This spiritual journey that God has sent me on isn’t like all the others. In the past, He’d been gracious enough to just give me one major crisis at a time. When looking back through the past 25 or so years, I can distinctly remember thinking that I was grateful that God allowed one serious trial to stop before another came. Because we had adopted many special needs children, we lived from crisis to crisis all those years. It’s only been the last six months that that has lessened and we’ve actually enjoyed several months in a row without incident – until recently.
From Scripture, I know that God never gives us more than we can handle – part of the reason for this is that He knows our spiritual state and can gauge our ability to handle things, and part of it has to do with His ability to sustain us as believers. So, based on that, I know that He must think I can handle more than I have in the past – and apparently all at once. Added in is the agony I feel when I see my husband go through the trials too. Usually one of us is “up” when the other is “down.” It’s as if God is stripping us of all we have in order to rebuild us into something better. Having the book of Job and Esther has helped me endure. I’m sure Job, just like me, feared going to his door each time bad news knocked. You get to the point where you say, “OK, what else can go wrong?” Well, we’re to that point. Daily we get news that stirs the pot of discouragement more. We step to the right think we got an answer only for it to change the next day. So we step to the the left and knock on another door to no avail. There’s got to be a window somewhere that God can open! I just know it!
I know that we shouldn’t get too discouraged when things don’t go right, it just means that God either has another path for us to take or the timing isn’t right. Maybe God has some things to put in place before we accomplish what we set out to do. Like the book of Esther, we can’t seem to find God anywhere. We don’t see Him stepping in and managing things like we normally do. That’s not to say He’s not there, for we know He is. But it just means He’s stepped back and watching things play out. This is definitely not a parting of the Red Sea event. It’s more like in the book of Esther where He guides and directs us to accomplish His will. There is a lot of responsibility to do so on our part. We need to make sure our faith and ability to hear Him are up to par. We need to listen to that still small voice directing us as if we were His puppet. In this instance, we need to be like His puppet, we must allow Him to completely work the strings to our hands, feet and mouth. It’s not easy for us to put ourselves in that position – we do tend to want to do things with our own abilities and wisdom. But especially when the stakes are high, like they are now, we need to be completely turned over the the Spirit’s leading. Sometimes I feel like I’m wandering around in the dark. I know God is there but can’t see how it’s going to work out for His glory and our best.
Yet, even wondering how it will all work out, I have to trust Him. What other choice do I have? So, I sit here wondering what’s next and how I’m going to handle one more rock in the road. A long time ago I realized I care way more deeply about situations and events than most people and I am much more proactive than the average person. I’m a fixer. If I have nothing to fix, I am very content to just enjoy life. But if there’s something that needs fixing, I’m very impatient with other people and expect them to diligently follow things through to the end. It is very frustrating for me to have my future or my family’s future in someone else’s hands. I can’t fix them, but God can. I just need to be content to let God handle it – He does it so much better than I do!
Here’s the moral to the story that has not finished playing out in my life. No matter what others do, God will always manage my life for His own glory and my good if I follow Him and trust Him to direct my ways. I may not see Him or feel Him in the midst of trial, but I know He’s there. Some day I will be able to look back and tell you how God worked it all out, but for the moment, I have to just sit and wait and realize He is able. Perhaps I might even be able to do that patiently.