“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV
Learning to trust God this past year and a half has been extremely difficult for me. I’m not anywhere I thought I would be and I’m all the more grateful for it. My journey isn’t complete or perfect but that’s where God wants me to be for now.
A year and a half ago I found myself still living with my parents (which is totally good, follow where God leads you not where the world says you have to be), working somewhere I thought to be immoral, and with all this renewed found faith for God.
I had just decided a couple months prior that I would no longer attend college. That I no longer wanted to pursue becoming a dietitian. I had no license, no car, very little money, and no direction or independence. I was 21 but felt very little like the adult I was, or who I thought I was supposed to be.
The world and social media teaches us that we need to be as “adult” as possible. We need to move into luxury apartments, vacation while we are still young with no kids, work desk jobs so we can look pretty at work and have high positions, party, drink, sleep with anyone and everyone to figure out who we are. Find aesthetic cores and fit into this very small niche box so that you can be acceptable, cool, an adult.
God does not call us to this.
Here I was, lost in all this confusion and lies I had let the world feed me because I refused to open up my Bible and actually read it. I was so unhappy with where I was in life. I was caught up in who I thought I was, who I thought I should be, and who I currently was. I was thinking too much of me to be honest.
I prayed to God to move me. I told God I would go wherever he told me to go no matter how uncomfortable I was. I was anxious that my whole world was about to be flipped upside down, but I also knew that, that was exactly what I needed.
Days later my parents told me they wanted to move out to Wilcox Arizona and that they wanted to become homesteaders. Right then and there I felt God let me know I wasn’t going to go. I was unsure if this was me being upset or if this was God’s voice so I went into my room and prayed.
I had my own reasoning for not wanting to move so far but I wanted to hear God’s answers. I wasn’t going to be able to come visit my friends because I had no way to get down to them for I had no car, I wasn’t going to be able to visit my boyfriend for the same reason and he wasn’t going to be willing to move out there with me, and while I didn’t particularly like my job God was telling me to stay.
I didn’t know where I was going to go. I called my boyfriend and cried. I didn’t know what to do. He offered for me to come move in with him and his family since I was there more than I wasn’t anyway. I told my parents and the date was set. I would move out before they listed the house on Zillow.
This time in my life was devastating for me. I was wrongfully angry and felt so abandoned. Don’t get me wrong I was happy for my parents, that they would live out their dreams if it was God’s will, but I couldn’t help feeling lonely. The day I moved out was extremely difficult as I had badly burned myself at work the day before.
I had to give up the lovely safe space I had built my room to be, move it half to a storage unit and half into my boyfriends room, give up every routine I ever had, release my pride and let my boyfriends family drive me to and from work everyday, deal with this bad burn that I should’ve gotten medical help with in retrospect, move my cats in and get them acclimated, and face the depression that had grown in my heart. I felt the heaviest I had since senior year of highschool.
My whole life indeed was flipped upside down by this move. It was one of the hardest things I have ever emotionally gone through. But then things started to look better. The owner at work was selling the other location to my boss and my boyfriend and I were offered positions with them there. I knew the steps I would have to take to be able to make this possible and prayed about it.
I would need to buckle down and get a car and my license so that I could even get there everyday. And I would need to endure the couple months to follow where I waited for everything to fall into place. Work at the current location I was working at was miserable and so toxic. But I knew I had to keep going in to get to the next place.
My neighbor was selling a red 2002 Honda Odyssey for only $2,000 dollars. I was close to getting my license. I quickly bought it with my boyfriend. I learned to drive on the cute little junker and was able to get my license. In this time I had officially moved to the other location and my Dad had been so kind as to take me to work everyday. (this was a big ordeal because as a baker I need to be at work at 3am)
At the new location I was able to make more money, I was able to go everywhere I needed because of my new car, and I was finally beginning to feel like God was letting me provide for myself more efficiently. The only thing I wanted now was to move out with my boyfriend and begin our own life.
So I prayed. I prayed that God would prepare us a place to move into and that he would prepare us for our move. He had moved me before and I was now learning to trust God. I knew that a hard period would be coming up. A period where God was going to begin to prune my branches so that I could produce better fruit.
My car officially broke for the first time. It was a horrible time finding a mechanic and paying for everything but my boyfriend helped and we got through it together. Then my cat Bubbie got a urinary blockage and that was another huge chunk of our savings gone. It was looking like we might not have the funds we were going to have to move out. Then it finally happened, my engine block fell off the car and we realized the car wasn’t going to be worth fixing. That we would need to find a new car.
This was not a journey I was prepared for. God helped me through it but it was the most miserable two weeks ever. I had cried every time we failed with the dealerships and finally we found one that would work with us. That wasn’t trying to scam us. We met a lovely kind woman named Isis who helped us tirelessly to help us get a car. She made herself available to us at all times and went above and beyond to help us. Through the grace of God she found exactly the perfect car for us.
This was one thing God prepared for us. Then we found the apartment we wanted to move into. It was small but perfect space for what we had and we were going to be able to afford the rent there. I began to pray on it to make sure it was what God wanted and I prayed for him to continue preparing us.
Then the worst thing happened. My boyfriend and I went through the roughest patch we had ever been through. I’ll spare the details out of respect for my partner. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs” Ephesians 4:29 NIV. We had to come to terms that we were going to choose to love each other no matter how we felt about certain things.
The Bible says feelings are fleeting. I would show up for my partner even if I was anxious or if we were hurt. We would work through our differences and make it work because we did at the end of the day love each other.
This was the last thing God prepared for us. We decided our move in date and I prayed for God’s guidance. I prayed that if this wasn’t the place for us, if this wasn’t the path he wanted me to go down, that God wouldn’t allow the apartment to get approved. We scheduled a tour as well to see the place in person. The very day we toured, that evening, we got the approval email with the next steps we’d need to take.
I will get to move in this July and I feel so blessed that God is moving me still. I don’t know how this season of my life is going to go but I have God with me. I have days where I struggle to trust God, but that’s because I’m not perfect and that’s ok. I know in the end it will go exactly as God plans it to go.
My life is in God’s hands. No matter how much I want to take control, I’m learning to let God have control. For he makes things good where I can’t see hope.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures” Psalms 23:1-2 KJV
“Though anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” Psalms 23:5 KJV
Daughtofthehighking 