Clarity ?

My adult life has been a constant fight for - and struggle with - clarity.

I have always had a desperate need for understanding. Which has obviously caused a few very real altercations with my faithfulness.

Full understanding of the way things happen in this life will never come to anyone but God Himself. So for someone with a brain like mine, it can become very frustrating. Paralyzing, even.

In the past year, God has led me through leaps and bounds regarding this issue in my faith walk with Him. I’ve done great work on choosing to surrender that need for understanding and control daily - because for me, it has to be a daily choice. If I don’t make the choice, the choice makes me. 

If not, I dwell, and dwell, and dwell some more.

Guess what? I’m doing it right now! Can you believe it? 

(Read that with a tone that’s dripping in sarcasm)

In all seriousness, these past three days have been a bit of a whirlwind. 

I realized over dinner with my family that we’re gonna have to move again, by the end of this month. YAY!! 

(Once again - sarcasm.)

I’m one minor inconvenience away from selling all our stuff and buying a nice little camper so we can move without moving.

In reality and rationality, it's just moving. It's a logistical nightmare for a week or two until things are sorted out, then it's almost always fine after it's all said and done.

Don’t get me wrong, God has never NOT provided for us. That’s not lost on me.

But this is where we get met with my problem:

I know that God will take care of it. I know that we won’t end up without or lacking in any way. What I don’t know is how I am supposed to handle it. 

Hear me out - 

God can definitely make things move in our lives without us doing anything. I whole-heartedly believe that if He chose to, He could send an angel to where I’m sitting right now at a Starbucks to tell me exactly what He wants me to do in the situation that I’ve found myself in. 

But He hasn’t done that, and therefore I am reeling. Obviously I understand why that dream is not my reality, and am so thankful for all of the lessons that God has taught me in this way: the hard way. However, it will never not be difficult when you’re actively walking through those seasons.

It all just feels like trying to kayak upstream in murky, possibly crocodile infested waters, mentally wading through constant uncertainty in a way that has greatly weighed down my mind. You’re already feeling unbalanced from paddling against the current, and you can’t clearly see the problematic creatures lying in wait under the surface for you to slip up, but you know they’re there and can strike at any moment. 

That may seem slightly dramatic, but when your brain automatically thinks the worst in every single situation, it's close enough.

Even so, the only comfort I’ve been able to find has undoubtedly come from God, and grounding myself in the idea that my uncertainty and fickle human weakness is never His, and will never compare. 

God opens and shuts doors in our lives every single day in ways we’ll never be able to comprehend. But sometimes those doors can appear like two very similar options, but instead of only one being wide open, they are both cracked open just enough to peek through, and it's up to you to listen closely to His voice to decide which you’re meant to walk through.

I know that these Weekly Pages almost always end in some sort of sunny-side-up ending that you’ve (hopefully) come to know, love, and draw a bit of comfort from. But today, it’s ever so slightly different in the sense that I haven’t totally reached that conclusion just yet.

To be completely forthright: I am still actively struggling through this - badly. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to come to grips with the fact that I’ll never achieve full clarity over situations in my life that give me grief. 

That is, unless God wants to throw me a bone by way of day-by-day explanation the day I finally get to see Him face to face. For that, I’ll do my best to wait patiently and pray He actually does. But I’m sure by the time I get to that moment, clarity will be the last thing I’m worried about - I’ll just sob and worship at his feet.

But for now, if you struggle with this kind of thing, too; I’m right there with ya, and probably always will be. Whether your struggles are over grief, loss, confusion, or mere disappointment - He knows we’re going to wrestle with all of this, and He wants to help us. He wants us to rely on His strength in our weakness. Even in your doubts, or even disbeliefs in the situations you find yourself in, He will love you through it.

Clarity is a hard thing to come by, and we’d probably all be better off if we just stopped chasing it entirely. But until I can fully master that (I won’t), I’ll keep trying to stop clinging to my own control of a situation, and focus more on the only One who has control. 

It’s only ever been His, anyway.

Until next week,

— E. Byers, author of The Grassy Laine