Fifty-Three
I thought growing older would give me more answers. Instead, it taught me which questions matter most.
Birthdays have a way of making us look backward before we dare to look ahead. As I turned fifty-three today, I found myself thinking less about the number itself and more about the road that led me here. Fifty-three years sounds impossibly old when you’re a child, but somehow it doesn’t feel old from where I stand. I don’t feel finished. I don’t feel like I’ve arrived. If anything, I feel more aware than ever of how much I still have to learn, how many stories are still waiting to be told, and how many people are still waiting for someone to believe in them.
When I was a little girl growing up in Rocky, Oklahoma, I imagined my future the way most children do. I assumed life would unfold in a fairly straight line. I believed that if you worked hard, loved your family, trusted God, and tried to do the right thing, life would make sense. I couldn’t have imagined that I would one day become an author, spend countless hours studying murder investigations, advocate for missing women and girls, direct a sober living program, or devote so much of my life to people carrying unimaginable burdens. I certainly never imagined that some of my greatest blessings would grow directly out of seasons I once begged God to end.
The older I become, the more I realize that God rarely wastes pain. We often pray for Him to remove it, but so many of the things that have shaped my life most profoundly were born in moments I never would have chosen for myself. Looking back now, I can see His fingerprints in places that once felt abandoned. Doors that closed redirected me toward opportunities I never would have pursued on my own. Relationships that ended forced me to lean more heavily on Christ than on the approval of other people. Even failures, disappointments, and heartbreaks became teachers that quietly prepared me for work I didn’t yet know I was called to do.
Of all the titles I have carried over the years, none has changed me more than being called “Mom.” I have written books, spoken before audiences, investigated cold cases, founded organizations, and worn more hats than I can count, but motherhood has been the role that has humbled me the most. Raising seven children has never been about getting everything right. It has been about learning, failing, apologizing, celebrating, worrying, praying, and discovering that love grows deeper every single year. Each of my children has challenged me differently, and each has revealed something about my own heart that I might never have seen otherwise.
When they were little, I believed my job was to protect them from everything. I wanted to shield them from disappointment, rescue them from consequences, and make every path a little smoother than the one before it. Like so many parents, I measured myself by how well I could solve problems before they reached my children. What I didn’t understand was that parenting changes. There comes a season when scraped knees become broken hearts, when homework becomes life decisions, and when the little hands you once held begin reaching for lives of their own. Somewhere along the way, your role shifts from directing every step to standing nearby with open arms, hoping they remember everything you tried to teach them.
That has been the hardest lesson of motherhood for me: letting go. There is no manual that prepares you for watching your children become adults. You still love them with every part of your being, but you can no longer live their lives for them. They make choices you wouldn’t make. They experience losses you cannot prevent. They carry burdens you desperately wish you could shoulder yourself. In those moments, I have learned that faith is not simply believing God exists. Faith is trusting that He loves my children even more than I do. It is believing that His plans for them are greater than my fears and that His presence reaches places where my hands never can.
That lesson has changed my relationship with God as much as it has changed my relationship with my children. When I was younger, I often approached faith as though it were a series of answers waiting to be discovered. If I prayed enough, studied enough, or believed strongly enough, I assumed everything would become clear. Life has taught me something different. Faith is not the absence of uncertainty. It is choosing to trust the character of God when the circumstances around you make very little sense. I have experienced seasons when prayers were answered exactly as I hoped and seasons when heaven felt painfully quiet. Through both, God has remained exactly who He has always been—faithful, patient, merciful, and present.
That faith has sustained me in work that many people understandably struggle to comprehend. I spend a great deal of my life thinking about women whose stories ended in violence or whose disappearances left families suspended between hope and heartbreak. I have read police reports that most people would never want to see. I have walked through crime scenes, spoken with investigators, and sat with mothers whose daughters never came home. There are days when the weight of those stories feels almost unbearable, yet I continue because every one of those women mattered. They laughed, dreamed, fell in love, celebrated birthdays, and made plans for futures that were stolen from them. They deserve more than to become case numbers tucked away in forgotten filing cabinets.
People sometimes ask whether spending so much time around tragedy has made me cynical. The answer is no. If anything, it has made me fiercely grateful. When you spend enough time studying violent crime, ordinary moments begin to feel sacred. A phone call from one of my children. Dinner around the table. Worship on a Sunday morning. Watching my youngest laugh without a care in the world. None of those moments are guaranteed, and working with grieving families has reminded me never to treat them as though they are. Life is breathtakingly fragile, and because of that, it is infinitely precious.
