I didn't see a way out of this one...

In the winter of 2021, Greg and I found out that there was a landslide happening on our property beneath the private road that leads to our home. This meant that, eventually, there would be no way for us to get to our home (not in our cars anyway). The issue had begun a few years prior, and we thought we had resolved it, but despite our best efforts, the land was moving again.

In order to fix it, we would have had to sell everything we owned (and possibly a kidney or two) just to be able to afford it.

I didn’t see a way out of this one, and I felt absolutely defeated.

The home Greg and I had dreamed about, scrimped and saved for, and built from the ground up was slowly, and quite literally, drifting away.

The worst part was, there was nothing I could do about it.

Try as I might, I could not stop the land from moving - Imagine that!

I joke about it now, but this moment was a harsh reality check for me. I was forced to realize that no matter how hard I try, there are some things I simply cannot control, and this reality rattled me.

Up until this point, I believed that if I worked hard enough, I could shield myself from something like this. If I followed all the rules to a “T” and took every preventative measure possible, then nothing bad could ever happen to me.

But, the truth is, bad things still happen even if we do everything right.

I don’t know why, and I may not fully understand it now…

BUT I do know that through this hardship I have experienced tremendous growth and transformation. It has taught me to accept the things I cannot change, and that my perspective isn’t always accurate.

Here’s what I mean…

This time last year, I believed that God had abandoned me. I thought He had left me to fend for myself, and that I was on my own. But, this was merely my perception, not reality.

There was more to the picture that I couldn’t see.

I had an idea of what I thought my life should look like, and I was holding onto it so tightly that I couldn’t envision that, maybe, God had something better for me. Better than what I could have envisioned for my own life.

At the time, I was so focused on what was going wrong, that I couldn’t see the new and beautiful things that were beginning to take shape. The subtle brushstrokes that were being applied. But, looking back on it now, the picture is becoming clearer.

I am beginning to see that…

God not only cares about my problems, but also the problems of others. Because of the landslide, we were forced to get creative. After the landslide was fixed, we turned our home into a rental property, which has created multiple jobs that are now blessing others financially.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to take one step forward in faith instead of standing frozen in fear. As a teacher, Greg encouraged his students to think critically and creatively about what they wanted out of life, and to pursue what inspired them, despite the fear they may feel along the way. This difficult season in our lives prompted Greg to take his own advice. Because of the landslide, he was able to leave a job that was no longer fulfilling to him, take a risk, and pursue a new career in construction and real estate.

I cannot control everything that happens to me, but I can control how I experience what happens to me, and how I look at my future. This experience has allowed me to develop new ways of thinking. Instead of focusing on everything I’m worried about, I try to focus on what is going well. Every day, I can choose to believe that my future is better than I could ever imagine, and practicing this allows me to feel excited about what’s to come, instead of “always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

I could go on, but the point is, I have encountered blessings that I never would have received had things gone the way I wanted them to a year ago.

Don’t get me wrong, taking down my daughter’s nursery and leaving the home Greg and I had lived in for the last eight years was devastating, and I want to honor that. However, that circumstance, as painful as it was, redirected us.

We had no choice but to forge a new path for our life. One that sent us on a new adventure that we never would have said “yes” to had we not been drawn out of our comfort zone. When I think about this, I am reminded of a verse in Isaiah that has helped me get through many sleepless nights in the last year. It says,

“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”

– Isaiah 43:19 (NLT)

All along, God has been preparing the way for something new to emerge. Of course, there are still things about my life that I don’t fully understand, but if I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that my perspective has a limit. There are so many things happening behind the scenes, even now, that I’m not aware of.

I still can’t see the whole picture of how the rest of my life will go, but I’ve made a decision.

I am going to be resilient.

Resiliently hopeful that the finished artwork of my life is going to be a masterpiece.

Will you join me?