When Plans Fall Apart

“I am so sorry but we decided to go another way…” is what the email read.

I had to take my daughter across town and I didn’t want her to see my cry. But that girl reads me so well.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

“I didn’t get that job,” I replied.

“Oh mom, I am so sorry.”

She is quiet as we drive, empathizing and wondering all at the same time. We drive in silence through traffic as tears escape from my eyes despite my willingness for them to dry up. I drive and internally fight against rejection, battle for truth, and anger against God.

Then she wonders aloud, “It seems like things just aren’t going our way lately. Is there something wrong with us? Are we cursed or doing something wrong? It just seems like God isn’t on our side or something.”

I choke out a bitter laugh because I have had these same thoughts. I have learned to praise God for my teenagers questions and doubts because it gives me the opportunity to speak truth and wrestle with them and even tell them, I don’t know. It’s vulnerable, but it keeps me humble and honest. And so I lean toward honesty and in my own doubts whisper a prayer for truth.

“It does sometimes seems like things aren’t working out, maybe more so lately,” I reply,” but no, we are blessed and we live in the abundance of God’s love. He is always for us and just because we cannot see or understand why things don’t go as we hoped, we have to trust him. God see’s the whole tapestry of our lives when we only see the threads. We have to trust him and trust is what this life is about. We trust that God is for us and with us, always.”

I drop her off at school and tell her to break a leg.

I sit in the car and watch as she waves and then disappears past the glass doors with confidence and grace. She has had to learn trust so much this year too, knowing she is playing a part in the school production with excellence and talent even though it was not the part she has planned or prayed for.

Because sometimes plans, prayers and promises fall apart into pieces you can’t seem to pick up or put together no matter how much you try.

And it doesn’t make sense.

And it is painful.

And God, where are you in the disappointments and the detours?

God see’s the whole tapestry of our lives when we only see the threads. We have to trust him and trust is what this life is about. We trust that God is for us and with us, always.”

As we enter the book of Ruth, we meet Naomi, whose life has been marked by loss and tragedy. She follows her husband away from her family, her home and the promises of God into the land of Moab; a land filled with idolatry and hopelessness.

“In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.” Ruth 1:1 ESV.

In the years she lives in Moab her husband dies. Her two sons marry Moabite women, yet 10 years later her two sons die, leaving Naomi and her daughters in law as childless widows, and Naomi is alone in a foreign land, vulnerable and grieving.

The threads of Naomi’s life seem completely unraveled.

All the plans have fallen apart.

Where does a she go from here?

How do we move from disappointment or even distrust?

“...the journey we are on is paved not by circumstances or indifferences, but by the one true God who is not only with us on the journey, but guiding us towards His greater way.”

The word “Sojourn” in Hebrew is defined as “a temporary stay.” Naomi wasn’t suppose to stay in this place long and even though her plans sort of fell apart, the journey she was on was in fact temporary. God was working through all the detours of her life and though she felt alone and seemed fragile, God was making a way for her and Ruth that could never have been imagined.

So many times things seem to fall apart, but the journey we are on is paved not by circumstances or indifferences, but by the one true God who is not only with us on the journey, but guiding us towards His greater way. Naomi did not stay in her despair, instead with Ruth by her side, she found her way back to the promise, to her people and to her God.

And maybe that is our story too.

We journey through faith, guided towards Him.

By the time I rounded the freeway back towards home, despite a few tears running down my face, with a great sigh I was resolved and said out loud to the God of heaven, “I trust you with my whole heart. I don’t get it, but I trust you. Nothing has fallen apart, because I know that you are the one who holds it all together. And I am holding on to you.”