💛 The Messy Middle Isn’t a Mistake

I got the email while standing still.

One of those quiet moments where nothing feels urgent yet.

My phone buzzed.

A simple line across the screen.

“There’s been an update to your credit score.”

I had ended 2025 with meticulous planning and execution.
I had followed the playbook I wrote.
I had done the waiting part.

I clicked expecting what we are taught to expect at the top of a new year.

Forward movement.
Confirmation.
A clean upswing.

Instead, my score had dropped.

Twelve points.

It wasn’t catastrophic.
But my heart sank anyway.

My body reacted before my logic could catch up.
That tight feeling in the chest.
That quick mental inventory.

The truth was, I had done nothing wrong.

I had added a new card.
Opened a self funded loan.
Let an inquiry land.

All planned.
All intentional.

And still, the number told a different story.

So I did what many of us do when something doesn’t make sense.

I put the situation into ChatGPT lol.

It told me to take a deep breath.
Which made me chuckle because how does this software know me like that?

Then it explained that this kind of dip is normal.
That when multiple changes land at once, the system pulls back before it recalibrates.

This wasn’t punishment.

It was physics.

That word stayed with me.

Pullback.

Because what I was experiencing wasn’t failure or bad luck.

It was tension.

The kind of tension that shows up when something is being aimed.

---

It reminded me of a story my mother told me a few months ago.

Midway through her career, after years of managing labs across multiple states, she was invited to lunch by a vice president at her company.

He offered her a new role.
One that would take her off the road.
One that would finally use the graduate degree she earned while working full time and raising me as a teenager.

There was one catch.

It came with a pay cut.

I imagine that moment often.

The calculation.
The responsibility.
A husband.
Three kids.
A household that needed stability, not promises.

The vice president named what the offer really was.

This role would place her in proximity to decision makers.
It would change her environment.
It would slow her down in the short term and expand her reach in the long term.

She took it.

That decision eventually led to the most money she ever made.
New skillsets.
And building the company’s first innovation lab.

None of that happened without the pay cut.

None of it happened without the pullback.

---

There’s a concept Seth Godin writes about called The Dip.

That place in the middle where progress feels uncomfortable.
Where the early excitement has worn off, but the payoff hasn’t arrived yet.

Where many people quit, not because they chose wrong, but because they misunderstand what the tension means.

We are rarely taught that the dip is not a sign to stop.

It is a sign to aim.

This is the part I’m still sitting with.

There was a moment after seeing that score drop where I wanted to fix it.
Adjust something.
Add something.
Prove something.

Instead, I waited.

And over the next few weeks, the numbers climbed back.

Past where they were before.

Steadier.
Quieter.
Less reactive.

Not because I forced them.

Because I stayed.

---

I don’t know where you are noticing a pullback right now.

Maybe it’s in your finances.
Maybe it’s in your body.
Maybe it’s in a relationship or a season of rest that feels unfamiliar.

Maybe it’s in the frustration of doing things carefully and not seeing an immediate reward.

Maybe your version doesn’t look dramatic at all.

Maybe it looks like staying.
Like choosing not to abandon what’s working.
Like trusting that quiet does not mean stuck.

What’s being practiced here is patience over panic.

Not everything that pulls back is falling apart.

Some things are being aimed.

---

🕯️ The Becoming Line
Not every step backward is a mistake.

---

What if this is the invitation.

To embrace the boredom of consistency.
To let the quiet days count.
To enjoy the process even when nothing feels exciting yet.

To resist abandoning where you are just because you no longer feel the rush.

To trust that staying is doing something, even when it doesn’t look like it.

That we learn to honor the pullback.
That we stay long enough for the release.

I pray we all become patient in our becoming.