A couple of months ago, I was scheduled to go to the neurologist with my dad.
To say I was dreading the appointment would be an understatement. The last time I had gone with my parents to see this doctor, I learned that my mom had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia. The office was in a different location now, but I still had no desire to go back there.
Late last November, I was talking to a friend after church. We were near the end of a sermon series about the Lord’s Prayer, and that day, the pastor had talked about what it means to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
I don’t really remember the sermon, but I do remember what I told my friend when I brought her up to date on my dad’s growing health problems.
“I’m not questioning God’s presence or role,” I said. “I just don’t know what to do.”
It was such a helpless feeling. My dad’s condition had gotten progressively worse throughout the fall, but he had yet to receive a diagnosis that would provide a way forward. He had agreed to see a new doctor, but he was still living alone and trying to care for himself.
All I could do was pray for direction.
The next day, my dad called me because he didn’t have the strength to go to a therapy appointment. “I just want someone to check me into a hospital and find out what’s wrong with me,” he said.
It wasn’t the answer I was expecting, but it was an answer. None of us could have predicted the sad decline that would happen in the coming weeks, but the fact remains—in that specific hour of need, God showed me what I needed to do.
I’m grateful for those occasions when a long-awaited answer finally appears in bold, black letters. But more often than not—especially lately—I find myself picking my way through ongoing problems one detail at a time.
When situations get particularly frustrating or confusing, I desperately wish God’s words to the nation of Israel in Isaiah 30:18 would come true in my life: “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’ ”
That’s what I want, more than anything. But what I get—most of the time, anyway—is more of my own nagging questions. How is this going to work out? How am I going to accomplish that? Who’s going to help me?
I want to figure it out faster, to make things happen in ways that are easier and more comfortable for me. I especially want to know how the story is going to end, and when.
Instead, I’m left with the growing realization that events will most likely unfold in ways that I can’t even imagine right now. Reality might be better, worse or just different. That’s how life works.
I know I’m not the only one facing uncertainty, hard questions and tough circumstances that have no obvious solutions. You’ve probably been there. Maybe you’re there right now.
If I’ve learned anything from the last several months, it’s this: I don’t make the plans, and the outcome isn’t up to me.
But we still have to act, right? We still have people counting on us to make decisions, to solve problems, to pay the bills and juggle all the balls.
So what do we do when we don’t know what to do? Though I don’t have a definitive answer, these steps are helping me right now.
• Wait. Don’t plow ahead just to have something to do or because you’re not comfortable with ambiguity. Listen. Ask questions. Share your concerns. But be patient.
• Pray for specific needs, and ask others to join you. Don’t carry your burdens alone. One or two friends who will intercede for you at a moment’s notice can make all the difference in the world.
• Pray for God’s will to be done, not yours. Time and time again, I’ve found no better way to release my agenda than this.
• Seek input from wise people who once were where you are now. Ask questions like, “What did this look like for you?” “What should I focus on in this situation?” and “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”
• Do “the next right thing.” This phrase is the title of a new book by Emily Freeman, and it’s also great advice. You may not know the next 37 steps, or even the next two. There’s probably something you can do, though—a single task you can accomplish or an immediate step you need to take.
• Trust God, not Google. The answers will come, even if they’re not the answers you want. God’s timing and methods are often incomprehensible, but—in keeping with His character—they are perfect. Somehow, in the midst of the uncertainty, we’ve got to find a way to rest in that truth.
♥ Lois
Trust God, not Google. The answers will come, even if they’re not the answers you want. Share on XP.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Let’s Have Coffee, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.
Quite a few bloggers that I follow do this thing called “Five-Minute Friday.” According the online host of this activity, FFM is a weekly writing link-up in which bloggers “free write for five minutes flat” on a single word prompt.
I’ve never blogged in response to a prompt before, nor have I EVER written anything in just five minutes. The idea has always intrigued me, though.
I was standing in front of the cake-decorating supplies, trying to decide which package of cupcake liners to buy.
Compared with other choices I’d been wrestling with that day, this one was pretty straightforward. Foil or paper. Multi-colored or white. Easy peasy.
Not too long ago, I read a book called The Cozy Minimalist Home. Written by Myquillyn Smith (a.k.a. “The Nester”), this gentle guide helps would-be decorators “quiet” their spaces and incorporate “more style” into their homes using “less stuff.”
I wouldn’t call myself a minimalist, cozy or otherwise. I have no plans to remove everything from my living room and then put back only what truly fits according to this decorating philosophy. But this lovely book has prompted me to look around my house with fresh eyes and honestly evaluate whether I like or need what I’m seeing.
On separate occasions during the last year or two, I’ve asked both my parents if they think about heaven much. It’s a reasonable question, I think, given their age and declining state of health.
My mom and dad are committed believers who aspired to serve God throughout their eight-plus decades of life. But when I asked them this question, they both said no.
At first, I was a bit taken aback by their decidedly un-Billy Graham-like answer. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. They’ve always taken a concrete, non-naval-gazing approach to life, and their faith and study of scripture has always tilted toward practical application, rather than lofty rhetoric.
My dad, specifically, is a mechanical engineer who spent his life solving problems and inventing solutions. Along the way, though, he also realized there are some things we just can’t know—including what heaven is going to be like.
“How can we know that?” he asked me once. “We’re going to be different. Not only are we going to be changed, but we’re going to be eternal. I don’t think anybody really understands eternity.”
In a way, he said, we’re like caterpillars contentedly munching away on tomato plants, with no possible way to imagine the transformation that’s about to happen to them.
“A caterpillar just can’t understand butterflies, even though it’s going to be one,” he explained. “The Bible says we don’t know what we will be like, but we will know what we will be when we see Him. I don’t think we can understand, so I don’t really dwell on it.”
My parents don’t talk about their eternal home much, or in ways that we might expect at this point in their lives. And that’s OK—God knows their hearts and understands how they are wired.
For me, though, the thought of them being in heaven—free from pain, fully restored in every way, reunited with loved ones and embraced by their perfect, loving heavenly Father—brings great comfort and peace.
Beyond that, I guess I’m a bit like my dad in that I’ve never dwelt much on heaven either. Increasingly, however, I do feel the tension between the now and the not yet, the fact that we are foreigners and exiles in this world, the reality that our true citizenship is in heaven. (1 Peter 2:11, Philippians 3:20)
Maybe it’s a maturing realization of a sense I’ve had most of my life—that feeling of not really belonging anywhere, at least not completely. The closest I come here on earth is at home, surrounded by the people who know and love me best. When I get to heaven, though, I wonder if my first impression will be similar to what the great Narnian horse Jewel experienced at the end of C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle.
“I have come home at last!” he exclaims as he enters the new Narnia. “This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”
I can imagine feeling that way—maybe you can too.
And then there’s the question of whether, once we arrive in heaven, we will want to ask God about all the trials and sufferings that we didn’t understand here on earth. Will we be able to see—finally—why things happened the way they did, or will we simply not care anymore?
I don’t know, of course. But the way Max Lucado addresses it in his book Traveling Light makes me look forward this future home of ours even more.
“One thing is certain,” he writes. “When the final storm comes and you are safe in your Father’s house, you won’t regret what he didn’t give. You’ll be stunned at what he did.”
♥ Lois
The closest I come to belonging here on earth is at home, surrounded by the people who know and love me best. Share on XP.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Let’s Have Coffee, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.