The Good Hidden In The Struggle

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My meetings took longer than I thought so I had to drive from Dallas to Houston late at night. I was on a dark stretch of highway when I felt the sudden thud of a flat tire. My heart sank when I realized I didn’t have a spare but I managed to reach the next exit. Relief quickly faded as I rolled into a dimly lit gas station in the middle of nowhere and found it was closed. When the tow truck finally arrived the driver said no one nearby could help but he knew of a 24 hour tire shop in Dallas. As he towed me all the way back I just sat there frustrated and tired as more time slipped away. I didn’t know it then but a storm hit Houston and flooded parts of the highway I was headed toward. What I thought was a setback was actually God stepping in.


We get upset when plans fall apart and we question why things don’t go our way. Maybe you look at your life and wonder why you’re not where you thought you’d be by now. I know I have had times when I expected to be further along in my career and in the moment it feels frustrating and personal like something is wrong with you and that you have made a mistake you can’t fix. But God sees what we can’t and he knows the roads ahead and the dangers we’d walk into without even realizing it. So what feels like a loss may actually be God removing someone or something that’s not good for you and what feels like a delay may be him keeping you out of a situation that would’ve hurt you later even if it looked right at the time.


The season where you feel behind may actually be a season where God is protecting your growth and preparing you for what’s next and it’s not always easy in the moment because we want things to happen on our timing and in the way we imagined but this is where trust begins to grow. God isn’t absent when things fall apart. He’s often working in the middle of it even when it doesn’t feel like it so faith grows when we trust God beyond what we understand. It’s easy to believe when life is smooth but real trust shows up when things fall apart and we still trust that God knows best. As Isaiah 55:8-9 reminds us, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts and his ways are higher than ours.


So when something goes wrong we shouldn’t rush to call it bad because we may only be seeing a small part of a much bigger plan. Looking back at that night I didn’t just have a flat tire but I was being redirected. What felt like inconvenience was protection and what felt like delay was grace. So when life doesn’t go as planned know that God hasn’t abandoned you but he’s guarding and guiding you at the same time.


Think about it.

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