I’ve called myself a recovering type-A personality for a long time. Type-A’s love to plan. We love details and having some measure of control.But, the thing about life is it rarely plays out that way.
God works in mysterious ways. Most people take comfort in trusting that God knows what He’s doing, and that He has our best interest.
I will admit it: I have trust issues with the Creator of the Universe. There are days where absolutely hate His mysterious ways. I feel like for the past few days I’ve been looking up at the sky and begging God for an agenda, a clear message, a road sign to direct myself toward. All I have are questions.
I recently quit my perfectly normal and stable job to move to Georgia in search of what God I believed God was calling me to do: tell my story in the form of writing a book and learn what it means to live totally abandoned to His calling.
I started off very gung-ho about the whole thing. Hopeful, resilient, I packed my car up and hit the road. “Of course, I can do this! God is with me, so what else matters!” Even in the first two weeks there was nothing that could have shaken my faith that this was absolutely correct.
Fast forward a few weeks since I started- I’m a basket case. It seems that the hours of sleep I get are less and less and the workload becomes greater and greater. I’m anxious about what will happen two months, six months, or a year from now. I mean, what was I thinking? I left a great job with great pay and benefits, a wonderful loving community and for what? To live in a house with four strangers who don’t know me or my story, pay to work for a place, and fall right back into this place of striving to make things work.
I feel like I know where God is taking me, where the trajectory of my destiny is aimed, I just don’t understand how it is going to happen. I have zero timeline for this. How is this book I’m writing going to get published? How is my speaking career going to take shape? How am I going to get this work done and foster any sort of meaningful relationship, romantic or otherwise? I want to know how I am going to pay my bills and I want to know that I’m going to be taken care of, because if I don’t do it, no one will!
I crave stability and I have everything but that.
In a bit of a panic, I left the room where my colleagues were working to go on a walk. I needed to get by myself or I was going to have a major freak out. My eyes briefly glanced up to the mountains in the distance, and all at once I felt God speak to me.
You want so badly to be a mountain, but what you don’t understand is the process it takes. The ground must be shifted and broken up before it forms what you see before you. I’m shifting you. I’m breaking you up so that you can touch the sky.
I simply stood there looking at the horizon, feeling foolish. I want so badly to have achieved my goals, to make my life something that I could show off, all the while forgetting that God wants to give me that life! I feel like I should have all my stuff together, and I just don’t. And in all this striving, God sees me and waits for me to just look to Him. He is ready and willing to help. More than that, He wants to help, to be my source of strength and life.
If our focus is always on doing, creating, working for the Kingdom and not secure in simply being with God, resting in the truth that He loves us simply by nature of our creation, we can easily fall into places of toil and worry and stress. I don’t want that anymore.
There are seasons of our life where the ground beneath our feet can feel completely unstable. But in those moments we cannot allow ourselves to let our faith be shaken by our circumstances. Our hope is not reliant in what is happening around us from one moment to the next.
Our hope is in God, whose character is unchanging.
Take heart, fellow worrisome friends. Your world may be chaotic, but there is One who is stable. Talk to Him. Give Him your worries and exchange your worry for peace that passes understanding.
Now, take a deep breath. It’s all gonna be okay.