When You Didn't Ask For This

I drive by neighbor Doug's house and see the lights are on. The shades are still open even as evening dark begins to fall ever so slightly. I notice him sitting at the dinner table, likely eating supper - alone. Doug has lost his wife and his son-in-law in a year's time, both quite suddenly. My heart is filled with sadness at the sight as I pass by and head home to fix my own dinner. Grief is the ultimate isolator - making one feel as though the world is going on by you and you are left to navigate a journey you did not choose. And I wonder if Doug sits there now and tells God he didn't ask for this. 

Many days I've spent saying the same thing - telling God I didn't want any of this and why all this and couldn't there be another way? It's true I didn't ask for this, but one thing I did ask for was to follow Jesus. 

And what if following Him led here? 

Here, into this death-valley where loss has become an all-too-familiar friend. Here, where I sit in the darkness and hold out hope for the return of the light and its promise. Here, where friends are few and grace sometimes appears absent and so much pain and suffering dot the landscape that I wonder where is there beauty and can I believe again? So what if following Him led here? 

Do you ever ask yourself if the things you most want to escape and deny are actually the very places God has led you in order to frame and form your holiest self? Do you ever think that His way could take you to spaces you'd rather not go and places you'd rather not show and things you'd sooner run from than accept? 

It's not the picture most of us envision when we set out on the Christian life. We imagine joys and mercies and blessings and all things love, but we never think that we'll actually come to know the meaning of these through hardship. And it's the times we're forced to tell God we thought we knew that we realize just how wrong about all this we really were. 

Doug has had to walk his own path of grief, but he never guessed he'd have to walk a path that involved his daughter's grief, his grandchildren's grief, and the grief also of his daughter-in-law. The whole family now mourns and we mourn too because we love and all this world breaks us because it's broken and we need a Savior to tell us there's meaning in this sorrowing. 

When you didn't ask for this, remember that you asked to follow Him and, just maybe, you may find peace in merely knowing that He doesn't lead you astray. 

When it feels like your whole world is out of control and every part of you wants control, then you cry out for His presence and you tell yourself that He's in control and that you don't have to grab control. You tell yourself He hasn't failed you and He never will. Maybe your heart doesn't believe it but you still know and you remind yourself that the thing to do when you don't know what to do is turn your eyes on Him and tell Him you trust Him to guide, wherever He takes you. 

Yes...even if it means you find yourself in the loneliest of places searching for hidden hope and wondering why in all this world you ended up here. Even then, you remind yourself that, though you don't know the way, He is the Way and will make a way where there seems to be no way and all you need is faith to hold on, courage to hold out. 

So what if following Him led here? Is that actually just a disguised mercy we've yet to accept?