The same appreciation for redemption has grown through my work at Oasis. When I look at the women who come through our doors, I don’t see addiction first. I don’t see criminal records, broken relationships, or years lost to substance abuse. I see women who have survived. I see mothers longing to rebuild trust with their children. I see daughters who have carried wounds most people will never understand. I see women who have been told by society that they are beyond hope, only to discover that God’s grace has never operated according to society’s standards. Watching those women rebuild their lives has become one of the greatest privileges of my own life because it reminds me daily that no one is defined forever by the worst chapter of their story.
Some of the most meaningful moments I’ve experienced have not happened on a stage or inside the pages of a book. They’ve happened quietly. They’ve happened when a woman receives her first paycheck after believing no one would ever hire her again. They’ve happened when a mother hugs a child she feared she might never see outside of supervised visitation. They’ve happened during graduation ceremonies when women who once doubted they would survive another week stand before a room full of people and celebrate months or years of sobriety. Those moments have convinced me that miracles often arrive without fanfare. They happen one decision at a time, one faithful day after another, until someone suddenly realizes their entire life has changed.
As I reflect on these fifty-three years, I realize that the things I once thought would define my life have become secondary to the people God placed in it. Books eventually go out of print. Podcasts end. Awards gather dust. Careers change. Public recognition fades. What remains are the people we loved, the kindness we extended, the truth we defended, and the faithfulness with which we lived the ordinary days that make up an extraordinary life.
I don’t know what this next year will hold. I know there will be more work to do because there are still families waiting for answers, women waiting for second chances, books waiting to be written, and stories waiting to be told. I know there will be joys I cannot yet imagine and challenges I cannot yet see. What I also know is that every season behind me has prepared me for whatever lies ahead. God has never asked me to understand the entire path before taking the next step. He has simply asked me to trust Him enough to keep walking.
If turning fifty-three has taught me anything, it is that a meaningful life is rarely the one we would have designed for ourselves. It is the one God patiently shapes while we are busy making other plans. Looking back, I can honestly say that His story has always been better than mine would have been. It has included more heartbreak than I expected, but it has also contained more purpose, more grace, more unexpected friendships, more opportunities to serve, and more reminders of His faithfulness than I ever could have imagined.
So today I celebrate another birthday with gratitude instead of certainty. I am grateful for every lesson I learned too late, every prayer God answered differently than I requested, every child who taught me how to love more deeply, every woman who trusted Oasis with her recovery, every family that allowed me to help tell the story of someone they love, and every reminder that Jesus has never abandoned me—not in seasons of joy, not in seasons of grief, and certainly not in the ordinary days in between. If the first fifty-three years have taught me anything at all, it is that the best measure of a life is not how loudly it is remembered but how faithfully it is lived. By God’s grace, I hope to spend however many years He gives me doing exactly that.
There is another lesson these fifty-three years have taught me, and it is one I never expected to learn. For years, I thought my work was about finding answers. Whether I was investigating a homicide, interviewing a witness, writing a book, or sitting beside a family that had waited decades for justice, I believed my purpose was to solve problems. While I still hope every missing person is found and every family receives the answers they deserve, I have come to understand that my calling has never been limited to finding solutions. Sometimes my purpose is simply to make sure someone is not forgotten. There is a profound difference between solving a case and honoring a life, and even when justice remains painfully out of reach, I have learned that remembering someone still has tremendous value.
I often think about the young women whose names have become woven into the fabric of my own life. They were daughters before they became victims. They laughed with friends, rolled their eyes at their parents, dreamed about careers, wondered who they would marry, and assumed they had tomorrow. Somewhere, there are mothers who still remember the sound of their daughters’ laughter more clearly than they remember the last conversation they had with them. Those families have taught me more about courage than any classroom ever could. They continue to celebrate birthdays for children who never came home. They continue to decorate graves, preserve bedrooms, and answer every phone call with a tiny flicker of hope that this might finally be the one that changes everything. Watching them persevere has forever changed the way I define strength.
One young woman, in particular, altered the direction of my life without ever knowing it. Melissa Witt has occupied my thoughts for more than a decade. I have read the reports, retraced the timelines, stood in the places where she once stood, and spent countless hours trying to understand what happened to a nineteen-year-old whose future was stolen in an instant. Somewhere along the way, I realized I was no longer simply researching a case. I was carrying a responsibility. Melissa reminded me that every victim leaves behind far more than an investigation. They leave empty chairs at family dinners, birthdays that become anniversaries of grief, dreams that never have the chance to unfold, and people who spend the rest of their lives wondering what might have been. She is one of the reasons I continue doing this work, because as long as someone is willing to speak a victim’s name, there remains hope that truth has not had the final word.
