You Didn't Miss Your Life

Ever feel like you should be further along by now?

In this episode of The Weekend Joyride, Mac and Rhoni talk honestly about the gap between the life we imagined and the life we’re actually living. From quiet regrets to unexpected turns, this conversation explores what it means to trust that your story isn’t off track—even when it feels like it is.

Along the way, a simple (and slightly overanalyzed) movie moment turns into a powerful reminder: life moves in seasons. Some feel like things are falling apart. Some feel still and uncertain. But that doesn’t mean the story is over.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re behind in life… this episode is for you.

Featuring music inspiration from:

• Matthew West
• Ben Fuller
• Chris Renzema (“Springtime”) 

Contact us:

hello@weekendjoyride.com

Links from this episode:

100 Huntley Street - https://100huntley.com/

Matthew West - https://www.matthewwest.com/

Matthew West - Good (Song) - https://www.matthewwest.com/music/good

Chris Renzema - https://www.chrisrenzema.com/

Ben Fuller - https://www.benfullerofficial.com/

Ben Fuller - Who I Am (song) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXFklH5A4jA

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Transcript

Mac 0:21

This week on the Weekend Joyride. ...

The Life I Thought I’d Have

Mac 0:38

Stay with me. It's the Weekend Joyride.

Rhoni 0:51

The weeks are moving quickly. Summer is near.

Mac 0:55

It's May. Can you believe that? It's gone by so fast, and this year is just like going by so fast.

Rhoni 1:03

And it's been good, mostly. Which maybe good is what we're gonna talk about today.

Mac 1:10

Let's do that, shall we? This is an interesting thing, I think we have to talk about. And it all started with a line in a song for you, huh?

Rhoni 1:18

Yeah, that line in the song just kind of stopped me. It's a Matthew West song, and he says, I'm not loved because I'm worthy, I'm loved because you're good. I think a lot of us say we believe that, but I'm not sure we always live like that's true.

Mac 1:36

It's funny, you actually ran across an interview from 10 years ago on a website called 100 Huntley Street. It's Canadian, and they were talking to Matthew West, and he talks about how God reroutes you sometimes.

Matthew West 1:50

Well, for me, one of the biggest like uh recurring lessons that I've been learning in my life is that oftentimes, you know, the dreams that we think should come true are not the dreams that God has for us, you know. And so for me, I've looked at different instances and occurrences in my life where I've realized, you know what, that was the best thing that never happened to me. You know, I'm glad that dream didn't come true because it just forced me to turn my eyes to God and realize that his dream for our lives is much bigger. You know, his dreams are much bigger and better than our dreams for ourselves. So my little dream was baseball, you know, and as a senior in high school, um, the Chicago Sun-Times, the city where I grew up, they said I was gonna be, I was a top college prospect. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna get a full scholarship to play baseball. Maybe I'll even go to the pros. Yeah, but I didn't get one scholarship offer, and I watched this door close right in front of me. That had to hurt. It hurt. And my parents, they kept saying, you know, it's not about your plan for your life, it's about God's plan for your life. And so I look back now and I realize how dreams not coming true, doors closing, are what rerouted me, right? It's like if you've ever used your GPS in your car and you take a wrong turn and then it reroutes you, and you still can arrive at the destination that you were meant to go, even if you took a few wrong turns here or there. And I think about that in my own life. Like those doors that have closed in my life, they've rerouted me towards the true destination that God had planned for me all along.

Rhoni 3:22

The song that Matthew West put out in January is called Good. I think what's interesting about him is that he doesn't just write songs, he really does write from real life. And for years, people have sent him their stories. I didn't know this, but they also have talked about their regrets, their struggles, their questions. And then what he does is he turns around and turns those situations that he hears about or reads about into songs. And this one, it's not really about a dramatic moment, it's just about something quieter and honestly, probably harder.

Matthew West 4:26

Because you're good.

Mac 4:36

That is a hard thing to get through your mind, but a lot of people don't even realize that they're doing that.

