Scott and I had a great opportunity to get away from home for a while this past week. We headed to Florida on Monday and stayed until Thursday. It was such a relaxing, fun trip! On our way back yesterday our drive went from 10 hours to 13 hours in duration when we hit a complete stop on 75. We luckily were near an exit and we pulled off real quick to stop at a truck stop. As we walked into the truck stop Scott turned quickly into the typical man and hid behind the candy aisle while I asked for quick detour directions. We then got back on the road and were well on our way. After 4 turns, 2 different highways, a run down town, and an hour later we ended up about a mile in front of the bad accident that had traffic stopped for a good 18 miles. We felt so successful and kind of laughed about all the people behind us that were not as smart as us for getting on the detour. I then started brewing thoughts in my mind about something to write about. My first thought was how do I write about a detour and god's path? Normally when we think of people taking a detour off of god's path we think about huge mistakes and regrets. But sometimes God can send the detours our way to make us grow.
As humans, we normally want the shortest, quickest, easiest path to point A to point B. We get so frustrated if something or someone gets in our way. So when a roadblock gets in our way and delays us from where we are trying to go we turn from godly people to not so godly people.
In life we often make plans. We have a certain timeline of how we think our life should go and get frustrated when things do not go as planned. For example, we expect to be at a certain position in our jobs by a certain time, make a certain amount of money, live in a big house, have X amount of kids, and have a certain amount of money in our retirement fund. As many of you know life just does not always goes as planned and many times you encounter a detour that may take you in a different direction that may delay your orignial destination.
Because our God loves us he sends detours our way. He usually does this because he is maturing our hearts and drawing us closer to him. We might not always know the plan or reason for God's detour but one thing is for sure it is never meant to bring us down. God is only trying to make you stronger.
Finally, we arrived home and ahh it was such a relief! I was feeling on fire for God because the last 7 hours of our trip I meditated on what God was trying to tell me through the detour! I got home read my bible and then did some research on my computer about getting pregnant and miscarriages.I swear Satan gets into my head sometimes and tells me everything I read on google is true.(which is one of his silly lies) After reading and feeling really down for about an hour I sat my computer down on the floor. Instantly, and I mean within a millisecond my computer started sparking and smoking. It blew up:) What a sign from God it was! He was saying well if you aren't going to listen to your doctor I will just take care of it for you. Long story short, my computer is fried and it can not be resuscitated. A dear friend of ours recovered all of my documents luckily! I just had to laugh about it because only God could blow up my computer like that.
Then, again today God challenged me again. It is exactly 5 weeks since my miscarriage and today I got my first (thing that we women hate that we get once a month, sorry boys!) since the miscarriage. Ugh what a reality check it was for me to remind me I am NOT pregnant. I knew it was coming but there was a little piece of me that thought just maybe I could be pregnant. I wanted so bad to be mad at God but as I turned on the TV I saw a tsunami was about to hit Japan & my small problem turned into something so minute compared to the 1,000 that lost their lives.
Even though I am NOT pregnant, my computer is fried, and it took us 13 hours to get home yesterday God has revealed so much to my heart. He continues to tell me TRUST HIM, TRUST HIM, TRUST HIM. There is no detour he is going to take me down that won't lead directly in someway back to his path. He WILL bless me with the desires of my heart. I just have to be patient.
Lauren this really spoke to me! Looks like I am going to have let God take me on a detour... Thank you for your amazing posts-- Courtney Richardson
ReplyDeleteLauren, you don't know me, but I recently have been through the same heartbreak that you have been through. At ten weeks we found that our baby no longer had the strong heartbeat it initially had. I had to have a D&C last week and it has definitely been an unexpected and difficult detour God has put in our path. One of my best friends told me about your blog (she said you were in her Bible study), and I just want you to know what an encouragement and blessing you have been to me. I KNOW God is good and He will bless us in His timing. I know that I need to trust him and be patient for his plans, not mine. Thank you for opening your heart to us and being such an encouragement to so many.
ReplyDelete-Audrey