All Is Well (Even When It Really Doesn’t Feel That Way)

The night before I drove to the leasing office to sign a stack of papers that would make the overwhelming decision official, I stood in my apartment and slowly spun around. What do I pack? What can go right now and what will I still need here for the days in between, as I put my life into boxes and move from one place to another?

I filled three or four bins and then my eyes landed on three words, a phrase inside a blue picture frame, and I knew I needed to lead the way – not because they felt accurate, but because they’re abundantly true.

All is well.

When I wrote my first book, Even If Not, I invited several artists into the process. Each chapter begins with an illustrated quote from the pages that follow, and as I turned in a circle in the place that has been home for ten years, the print with three words from chapter two caught my eye.

For nearly a decade of days, the simple but striking reminder of “all is well” has sat on the end table in my living room, a constant visual in every season and situation.

I needed it in a new way this year. Within four weeks, everything shifted from staying put to signing papers for my own little home. The wild whirlwind wasn’t my plan or my preferred timing, but as I walked inside the new place and set the frame on a cherrywood shelf, I whispered the words to my own heart:

All is well.
It’s true and coming truer.
Things will change, but that promise will remain.

Whatever we’re navigating today, in a few weeks, it’ll be a slightly different story. A new chapter, perhaps, or a new line on the same page, but something will have shifted. Our opinion. Their response. The weather. An answered prayer. A closed door. Their attitude. Our bandwidth.

The list could go on because the possibilities of new are nearly endless. In the midst of changes and challenges — some that are expected and others that are entirely unanticipated, some that feel like a nightmare and others that look like a dream come true, and still more that fall somewhere in between — what I find myself coming back to the most is simply this:

God has been, God will be, and I am not alone.

By that I mean: God’s character is sure and solid and steady. It does not shift in changing circumstances. Come what may, His character remains what it has been and is and always will be.

He is the God who sticks it out, who suffers with, who stands beside, who sits in the silence, who sings in the shadows, who steadies our racing mind and pounding heart, who stills the storm and shares with abundance and says things might shift but He will stay.

Old Testament and New, the promise holds true. It’s in His name; it’s who He is.

I AM, a present-tense God. (Exodus 3:13-15)
Emmanuel, God With Us. (Matthew 1:23)

After deep cleaning every last inch of the apartment, after placing the final box of odds and ends in my car, I reached for the last thing left inside: a green sticky note taped to the door.

“It’s the end of an era” I said quietly, my voice echoing in the emptiness. One last time, I stood in the place that has seen my biggest heartbreaks, thousands of sleepless nights, exciting news, and so much laughter, and I stared at the faded paper in my hand. It read,

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:18-19

I wrote the words on that sticky note as a reminder to myself in high school, took it to college and kept it on my dorm room desk, and then taped it to my bedroom door after I graduated ten years ago. You could say I’ve carried this verse with me, but the deeper truth is that the words have carried me through seasons and storms, through both brutal and beautiful days.

I’ve seen those lines every day for half my life, and although the last thing moved out and the first thing carried into the next chapter doesn’t have to mean anything at all, it was a small way to intentionally mark the moment, the new thing, with words that are weighty and that mean much more than simply letters on a page.

The little green note that lost its stickiness years ago is framed now. It sits by the print from my book, two ever-true reminders that greet me each time I walk through the front door into the new.

I don’t know what stories the walls of this old house could tell. I don’t know what they’ll see next, what seasons I’ll navigate in this place I’m learning to call home. But I know the first lines of the new page:

All is well, right here and right now, because He is a God who doesn’t change. He’s the God who makes a way. He’s the God who stays.