Rhoni 4:42

Exactly. He talked about treating grace kind of like a ladder. Of course, grace is one of those Christian ease words that we say all the time, but I'm not sure everyone really thinks deeply about grace. Like if I just do enough or be enough or get it right enough, then I'm good. And then realizing eventually that that is not how grace works.

Mac 5:09

We don't have to climb a ladder rung by rung to work our way to that.

Rhoni 5:15

No, and this is I think this is where, Mac, I want you to go a little bit deeper because that idea that we're loved because God is good, that's not just emotional, that's foundational. And we as Christians, we as people who carry the Savior with us, we as the body of Christ, if we miss that, we miss everything. Again, if we miss that we are loved because God is good, and not because we've done something right. If we don't get that part right as the body of Christ, we are in error.

Mac 6:10

Yeah. I'm sitting over here nodding, nodding as you talk about that. I know you can't hear me nodding, but yes, I'm I'm totally agree. Righteousness is not something that you you grow into. You find it one day and you go, Oh, I'll work towards that, and that's good. No, that is something that we were given freely by God. The moment you came to Christ, you were made righteous.

Rhoni 6:35

Yeah.

Mac 6:36

And here's where people miss it. Every believer has the same standing with God.

Rhoni 6:42

Really? Absolutely right.

Mac 6:44

There aren't levels.

Rhoni 6:46

And people try to confuse righteousness with self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is my stroking my own ego about how good I am. That's self-righteousness. But righteousness is who you become when you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. You are made new again, and your sin nature has been crucified, and you have become a new creature. And every moment after that, God sees you through the eyes of Jesus who was righteous, as if he'd never sinned.

Mac 7:33

Yeah.

Rhoni 7:33

And that's how God sees us.

Mac 7:35

Yeah.

Rhoni 7:36

So that's righteousness.

Mac 7:38

And that's hard, that's hard to even take in. I mean, it's hard to realize that because I think even if you think that every now and then, you still carry something. You know, you still and that's the difference between sin consciousness and righteous consciousness. Sin consciousness hesitates, it questions, it pulls back. Righteousness consciousness moves forward because it knows where it stands. I mean, we've gone through lots of sermons uh hearing about sin consciousness, because if you're always being preached to about this is sin and that's sin, and don't do sin, and that's a that ends up being all you think about.

Rhoni 8:18

Yeah, it's like when you're on a diet and all you do is read the menu.

Mac 8:23

Yeah.

Rhoni 8:23

And all those things you can't have.

Mac 8:25

Can't have, yeah.

Rhoni 8:26

So it's really the wrong philosophy, but it is something hard to take in because most of us really do think we still carry something. We don't tend to walk around like the free creatures that we are, yeah. Once we have received Jesus as our savior.

Mac 8:45

Yeah. And you know, we're not just babbling in spiritual language. Uh, righteousness really produces something, it produces peace and it produces uh security and confidence, just confidence about your life.

Rhoni 8:59

Yeah.

Mac 9:00

Jesus said, Don't worry about what you'll eat, what you'll wear, because when you understand your standing in God, those things will follow. And God treated Abraham as if he had never sinned.

Rhoni 9:13

Yeah, it's like, as you and I were talking, it's like a loving father or mother sees their children. Like I have no doubt that no matter how bad I mess up, my dad never saw me any different. I was still no, your daddy thinks you're he thinks I'm smarter than I am. He thinks I'm more capable than I am. But he does. He does, right?

Mac 9:40

He always thinks the best of you.

Rhoni 9:41

He always thinks I can do more, and I'm just like, Daddy, I can't do that.

Mac 9:46

I don't want to do that, Daddy.

Rhoni 9:48

But it's true. I mean, it that's a little glimpse of how the Heavenly Father sees us through the eyes of Jesus. We're his baby.

Mac 9:55

And that's how he deals with us.

Rhoni 9:57

And he doesn't care anymore. It's like he doesn't see our sin. He sees us through the eyes of Jesus. We are righteous, we are made new, we are made clean. We there is no veil between us and God.

Mac 10:11

So we don't have to try to be accepted by God because we already are.

