them do not fit. You try again. This is not failure. This is the work.
In that same period, I earned my certification in brain health and nutrition through the American Association of Christian Counselors and Dr. Daniel Amen. I wrote five books, including Wise With AI, which came directly out of the AI knowledge I had been building before my job ended. I built multiple courses. I kept writing, learning, and coaching. And I had many moments of wondering whether any of it was going anywhere.
What the Journey Actually Is
I used to speak at conferences about stress in the workplace. I talked about resilience, about pressure, about navigating uncertainty. I believed what I was saying. And then I was handed the most clarifying possible test of whether I meant it.
Growth does not happen inside your comfort zone. I have said that more times than I can count. Turns out it is genuinely true, even when your comfort zone disappears without warning at 63 and you are left building something new with your hands shaking.
Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Transformation is not a destination. It is an ongoing process. The Greek word metamorphoō points to a continuous, active rewiring, not a single moment of arrival. You do not become and then stop. You keep becoming.
Proverbs 3:5-6 has been one of the anchors of my year: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” There have been many moments in the past months when my own understanding was genuinely insufficient. When I could not see far enough ahead to feel confident. When leaning on anything other than that trust would have left me without a foothold.
The path has been made straight. Not smooth. Straight. There is a difference, and it matters.
The Confirmation That Came
Last week, a book called The AI Opportunity became a global bestseller in its category on Amazon. It is a collaborative book featuring 33 global AI experts. I am one of them. My chapter is about using AI with discernment, which is not coincidentally the thing I most deeply believe about responsible engagement with technology.
The reason I was in that room with those 33 experts connects directly to the same thread that runs through everything I have shared in this edition. The AI knowledge I built on my own initiative, the article I wrote and published before most people in my world were paying attention to this technology, the course and book I built around navigating AI wisely: all of it added up to something. The invitation to contribute to that book was the accumulation of years of work becoming visible in a new way.
I am sharing this not to mark an arrival, because I am still very much in the middle of this journey, but because it was a clear confirmation: you are heading in the right direction. Keep going. Those moments of confirmation matter when you are in a long season of building without being able to see the finished picture.
For the Reader in Their Own Middle
If you are in a transition right now, whether you chose it or it was handed to you, whether you are navigating a career shift, a relationship change, a health challenge, or simply a season where the ground feels less solid than it used to, I want to offer what has held me steady this year.
The transition is not in the way of your purpose. For many people, it is the very path to it. The door that closes, the role that disappears, the season that ends without your permission: these are not necessarily endings. They are often the pressure that shapes what you are becoming. Your first instinct might be right. When that door closed for me, something in me said opportunity. Trust that voice when it shows up. It often knows something your fear does not.
Failing forward is real work. Mistakes are not verdicts. They are information. Every misstep in this past year has taught me something I needed to know, even when it did not feel that way in the moment.
You have more to offer than the last chapter suggested. Experience is not a liability. The knowledge you have accumulated and the wisdom you have earned are exactly what the people around you need from you right now.
The journey is the point, not just the destination. The growth that happens when you are outside your comfort zone, when you are building something with uncertain outcomes, when you are trusting a path you cannot fully see: that is where the transformation actually lives.
A Gentle Invitation
If you are navigating a transition and feeling the weight of uncertainty, the questions about whether you are heading in the right direction, the accumulated fatigue of building something you cannot yet fully see, I want you to know that you do not have to figure it out alone.
I do not just teach this material. I have lived it. I am still living it. And there is something that happens in a coaching relationship when the person walking alongside you understands not just the framework, but the feeling.
Explore PathlightCoaching.com to learn more about working together.
I’d love to hear from you: Has there been a transition in your life, chosen or unchosen, that turned out to move you most powerfully in the right direction? Share in the comments. Your story matters, and it may be exactly what someone else needs to hear
Christi Wharton | Pathlight Coaching Accredited Mental Health Coach | Master Christian Life Coach | Brain Health and Nutrition Coach
The Purposeful Path is a newsletter about living with wisdom, peace, and purpose. If this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it.