That same conviction follows me through the doors of Oasis every single day. People often ask what it is like to work with women in recovery, and my answer is always the same: it is one of the greatest privileges of my life. I have watched women arrive carrying everything they own in a garbage bag, convinced they have exhausted every ounce of grace available to them. They apologize for taking up space. They avoid eye contact because shame has taught them to expect rejection before anyone even knows their story. Then, little by little, something remarkable begins to happen. They find a job. They repair a relationship. They laugh without forcing it. They begin believing they are worthy of love again. Months later, I watch many of those same women walk across our graduation stage with their children cheering from the audience, and I am reminded that redemption is not an abstract theological concept. It is something you can witness with your own eyes.
The women at Oasis have given me far more than I could ever give them. They have reminded me that resilience often looks ordinary. It looks like waking up before dawn to go to work after years of addiction. It looks like showing up for court, counseling, recovery meetings, and parenting classes when no one is applauding. It looks like choosing honesty over excuses and hope over despair, one ordinary day at a time. Watching those quiet victories has changed the way I see success. I no longer believe success is measured by applause or recognition. I believe it is measured by faithfulness—by continuing to do the next right thing even when no one else notices.
There have also been seasons when I questioned whether I was strong enough to keep going. Anyone who spends years advocating publicly, leading an organization, investigating difficult cases, or speaking uncomfortable truths eventually discovers that not everyone appreciates the work. I have experienced criticism that stung deeply, betrayal from people I trusted, and moments when it would have been much easier to walk away than to continue. Those seasons were painful, but they also refined my faith. I learned that if my identity depended upon the opinions of other people, it would rise and fall with every compliment and every criticism. Christ never intended for us to build our lives on such an unstable foundation.
As I have grown older, I have become far less interested in proving myself. In my twenties and thirties, I often felt pressure to accomplish more, work harder, and demonstrate that I belonged in every room I entered. Somewhere along the journey, that pressure quietly disappeared. I no longer feel compelled to chase every opportunity or win every argument. I would rather spend my energy investing in people than protecting my reputation. I would rather leave behind a legacy of kindness than a list of accomplishments. Time has a remarkable way of separating what is urgent from what is truly important.
Perhaps that is one of the unexpected gifts of turning fifty-three. I don’t feel as though life is winding down. In many ways, it feels as though it is becoming clearer. I know who I am. I know what God has called me to do. I know there are still books I want to write, women I hope to encourage, families I want to help, and children and, Lord willing someday, grandchildren I want to love with my whole heart. There is still so much life ahead, and I greet it with far less fear than I once did because experience has taught me that God has never failed me, even when I couldn’t understand what He was doing.
Sometimes I imagine sitting beside the little girl who grew up in Rocky, Oklahoma. She would probably have a hundred questions about the future. She would want to know whether life turned out the way she imagined. I would smile because the honest answer is no. Life became harder than she expected. There would be heartbreaks she could not imagine, losses she would never choose, and roads she never intended to travel. But there would also be extraordinary joy. There would be seven beautiful children who would become some of her greatest teachers. There would be women whose lives would forever intertwine with hers through recovery, redemption, and hope. There would be families who would trust her with the stories of those they love most. There would be books she never dreamed of writing, friendships she never expected to find, and a Savior who would prove Himself faithful over and over again.
If I could leave that little girl with one piece of advice, it would not be to avoid the difficult seasons or to chase an easier life. I would simply tell her to keep walking with Jesus. I would tell her that there will be moments when the road seems impossibly dark, when the answers refuse to come, and when she wonders whether any of her efforts matter. Then I would tell her to look back every once in a while, because one day she will realize that every disappointment, every unanswered prayer, every unexpected detour, and every act of obedience was quietly shaping a life far more meaningful than the one she had imagined for herself.
That is the gift I celebrate on my fifty-third birthday. Not that I have finally figured life out, because I certainly have not. The gift is knowing that God has been faithful through every chapter, and believing with all my heart that He is still writing the story. If the next chapter holds more opportunities to love people well, to fight for those who have no voice, to encourage women searching for a second chance, to cheer for my children as they build lives of their own, and to follow Christ with greater humility than I did yesterday, then I will consider it a life well lived. And if there is one lesson I hope my children remember long after I am gone, it is not that I wrote books or solved mysteries or stood behind a podium. I hope they remember that I loved Jesus, loved them fiercely, and spent my life trying to leave every person I encountered with a little more hope than they had before we met.