There are so many twists and turns and unexpected encounters on the winding road of life—sort of like the country roads here in rural Holmes County, Ohio, where I live.
You don’t need me to tell you that 2020 has been the year of unforeseen twists. And I’m not talking about unanticipated buggies and bicycles on country roads—I’m talking about the worldwide pandemic (did I even know what a pandemic was before 2020?).
With stay-at-home orders, social distancing, extreme sanitation, and facemask wearing, our new normal is anything but.
But our God is still the same.
Looking back on my own (almost) four decades of life, I often see in retrospect that which I never could have foreseen at the time. God’s fingerprints are there so clearly as I look back.
My life has always been in God’s hands. Even when things changed between my close friends and I, even when the housing market tanked, even when the test result came back positive for Down Syndrome during my pregnancy, even when there was no house to be found in the online real estate listings—God was in it all.
Not that God causes our pain and our hardship—hardly. We can thank our fallen world (and sometimes ourselves) for that. But God allows it, and works in it. And boy, am I glad.
Because if those friendships had stayed the same, maybe I’d have never quite learned that Jesus is my real bestie.
And if the housing market hadn’t crashed, my life would have had a different trajectory.
And if the test hadn’t come back positive, I wouldn’t have compassion for hearing bad medical news.
And if there had been another house to buy, I’d have missed out on the wonderful blessing of the one I have.
But the unexpected twists and turns on the road of life aren’t easy, are they?
Even small things can derail us—like the other day I stubbed my toes to the point of breaking them. Now I’ve got a painful purple bruise ruining my new running routine. And even though it’s not fun (I’m just now realizing how often my feet get stepped on by my children—ouch!) a little part of me deep down inside is excited with curiosity at just where all of these twists and turns are going to lead.
It’s amazing how God works, isn’t it? One minute, a friend is encouraging me to write a Bible study (and I’m totally blowing her off. Me? Write a book? Yeah, right.) But before you know it, after some serious God-prompting, lots of poring over scripture and commentaries, and plenty of clacking away at the computer, my study is on the verge of launching. Crazy stuff, right?
I have to chuckle as I think about the direction of my life. I never saw myself here—tucked away in the rolling hills of Amish Country, after a decade in the city, and a few years in south, after my childhood on the third-generation family farm. None of which I anticipated, or planned. But I’m so glad God did.
And even though our world is enveloped in uncertainty, I’m ready to lean into the unknowns—ready to move forward even though I’m not sure what the future looks like. Because I know Who is already there. And one day I’ll look back and be so grateful for this unexpected turn in the road. After all, the journey with Him has been so good thus far.
Tags: amishcountry, unexpected
