Where is God Taking Me?
God’s ways confuse me sometimes. Do they confuse you, too? I start questioning God’s methods when I clearly see a better way.
Why does God take the long way around? I see point A to point B quite clearly. Why can’t He?
Fibro fog is one of the most debilitating and scary symptoms of Fibromyalgia. I would choose the body pain over the fog every day of the week. It quite literally is a fog in your brain that forces you to sound like a blubbering fool. My brain wants to say, “That’s a pretty flower,” but what comes out is, “The chalk moved.”
There is no possible way for the listener to connect the dots of what I am saying, because it doesn’t make any sense!
Often I am in the middle of speaking when I stop and look blankly at the person I am talking to. My girls or husband will say, “And?”
“And, what?”
“You were saying something.”
“I was?” Good grief.
A Writer With No Words
Recently while cooking dinner, I created a small grease fire. A flame shot up from the stove when I removed the pan. Thankfully it only lasted a few seconds. When my husband came home, I was trying to explain what happened, and all I could come up with was, “The flat circle. The flat circle.” I couldn’t remember the word for burner.
It gets worse. My daughter came into my bedroom while I put together a present for a party. I wanted to ask her if she could go into the garage and get me a bag, but I couldn’t speak. I started to make hand gestures, and it ended up being a game of charades.
“Okay, Mom. You need me to get you a Christmas bag. You also need tissue paper to go inside of the bag. Oh! And you want a label to write their name to put on the bag. Got it!
She was so proud for understanding what I needed. It completely exhausted me trying to get the message across.
I can’t comprehend all the while knowing I would someday have an extreme deficit with words, in the 5th grade God put it on my heart to become a writer. I often ask God if I can stop now. Is this something He will allow me to quit because it is so hard. The Holy Spirit says, “No. Keep going.”
I pray for every word. I pray before every Facebook post, every tweet, and every blog. I pray while I am writing my books and before speaking engagements. I pray that God will give me His words because mine continue to fail me.
A Method to the Madness
After much prayer in college, God guided me to the field of Speech-Language Pathology (the irony continues!). Twenty plus year into my field, my prayers go up before every therapy session asking God to give me the words to help my students with their words.
Why do we start questioning God’s methods when their purpose is for our own good?
My strong will and stubbornness took the mountains meant for God to move and hoisted them on my back as I attempted to move them myself. With this disability, I am in complete reliance on God to give me something so simple as a word. I am on bended knee in humility, and there is no doubt the God receives all of the glory for anything I write.
The mountains are now left for God to move.
I often tell Him my effectiveness as a writer would increase exponentially if he restored my access to words-you know the whole Point A to Point B thing.
He continues to choose the long way around.
Are You Questioning God’s Methods, Too?
When you feel discouraged and question and wonder why God is choosing the long path for your life, we have to remember how little of a perspective we are able to see. He sees your life from beginning to end. We see our lives from minute to minute.
The rough terrain He is choosing not to rescue you from may be preparation for the next challenge that is coming. The obstacles He won’t remove may be the ones that are protecting you from something much worse.
It could also be a way to give us eyes to see the enemy attempting to wreck havoc in our lives.
I am questioning God’s methods a lot because the words on this blog were not easy. I thank Him for every letter He puts together to create the story of the imperfections I am able to share.
It is through our imperfectness that we point to the One who is perfect. It is through our brokenness that we see clearly the cracks in each other and help heal with our own broken pieces.
God’s methods are not for us to understand. They can leave us scratching our heads and questioning why, but ultimately the why isn’t nearly as important as the Who.
So I will continue to write, you will move forward according to His will, and we will bless each other on these strange and twisted paths we walk.
In God’s perfect timing, it will someday all make sense.
Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels
Encouraging post. Clearly, God’s methods are not for us to understand. We are to simply trust and obey.
Amen. Every day is a faith walk. Thank you for reading!
This post was so poignant, so intimate. Thanks for sharing a hard subject. I pray for you as well!
Thank you, Diane! God is asking me to be more raw and real. We all carry so much weight sometimes and never know what each of us is going through. It helps to feel we are not alone in this.
What an encouragement this is, thank you Christa
Thank you!
Thank you. I needed to read this today. I pray that God will continue to bless you in the way that he knows is best. Especially I pray that your confidence that he knows what he is doing will keep you strong in these difficult times. J.
Thank you so much! I’m grateful it helped. It makes it worth writing! It’s easy to feel alone in our struggles, and I pray the Lord blesses your steps.