God Is Working Ahead, So I Don't Have To Dread

I didn’t used to get anxious thinking about the future.  I didn’t fret about it or even think about it a lot.  I had faith that God was going to work things out, no matter what happened.  

But then over the last few years, I started dreading the future.  I experienced some losses and  saw a lot more losses and griefs coming down the road and I didn’t want to deal with them.  And I couldn’t see any good new things coming.  So this created a toxic perspective for me.  

I read the book Switch on Your Brain and decided to try the method the author uses to change the way I think.  I downloaded the app to stay focused and let the author walk me through the process each day for 21 days.  I realized something important as I worked through each day’s assignment.  When I visualize the future, I’m seeing it without God working in or transforming it.  Here’s an example:

I need people around me.  I don’t like being alone for too long.  In addition to that, I’ve been quite depressed all winter.  If you had told me in October that our society was going to shut down and stores, churches, schools, etc would be closed in March, I think I would have had a complete breakdown.  I would have thought I couldn’t handle that kind of isolation.  

But the reality wasn’t like what I envisioned.  I only saw part of the picture.  Since school was closed, Kal was with me all day.  Wayne was busier than ever, but he was able to stay home and work some mornings, which is my hard time.  We couldn’t invite people over, but the weather was nice enough that our family found ways to visit outside on our driveways, bringing our own food and spacing our chairs far apart.  My kids got to come home to visit because they could work remotely.  

There were definitely some hard things, too:  Cason lost his job, we couldn’t see Michael-Ellen for months, I lost workshop business, I missed seeing people at church.  But the point for me was that I couldn’t have realized what redemptive work God was going to be doing in the midst of the hard things.  My imagination is too small.  As is my faith.  

So I have a new mantra to think and make part of my belief system:  “I will interpret all thoughts of the future with a positive orientation, knowing God is already working there.”  I have two verses connected to this thought, one that I wrote about four weeks ago before I even had this epiphany, and one that I’ve clung to for several years:

“See I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”  Isaiah 43:19  and  “She can laugh at the days to come.” Proverbs 31:25.

So I can’t see ahead, but I don’t have to dread, because now I know God will be there in ways I can’t foresee.

(And if you’re interested in doing the Switch on Your Brain app with me, let me know. We can form a small group online.)