Whenever things are going wrong in my life, I always have to stop and ask God if I am walking in His will. A lot of times I know the answer to that. For instance, when I am in sin, I don’t even bother asking God “what’s going on?” because I know the answer: I am walking in my own way and suffering the consequences for that. When I decide to stop willfully living in sin (which is different than committing sins), my life shapes back up and though things aren’t picture perfect, I know I am in His will. A long time ago, a friend told me that if I am not in sin then I am always smack dab in the middle of the circumference of the perfect will of God for my life.
But this is different…
Things aren’t necessarily going bad, but it’s like I have this puzzle which is my life and I have a ton of pieces that all look great, but they don’t fit together to complete the puzzle. Worse still, it’s like I can’t find the top of the box, so I can’t see what the end picture is supposed to look like. Instead, I am forced to try and figure out if I have too many pieces, if any pieces are missing and which pieces don’t fit in the puzzle. I’m guessing what the end picture is supposed to look like…and I am horrible at guessing games.
I feel as though what I want to do is at war with what I am doing which is at war with what I feel like my life should look like. Maybe the puzzle is just going to end up being one huge question mark (because that is how I feel).
I’m constantly asking God questions: “Lord, do I belong here? Is this what I am supposed to be doing? What will be the consequences or rewards of this decision? Will I regret this? What’s next? Am I in the right place? Did I miss something? What am I doing? What are YOU doing? What am I supposed to be learning? Can I learn this a different way? Didn’t I already pass this test? Am I being punished? What about these thing I need? When will this change? Is my heart in the wrong place?”
It’s frustrating to me because there are few things I don’t like more than personal inconsistency, not knowing what is going on, obvious bad decisions on my part and personal regret. I hate to feel unsettled or like I’m walking without a purpose.
This paralyzes my decision making skills and I end up accepting everything that comes my way without regard to what else is in my life. I stare at all these pieces of the puzzle and hope they fit….and I am also hoping for a few more pieces that have yet to manifest. But if and/when those pieces are thrown into the box, who knows whether or not I’ll have room for them in my puzzle?
God knows my end from the beginning, this I know. Max Lucado said in his book “It’s Not About You” that God doesn’t look at our lives as a series of events as one would watch a movie. Lucado says God looks at our entire life in a single snapshot – my beginning, middle and end all in a single frame. One of my old WHBC teachers would say, “nothing in our life takes God by surprise. He isn’t sitting up in heaven watching what happens to you and saying, ‘whoa I didn’t see that coming!'”
I know these things and that’s why I am trying to seek God and ask him what it is that he wants for me to do right now. Am I on the right track? Am I doing too much? Not enough? I believe He will answer me, but I’m making decisions every day in the meantime. I don’t want to be like the college freshman who takes random classes, unsure of what her major is and then junior year she decides on a major, but unfortunately none of the classes she has already taken will count toward her major.
I want to know that what I am doing, every decision I’m making is the right one. I’m not asking God to come down from heaven and micromanage my life. He gave me a rationally-thinking brain to utilize, BUT I do want Him to give me peace in my spirit, make my motives clear to me, and expose dead ends and unnecessary detours. I want Him to “direct my paths (Proverbs 3:5,6)” and “lead me in the way of the everlasting (Psalm 139:24)” . Of course the end goal is to go to heaven and to know Him in the meantime, but I still have a life to live here and I feel like I am lost.
I just want God to help me put together this puzzle.
Alissa Henry 