The phone rang late one night. “Mum, your manuscript has just vanished. We have searched everywhere and we just cannot find it anywhere.” Thoughts, of hard work being wasted, promises made to publishers and final outcomes taking so much longer, jostled in my head.
“Try and get some sleep, maybe a fresh pair eyes will help in the morning,” I responded, “in the meantime I will get some prayer support for you and we will see what happens.”
I sent a prayer request to some friends on Facebook, many of whom were authors themselves, knowing that they would understand the stresses related to writing. This group has seen so many answers to prayers and I felt confident that the missing work would be found. I also asked God if there was a lesson to be learnt.
Twenty hours later, there was still no sign of the elusive papers. I made a decision to move forward, reprinted the necessary pages and sent them into town with my son, who had unexpectedly visited us that afternoon.
“God, what are you trying to tell me here”. It turned out to be a rather simple really. When we come up against obstacles, do we see them as detour signs or roadblocks or something to be pushed through.
Either way, if God answers ‘no’ to our prayer or we don’t get the answer we would like, we have to take another course of action in order to move forward. If we stand where we are and keep pushing, we are going to end up being very exhausted and frustrated. If we take another course of action but keep looking back by stressing about what might have been, our progress is going to be slow and laborious as we stumble along.
If, however, we move in the new direction with a positive outlook, we will be able to enjoy the journey so much more. We may never understand the why or what of God’s reasoning in changing our direction but we can be confident that He has our best interests on His loving heart.
We can be assured that God will enable us to grow through whatever it is that we find ourselves doing instead and if we take some advice from Paul, we will be able to find a blessing in the process. “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,” Philippians 3:13b
In a world that is obsessed with perfection and a “do it once, do it right” outlook on life, it’s good to be reminded from time to time that God loves us in our imperfect form.