Candy Land and the Cards We Wish Didn’t Exist

Today I was playing Candy Land with my six-year-old.

It’s not my favorite game, but this afternoon it was going smoothly. She asked me to “play for her” while she ran to the bathroom, and in that short time I must have taken eight turns for both of us.

Green.
Double purple.
Red.
Yellow.
Double yellow.

So easy. So predictable. We were moving along at a nice, comfortable pace.

Then suddenly I noticed something.

“Wait… where are all the candy cards?”

You know the ones. The cards that send you to the ice cream float or the lollipop forest. The cards that suddenly move you way forward—or way back—no matter where you thought you were headed.

My daughter shrugged.

“We didn’t like them… so we took them out.”

Something inside me bristled. That’s the whole point of the game! Those cards are what make it interesting. They introduce the surprise, the frustration, the sudden reversals. They stir up jealousy, competitiveness, and excitement.

Without them, you just move color by color in a straight, predictable line to the end.

And then it hit me.

That’s exactly what I want in life.

I want all the candy cards removed.

Everything can be going along just fine—green, yellow, red—and then suddenly you draw a card you never wanted.

Your kid breaks their arm.
Your marriage hits a rough season.
Infertility.
A job loss.
A diagnosis.

In my case, life was moving along beautifully. I went to a great college, married the man I love, had four beautiful daughters, and stepped into the career I had dreamed of. I had just landed a university job.

Green.
Purple.
Red.

And then—bam.

Breast cancer at thirty-six.

It felt like being slugged in the face. One moment I was nearing the candy castle, and the next I was banished back near the beginning of the board, staring at everyone else moving ahead while I wondered if I would even live long enough to finish the game.

And I hated it.

I wanted to rip those cards out of the deck and burn them.

Don’t we all?

We want the smooth path. The predictable life. The steady march of color cards leading safely to the end.

But the more I sit with it, the more I wonder if those surprise cards are actually doing something important.

Because the truth is, a life made entirely of color cards doesn’t reveal very much about us.

Our pride stays hidden.
Our self-sufficiency stays intact.
Our faith never really gets tested.

But the sudden cards—the ones we never asked for—bring us to our knees.

They expose what was always there beneath the surface: our fears, our anger, our fragile sense of control. They confront the illusion that everything was fine when perhaps our souls were quietly drifting.

Scripture reminds us that God loves us too much to leave us unchanged. The painful interruptions of life—the setbacks, the plot twists, the dark nights of the soul—are often the very things that reshape us.

And from personal experience, I can tell you: it hurts.

I still long for the color cards. I still crave predictability, normalcy, ease.

But somewhere deeper—several hundred feet below the surface of my own heart—I fear something even more.

I fear reaching the end of my life unchanged.

I fear coasting all the way to the finish line still anxious, still self-reliant, still convinced that I was in control all along.

Yes, I am afraid of dying.

But I am more afraid of dying while my soul remains untouched.

So when the peanut-brittle cards show up in my life, I am slowly learning to pray a different prayer:

Lord, I don’t understand this move on the board. I wish you had skipped this card entirely. But if this is the space where you reshape my heart—then stay with me here.

Because what matters most in the end is not how quickly I reached the castle, but who I became along the way.

And if I arrive there battered, humbled, and clinging to Him with deeper faith than when I started…

then maybe even the worst cards in the deck were not wasted.