I was in the bathroom praying (as I often am), crying and irritated because there are spaces in my life that chafe. I have been standing at the precipice of leaving all and starting over for a few years now, pulled back from the edge by unseen forces gently reminding me of responsibilities that, while I didn’t ask for them, I had agreed to them and needed to see them to the end. The last time I almost leaped away from my life, God snatched me back with a heart attack–not mine, but my husband’s–adding more weight to the load I carry of “Things I am now responsible for.” I shouldered that weight in a rage, the unfairness like a kick to the head.

I didn’t want any of this, I would often pray. The ability to speak that truth aloud after all those years felt like sucking down a magical elixir from heaven. I never asked for this, Lord. The words stirred relief in my belly so full up with sick longing. I didn’t ask for any of this, so why do you let me be hurt?

Some around me think I’m not grateful enough, that I am discontent and never satisfied. And I suppose in so many ways they are right because in this season of my life, I have opened my eyes and realized that I want more than the dregs I’ve settled for. I want the abundant life promised, the double–I mean, I’ve already received the persecutions. I’ve already lived the hell of not good enough-ness, brokenness, needy, cheater, liar, adulterer, amorality, emptiness, and loneliness. I’ve already tread water in the drowning place of physical presence without intimacy because “I’m too deep” or “there’s always something wrong” with me. I want the abundant life set aside for me specifically. I already have lived contented with things not even my fault yet unfailingly my problem. I’ve already been reduced to rubble, dynamited by OPP (lolz; other people’s problems/perceptions/pain/personal traumas). I now want to be satisfied with God for my own life.

So I cry because this ain’t it.

But.

But.

He knows the way I take…

Job

God knows.

The way.

I take.

And the thing that keeps me from dying, the keeps me living without laying down and giving up every ghost is that I know that God knows the way I take. He has known all along. He saw it in eternity. And He made room for me, even now, to clean me up until I am as “pure gold”.

There will be times that you will want to quit. To turn around. To curse God and die. You won’t be able to see Him, no matter how hard you look. You won’t be able to find Him, no matter hard you search. Not because God is not there, but because God is not flesh and blood. The agony of your humanity will make you forget, will (for a second that feels like forever) override the fact that God is always there, with the plan already figured out and the steps already ordered. The scream of your flesh will make you believe that you are alone, forsaken, and without recourse. The voices of those around you will create for you a vacuum of despair, sucking all hope and the memory of just how God operates out of the very air you pull into your failing lungs.

And lemme tell you. God still knows the way you take.

When this happens, I need you to remember this: REAL Gs MOVE IN SILENCE LIKE LASAGNA.

When you sit in the silence of God, just know that you are being upheld by The Righteous Righthand; and also, there is work being done by God’s Logistical Lefthand that you could have never seen coming. You just have to keep breathing keep treading many waters keep knowing without feeling that at the appointed time, God will give answer, that God will restore to you that which you thought was lost and the more. You just have to hold on to what you know is your experience of God.

You must remember that the Lord our God is strong and mighty, mighty in battle. And those who are left handed in battle carry the advantage in a right handed world. They never see it coming: not the swing, not the hit, not the home run. They never see dagger hidden on the right thigh. They never anticipate the ambidexterity, the jook.

As much as it hurts, as much as you think you are suffering in that moment, see, you want that left handed work. The surgery that God performs on your life with that Logistical Lefthand carves away everything not like Him, not with Him, not for you. That hand exposes the doubters and scoffers and liars and hangers-on; the cheaters and swindlers and fakers and haters and saboteurs. You become lean, clean, the purest expression of what God intended you to be. Whole. Shalom.

So, rest in the pain of that silence and understand that when God is finished, you will come out as pure gold, and your path will be as a shining light ever shining brighter and brighter until it is like midday—uncontainable and claiming everything the light touches for the Kingdom and its Christ.