When my husband and I had been married for just over a year, he lost his job.
At the time, it felt like a crisis. But looking back, I can see it as the guiding hand of God.
My husband had been struggling with when or if he was going to go to college. He thought he finally knew what he wanted to study but he was dragging his heels getting started. I was still a student myself and I didn’t graduate for another few months.
But when he was laid off, his company gave him the option of taking a lump sum, or taking his severance over time, during which time he was still eligible for medical benefits and tuition reimbursement. He was able to enroll in accelerated college classes, the next semester was about to start and a friend helped him find a part-time job near campus so he could work a few hours before going to class each night.
All of this transpired within a few weeks.
What looked like a very bad thing, actually became the tool God used to guide us into the next important phase of our lives.
When the nation of Israel went into the wilderness, they were being delivered from captivity. But it didn’t always look or feel like a good thing. Once the initial excitement wore off, they were hungry and tired. Suddenly slavery didn’t look so bad, at least the food was good.
God provided them with daily manna. The word manna basically means What is it? It was like nothing the people had seen before. But it was the way that God provided for them on a daily basis for the next forty years.
We need to learn to recognize God’s provision. It’s not always easy to see. My experience with God has usually been that he provides in odd ways, usually ones I’m not expecting. Discerning is difficult at times. But I’m learning to look for the provision of God hidden in the seeming difficulties in my life. I don’t want to miss the manna because I’m busy complaining or be pining for slavery when I’m in the process of being delivered.
I don’t want to miss the manna because I’m busy complaining or pining for slavery when I’m in the process of being delivered. Click To Tweet
This is so true… Sometimes our gifts don’t look or feel like the sort of presents we’ve grown accustomed to receiving/expecting… I’m glad you shared about this season in your lives!
I had years of health problems, miscarriages, etc… My ACHING desire to be a mother led me to an emergency hysterectomy and early stage uterine cancer. All of a sudden all of those Christian-ese statements (said to encourage because the speaker simply didn’t know what to say) played in my head like a mockery… BUT- years later I sat bathing my adopted four year old daughter and the reality SLAMMED down on me. It wasn’t that I’d learned to own my journey and embrace it. It wasn’t that my womb had been tragically compromised and forever empty. It wasn’t that my arms, which longed to hold an infant, would never hold one… It was that God had MIRACULOUSLY led me into the lives of three incredible kids who were so traumatized and shattered- rejected and abandoned. God took me to them through a path which would equip me to SEE them, and to fall madly in love with them… And that evening, kneeling at that bathtub I realized I would not have traded those three kids for any number of healthy pregnancies or cradled newborns… BEST gifts ever. Does that make it easy? NO. But so beyond anything I could describe!
Misty, thank you for sharing your story! It’s never fun during the process of the pain and waiting. I wish I was mature enough to have peace during that time of process. (I usually get angry and flip at some point, always on the edge of losing hope). But I try to look back at the ways God has worked in the past and remind myself that he isn’t finished yet. Your story gives me such hope.