My dad and youngest brother visited David and me recently. One day, on our way to a blown glass place (it was beautiful!), we took a short cut through the national park. The one with animals. I love Nairobi.
David’s dad was driving (so glad I wasn’t), and we maneuvered several pathways that required more concentration than I usually give when driving. But they all paled in comparison to the (cue music) Maasai Gate. Very steep down, very steep up. I’d honestly have a hard time just walking it, worried I’d slip and slide my way down. The way up would maybe be easier to walk with — all of the rocks could make good stepping stones.
But driving it? Watching my father-in-law navigate that road scared me. Not because of him, but because of the road. Feeling my anxiety rise, I chose to look at something else. I started reading on my Kindle. I could still feel the car moving this way and that, hear my dad commenting on the craziness of the road, but my anxiety eased up. Why? I wasn’t looking at the road. I just trusted David’s dad to get us through it.
David and I have been praying for a miracle in our lives for a few months now. Instead of a smooth path, we see a really rocky, uneven, not-even-suitable-for-walking-path ahead of us. I’m really good at overanalyzing the hypothetical, so it’s easy for me to slip into that and start analyzing how much this path is going to hurt, how we might not make it through, how maybe we should turn back.
I am fully confident that God is hearing our prayers, but I’m not seeing the answers right now. I don’t see how to navigate through this path. But that’s okay. I don’t have to be the one that drives.
As someone who likes to know everything, I’m realizing that knowing everything is neither possible nor always helpful. If God showed me everything that was coming, it might just cause more anxiety (*probably would). So I’m choosing to avert my gaze from the scary hypothetical and instead implicitly trust the One who leads us on this path. I don’t have to know how A to Z will work. I just need to take the step immediately in front of me as He reveals it; no more, no less. Sometimes not seeing the road ahead gives more peace.
hi there, fellow sapling 