Rhoni 10:17

Okay, so if that's true, if I'm not being measured that way by God, this is where I'm gonna take it really personal, and I'll try not to cry because I feel it in my heart.

Mac 10:30

Okay.

Rhoni 10:31

If I'm not being measured that way, then why do I sometimes still feel like I should be further ahead in life? I've actually been thinking about this more than I expected to think about it. So I'm just gonna be honest and I'm gonna be pretty vulnerable here. I don't carry myself like somebody who has regrets.

Mac 11:04

No, you don't.

Rhoni 11:05

I don't, and people don't know this side of me. Well, you're about to. Um, but I do carry a lot of regrets that I really just need to get free of. I was a young mom. I had my daughter before I was out of college. I took her to college with me many days. We just didn't have the money for the extras, the trips, the experiences because of my mistakes.

Mac 11:40

Okay.

Rhoni 11:40

And then you just look up and she's grown.

Mac 11:44

Yeah.

Rhoni 11:44

And we have grandchildren, and there are just moments that I look back and I just wish I could have given her more of the things that they give our grandchildren, which is beautiful. It's wonderful. But I regret that I wasn't prepared. So it's not, it doesn't have anything to do with love. I was a good mom. Loved deeply, never missed anything, you know. But just because I thought there would be more time to build everything. And it's just kind of a quiet thought that I have a lot that I thought I'd be further ahead by now. And life is good for us, life is good for them, but I just look back and I think, my, how time just got away from us. Yeah. Like part of my story is did I mess up so much along the way? It's just a regret I have. I just wish I had done some things differently, and you can't get that back.

Mac 13:03

I think we're both we both think along those same lines because I don't I, you know, I've told you I never took my kids to Disneyland. I we just didn't do stuff. We were busy. There wasn't enough money. There was, it was, you know, there was always something else to do. And uh yeah.

Rhoni 13:22

And I know you and I, our kids have even told us this that we have instilled some even more important, probably things. Like I I got my degree, I got a master's degree. We laugh about how I taught my my daughter the work ethic. She was never allowed to quit, and we have some funny stories about that.

Mac 13:41

So And even just not long ago, my son Asher told me the first time he'd ever said anything like this to me, was that one of his favorite memories is when he used to come into the radio studio with me and I'd prop him up on a stool and put headphones on his head. Yeah. He thought that was the coolest thing ever. I had no idea. And that we don't we just don't know what we're doing.

Rhoni 14:04

We don't realize to make it clear, we raised our kids in pretty healthy environments.

Mac 14:13

Oh, yeah.

Rhoni 14:13

We don't have sad stories, neither one of us really. But I just regret that I wasn't able to do the things I wish I could have done. And that weighs heavily on my heart, really a lot.

Mac 14:30

And I don't know that this is any comfort or consolation, but I think there are a lot of people that feel just that way.

Rhoni 14:41

I'm sure of it. Yeah, I'm sure of it. And I just I really started realizing something. And I think that's the reason this feels so heavy is because I'm still measuring my life. The same way I used to measure myself.

Mac 15:02

We still have that.

Rhoni 15:04

If righteousness isn't earned, then maybe my life isn't being graded the way I think it is. Okay, so I that's the thing I need to lose.

Mac 15:18

Yeah. Is that and honey, we all do we all feel that way. We all yeah, I mean, I do. I still want to lose that too. God's goodness didn't just define our salvation, it's been working in our lives the whole time. It has been. Yeah.

Rhoni 15:34

And so, you know, this is where I'm bringing my soul to. The soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. So my spirit is reborn, my spirit is righteous, but we're talking about righteousness consciousness, and sometimes the soul gets in the way, right? That's what's happening. That's what we're talking about right now. So, where I need to heal my soul is this question about what if my life didn't really fall behind, it just unfolded differently.

Mac 16:14

I think we all have to give ourselves that break.

Rhoni 16:19

Yeah. And what if God didn't just accept where I am because he's a good God, but maybe he actually built something on purpose through the way it happened. Like he we've learned that he has the ability and the grace and the goodness to step into your future if you can wrap your mind around that and see the choices you're gonna make. And he can, in a sense, correct and direct your past because he sees where you're gonna wind up in the future. Does that make sense?

