“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding;
think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths.”
Leaning Hard and Stepping Forward
The staircase is dark and tall, looming to my two-year-old. Her little feet pushed upward, but her pudgy hand couldn’t quite reach the light switch. With the kind of determined, stubborn bravery found only in toddlers, she decided to go forth. To press on and climb the staircase, deciding her final goal was worth the moments of fear in the dark.
Her final goal, waiting at the top of the stairs for her?
Me.
We’re currently living in limbo. Our home sold one month (and two days) ago, and on that day our family of five + a dog moved into my mother’s townhome. We’re living on top of one another, boxes holding clothes and toothbrushes, books and memories, freedom and privacy. With my newly retired mom, two work-at-home parents, three kids under the age of 4, two golden retrievers (and basically a partridge in a pear tree), our walls are bursting with life.
Legos, art projects, groceries, laundry, loud laughter, timeouts, dog hair, Cheerios, boxes, toys, and shoes all wind up in the living room. The two “big kids” share a full bed turned sideways, making every night a sleepover in the loft at the top of the stairs. We cook together, dancing around one another in the kitchen as we sidestep the dogs’ woeful eyes. We stay up late into the night and eat junk food, watching old sitcoms as the kids sleep and the leaves consider turning.
It’s total craziness and wonder, all rolled up in one houseful.
Our home was on the market twice, a fall and winter bookended by showings and offers and vacuuming. Since it sold last month, we’ve submitted several offers on houses in our area and price range, and each one has been shoved over for that of another. With each offer, each home we preview, each listing that lands in our inbox, we pray. We ask God to lead and to guide our path directly to our new home.
And isn’t that how we could pray every day? That in following Him, we would find our Home?
We still haven’t found our next home and sometimes my trust falters. Will He take care of us? Will we be in our own place by my kids’ birthday? By Christmas? By 2017? I have no idea, but every day we weed out more options and it feels like we’re making room for His path to widen, inch by inch.
Trusting God with all of our heart doesn’t mean He will wrap up the job like we think He should, neat and tidy with a bow on top. If I had my way, we’d have been in a new home the day after we closed on our old one. But that’s not how this is shaking out. Trusting God with all of our heart means leaning on His understanding, knowing that whatever that is, it is enough, and it is right, and it will be well. No matter what.
Trusting God with all of our heart doesn’t mean answers will come swiftly, or even at all. I don’t understand much. I struggle with understanding the presence of evil, with questioning the path He’s leading us down. Trusting God with all of our heart means relying on His understanding, letting the fact that He understands His ways be enough to answer our deepest questions of ‘why’ and ‘how’.
Trusting God with all of our heart and thinking of Him in all our ways means we open our hearts to His path, scary and new and untraveled as it may look. It means stepping forward, taking one stair at a time until we are safe at the top, the darkness behind us.
When we’re not sure how to trust, we lean hard and step forward in faith, knowing that He is waiting at the top to welcome us.
How can you lean hard into His understanding?