There were many, many days in my life that I struggled alone and I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to flounder around trying to figure out how to juggle all my roles – wife, mom, sister, daughter, employee, supervisor, friend, neighbor, soccer mom, swim mom, ballet mom, ‘couldn’t-get-her-son-to-participate-in-the-sport-sampler-we-signed-him-up-for’ mom, ‘terrible-at-imaginary-play’ mom, lunch-maker, party planner, tax filer, vacation planner, …
Trying to juggle it all without God at the center makes my current circumstance not surprising at all. I don’t mean to imply that I didn’t have the help of my husband, because I surely did. But, even with his help, I still failed because I didn’t let God help.
I didn’t think I needed to. Remember, I was sauntering. Not particularly joyfully, but certainly not begrudgingly. Just doot, doot, dootin’ along.
What I didn’t recognize was that my road was slowly mirroring Michigan’s: one day it was fine, and the next it was terrible, with little warning in between. I guess that is what happens when you saunter in a state of oblivion.
Maybe the same can’t be said for you and your circumstance.
If, for example, you’re going through a health crisis, then I totally get how it’s hard to rationalize or find the parallels to what I’ve just said, or else it’d read something like this: “If only God was a part of my life, or a BIGGER part of my life, I wouldn’t have cancer.” Sounds silly, right? I agree.
But – follow me here – maybe, just maybe, you could have been at peace sooner with your reality by changing your lens to see your hardship differently. Instead of asking “Why me?” or “Why now?” perhaps you could have refocused to, “What is God trying to teach me here?” I guarantee God was trying to get your attention a million other ways before knocking you to your knees; before taking the wind right out of your sails.
Maybe your health crisis or [insert your significant emotional event here] is trying to show you something, and the crisis you’re experiencing is the exact crisis YOU need in order to learn the lesson.
Or maybe, jussssssst maybe, the crisis you’re going through is really to teach those around you a lesson, and you may just be the very person that God knew could handle the crisis without falling apart in utter hopelessness.
Maybe God is using your terrible, ‘make-you-cry-every-night-until-you-sware-you-must-be-dehydrated’ situation as a way for you (or those around you) to stop, analyze, and redirect away from an even worse road that is wet, muddy, and pitted with nothing to look at but corn fields and nothing to smell but cow manure…
toward a road that is paved and has magnificent wild flowers on either side;
a road that has no stop signs to interrupt the bliss of your drive.
A road that is straight; no mild or wild curves; no hills or valleys;
a road that is (and smells!) constantly…beautiful.
Where you can drive as fast as you want, but you’ll go slower than you need to because you’ll never want it to end. A road that eventually leads to a place where you can pick up the person you know is meant to ride shotgun so you can both wildly sing along to Kenny Chesney on repeat.
How do we find that road? We let God lead us there. And we trust – not a ‘say-we-trust-but-not-really-trust’ kind of trust, but an ‘I-know-in-the-core-of-my-existance-that-something-good-will-come-from-this’ kind of trust. God will lead you there, but only if you ask Him to, and more importantly, only if you let Him!
Are you willing to let God lead you?