Mac 16:59

Yeah.

Rhoni 16:59

So it could very well be that he didn't just accept where I was and okay, she made a foolish decision, or okay, she took a little long to get out of college, or yeah, okay, she blew all her money before she was 21. What if it's not that? But he actually built something on purpose while he was watching me toddle through those young adult years.

Mac 17:26

I think we do that with our children too. We do. When you say to when you said toddle through, that just reminded me of you know, we're we're one step ahead of our kids usually, and we're moving things out of the way, or we're putting things in the way, yeah, or we're giving them an advantage this way, yeah, or taking something away that might hurt them over here. Oh, yeah. We don't even know that God is doing that for us. Oh yeah, I'm sure he is.

Rhoni 17:53

Yeah, I'm sure he is. We just need to redefine the mistakes and the regrets as a part of our story and trust that God is a good God and he's making something beautiful out of it in a way that we might not see or understand right now. Yeah. And it's about in the same way that we really must embrace a righteousness consciousness as who we are as Christ followers and the body of Christ. We need to move into that with our own personal failures and our own personal story. And we need to go ahead and embrace the mess as something that God is using to make something beautiful of, even now. Even if you look up and you think, but time got away, or maybe it's too late. Well, that's where faith comes in. You have to trust that he's gonna bring it all to a culminating moment in your life where you realize that he used it.

Mac 19:10

There's a song by Ben Fuller that has just come to me, and I want to play it all the way through, but due to copyright rules and stuff, we can't do that on this show. But I do uh we're gonna hear a line of it. Yeah, well, I'm gonna play some of it, and we're gonna post a link to the song. I want you to go listen to every word of the song. It's a great song, it's exactly what we're doing.

Ben Fuller 19:31

It is I stand in front of the mirror, but I don't like who's looking back at me. Wish I could see things clear. I mean again that I was made for more.

Rhoni 20:15

Seem not to follow such a clean timeline.

Mac 20:18

So maybe the goal is not to have the life I imagined at 25.

Rhoni 20:25

Or 18. Or 14,

Mac 20:28

or 40,

Rhoni 20:29

or 40.

Mac 20:30

It fits. Maybe the goal is to recognize the life that God is still building in me right now. You didn't miss your life, you're still in it, and maybe the pressure to catch up is not something that God put on us.

We Ruined Movies (And Found the Point)

Rhoni 20:52

And maybe you're loved not because you got everything right, but because he is good. So I do want to apologize publicly because I think I've ruined movies for Mac, and we've mentioned that before.

Mac 21:29

Completely ruined.

Rhoni 21:31

I am an I'm an English teacher. I analyze everything. Books, symbols, themes, everything.

Mac 21:39

Yeah, but now it's movies too. We're just trying to watch something normal. And she goes, Mm-hmm. It's Fall. Interesting.

Rhoni 21:46

Well, we just saw the Michael Jackson movie, and the minute he walks out and you see the back of his head, I looked at Mac and I said, It's gonna end that way. Uh-huh. It's gonna end with that scene again. I just know it. And it's just It's interesting when I look at movies or books, I analyze. And we know that the setting plays a big part in meaning. So fall actually means either something's being stripped away or there's change in the air. I just that's just what I do.

Mac 22:16

Nobody asked her to do this for me. She just, you know, it's just like I was just trying to watch the movie and it like a just like a guy, but no.

Rhoni 22:27

If leaves are falling, something in somebody's life is about to fall apart. Oh, and then winter shows up and winter's the worst, maybe in a good way, because now we're in the nothing's working, everything feels quiet, or the what's happening phase.

Mac 22:43

At this point, I'm not even watching the plot anymore. I'm like, okay, snow. Let's see. Here comes the emotional breakdown.

Rhoni 22:50

But here's the thing: it's not random. Poets and playwrights and producers stage these events. Fall, things are being let go, things are changing. Winter, things feel empty, it feels a little dead, or it just feels quiet and still, something's cold. But that's not the end of the story, usually. Spring always comes, and that's the gift. Spring always comes.

