Sometimes It Doesn’t Always Work Out

What do you do when it doesn’t work out? What happens when what you thought was going to happen doesn’t? How do you accept God’s No? What happens to your faith when it looks like you failed? How can faith and failure walk together? How do you continue to believe?

God reminded me of a time when we were so happy…our home was all packed up…everything was set for our move that next day…we were full of excitement…the new house was already decorated in my head…I knew where each picture would be placed and what color drapes I needed…life was good…and then it wasn’t…there was one document that was crucial for the closing of our new home…and we found at the eleventh hour that the document would not be released…without that document there could be no sale..what? God…this can’t be happening…we have to leave this house tomorrow…the new owners were moving in…there was no where for us to go…we had to leave this house and we had no other home to go to…when the reality of our dilemma settled in…I wept…no I wailed…God how could you allow us to get this far and then pull the rug out from under us? We had told everyone about our new home…we actually had to minister that same evening to our church marriage group…and they were all prepared to celebrate with us…everyone wanted to know about our new home…and at that moment we were actually homeless…no..not in the sense of being on the street…but…we did not have another residence to live in at that time…God where are you? I am humiliated…don’t you care that everyone sees how broken we are? We had to quickly settle on a rental…that was not at all what we wanted…it was a big step down from the home we had lived in before…I had expected God to quickly rescue us…me…my husband and our then teenaged son…but He didn’t…we lived in this desolate place for three long years…God was teaching each one of us a valuable lesson…sometimes things don’t always work out…does it feel good…NO…it hurt…and I cried…my husband and I had some difficult days and some sleepless nights…our son was terribly disappointed and the look on his face solidified my grief…but God was teaching us all something…when it doesn’t work out…you reach for your faith..through the brokeness..you grope…you force yourself to remember that God is good…that your circumstances may not be good…but He still is…and we can live in a place of defeat and discouragement…or we can decide to praise the God who is in everything…we chose the latter of the two…was it easy…No…did we have moments of why God? Yes!..but we realized if anything would ever change…it would be through the God who has kept us through this calamity…so we chose faith over failure…we eventually moved from that place…and God favored us…but that is another story…that I will share with you one day…so if your something didn’t work out…strain to hear the Teacher…there is a lesson that you must learn…refuse to leave the classroom…fight through the tears to take the notes…I promise you what you will find is that you have really lost nothing…but instead have gained the ability to trust Him more…I know I did!

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1