Seasons of Change
I’m a planner. In fact, I shared one month of my actual, physical planner back in “The ‘Surface Pressure’ of Work.”
I feel uneasy if I don’t know what’s coming. I like to start each day by planning it out. I have to-do lists. Every Sunday, I ask my husband to go over the week with me so I can make a plan. I feel adrift if I don’t have a scheduled purpose for each time slot of my day, even if it is just a block of time to “relax.”
As I read stories of great men and women of faith in the Bible, I’m amazed at how often they are asked to wait for some big change God is bringing. Sometimes, like Abraham, they know what’s coming. In his case, God promised him a son, through which he would bless all nations and people. Sounds great. Only, it came with a 25-year waiting period. That’s a long time, especially given that Abraham was already 75 years old at the time.
Even so, Abraham knew what he was waiting for. He had a plan - he just had to wait for it to come to pass.
I don’t want to diminish his faith. Waiting is hard, even when you know what you are waiting for; however, waiting when you don’t know what’s ahead adds another element entirely.
Joseph knew something about this, I think. He was given dreams in Genesis wherein the dream manifestations of his brothers all bowed to him. So, he knew God had something in mind for him, even though he didn’t know the specifics. He knew something had to change because, as the youngest brother, his position didn’t warrant the respect of his elder brothers.
Joseph knew God was leading him into something new, but he certainly had no control over the path there or even where that path led. I don’t think he would have chosen to get thrown in a pit, be sold into slavery, or be wrongfully imprisoned. Nonetheless, this was his path. It ended in God’s promise, but the road there was rough and wrought with a couple of decades of change.
Recently, I’ve been in a season of change. God’s gone and uprooted things that had been stable for a long time. The changes are good, of course, but they’ve made me feel off balance, somehow. It’s like He tipped over one domino, and that tipped the next, which tipped the next, and so on. Now, as if they were in slow motion, I’m waiting to see where they all will land.
It’s potentially a lot of change at once, and I’m not quite sure how it will even work out. So, I started doing what I always do. I started planning. I mapped out every scenario and tried to “make” the ending I thought was best. Imagine one of those giant corkboards you see when detectives are trying to solve a case (the ones with photos up and pins connecting strings running from one to another). That’s what was going on in my mind. It was a mess in there.
I would never advocate negligence in decisions that impact your family. But, in my case, I was spinning wheels fruitlessly, obsessing over my next steps and how things would work out. I was trying to predict outcomes I couldn’t predict. In a sense, I was trying to play god of my own life. I knew that the first domino push was His doing, but I was becoming extremely stressed over trying to control where all the others would land.
There was a disconnect in my brain. Although I believed God was working in the first change, somehow, I felt like I had to figure out all the rest to make God’s plan work. I needed to be the orchestrator, or it would all fall apart.
Only, that’s not how it works at all. Not for God’s kids. We have given control over to God. I don’t sit on the throne of my own life; He does.
I’m writing this without all the answers. I know very little about how all this will pan out. But God has reminded me I don’t have to figure it out or make it all work myself. If He is in this, then it is His to work out. That doesn’t mean I’ve decided to “Let go and let God” (I don’t believe we are called to be inactive spectators in our own lives). I’m not living a passive faith, as Erica has written about. I have been making the decisions I have to make in faith that He is working things out for His purpose. For those I haven’t had to make, I’ve decided I can wait.
As Lexi wrote in “Ode to a Sunrise,” I can focus on seeking God as a way of actively waiting.
I can “be still and know that he is God” (Ps. 46:10). I don’t have to figure out every detail right now. I don’t have to have every day of my five-year plan mapped out this second. I can wait and trust that even in seasons of change, God is still God. He is still good. He is still my Lord, and I will follow Him and trust in Him, regardless of where He leads my path.