Mac 23:24

But that's not just movies, though, really. Since I've seen all this, I know now that it is real life.

Rhoni 23:31

And it is. We we all have those seasons where things seem to fall apart or some seasons feel quiet. Yeah. And then you start wondering like, we've done. Is anything good coming next?

Mac 23:50

Yeah, but but that's not the end.

Rhoni 23:53

No, it's the middle. And we we are coming into a season where we just had some sadness with our pastor going to heaven. Yeah. Felt like a winter. Uh-huh. But I have to say, I so appreciated our pastor Trey, Pastor Ray's son, and Pastor Cricket, Pastor Ray's wife, showing up on Wednesday night. Yeah. Full of faith, full of God, ready to carry the vision forward. So I think it's safe to say that spring is here.

Speaker 4 24:27

Yeah. Yeah.

Rhoni 24:29

Now there's a song that we've been listening to called Springtime. It's by a guy named Chris Renzema. Chris Renzema. Renzema.

Mac 24:37

Renzema. We don't know how you say it. That's how new it is to us.

Rhoni 24:42

But what I love about it is that it doesn't skip the hard parts.

Mac 24:45

Yeah, it doesn't pretend that winter didn't happen.

Rhoni 24:48

It just actually leans into this whole idea that God is doing something underneath all of it. Sort of like tending the soil or growing something that you just can't see yet.

Mac 25:02

So even when it feels like nothing is happening.

Rhoni 25:05

Something really is.

Mac 25:07

So even if you feel like you're in fall, or maybe even winter still right now.

Rhoni 25:14

Just don't write the story too early.

Mac 25:17

Spring might be closer than you think. That's springtime from Chris Vanzama.

Rhoni 25:23

I keep thinking about what we were talking about earlier in the show. All those moments that we wish we could just redo, rewind those regrets that we have. Could we just live all that life over again? The things that we got wrong.

Mac 25:40

Yeah, it's all that stuff that we'd rather just skip over if we could.

Rhoni 25:44

But I think we're going to leave people today with this idea that what if those were not just mistakes? What if that was just the fall, the autumn of our lives?

Mac 25:57

Interesting. Yeah. See? See how maybe it was. Maybe things, things that were just being stripped away.

Rhoni 26:08

Exactly. Things we thought we needed, or things that were never really meant to stay. Or let me say it like this. Maybe it's a season that God rewrote for you because choices you made that put you in a season were not really the final season. Yeah. He rewrote your story. So then you may have places that feel quiet. You may have seasons where nothing's moving or nothing's changing.

Mac 26:41

It's like God hit the pause button.

Rhoni 26:43

But then he really didn't. That's the part we miss.

Mac 26:47

Yeah.

Rhoni 26:49

Because what that song, Springtime, reminds us, and honestly, what we've been talking about all along in this episode is that God does not just forgive and walk away. It's not like I made that mistake or made those hard choices, and he's like, over, done.

Mac 27:07

Yeah.

Rhoni 27:08

He just builds something new out of it.

Mac 27:10

Yeah, he doesn't just erase the story.

Rhoni 27:13

No, he rewrites it.

Mac 27:15

And not just at the end either. That's what's interesting.

Rhoni 27:17

No, right in the big middle. Right in the big middle of it. And so we'll leave you with this. Maybe the very thing you've been calling your worst moment, I feel it hit my heart again. Oh. Wasn't the end of your story. Maybe it was just the season before something better started to grow.

Mac 27:44

Spring's coming.

Ending

Rhoni 27:46

It's coming. 

Mac 27:53

Don't write the story too early. If you're in a season that feels quiet or uncertain, that doesn't mean it's over. It just might mean something's still growing. Thanks for spending some time with us on the Weekend Joyride. If this meant something to you, we'd really love to hear from you. Email us at hello at weekendjoyride.com. And do all the things if you will. Check our Facebook page and like the episode and tell a friend about it. And thanks for coming along with us. We'll talk to you next time.