The Next Step

I’m learning a lot about faith.

It isn’t to have God reveal all things to me and then move confidently into the future.

Instead it is to trust He has a plan for me without the fidelity of facts about my future - other than that He loves me - and I am to move forward and take the next step despite a large host of uncertainties.

Last year - as God would have it - someone I met seemingly randomly was going through a terrible time with his family’s health and pending uncertainties. While the circumstances of his life and what I’ve gone through are not the same, we share many common denominators of fear, pain, uncertainty, and loneliness in our grieving.

I’ve known him about a year now and while health situations at his home have gotten worse, there also has been a massive miracle. A baby has been born against all odds and lives while the uncertainty of the mother hangs precariously by a thread, so thin it can hardly be seen.

Not knowing the most recent developments, I had called him this week to unload and to surrender my own burdens, but found him in dire distress. I, myself, had dark nights a few years ago when I thought my wife would die overnight and leave me a widower. Those nights turned into weeks and months. His Hell is deeper and darker.

I asked what he was doing to survive.

He shared some personal things not appropriate for me to repeat, but the recent inspiration he received is universal to all suffering.

“Take the next step.”

God will reveal the next thing for me to do right now but often not the one after until I have completed or at least started the first one.

This time of year, I suffer from seasonal anxiety which - if left unchecked - has historically turned into depressive episodes. In the past I would wallow and go deep and not resurface for several months. It started earlier than normal as I had a major career change last September which introduced a lot more financial uncertainty than in previous years.

What has changed in recovery is that when the darkness begins to gather, I reach up to God and I change my state through exercise, meditation, and reaching out. Moving to Arizona where most days are sunny and warm and where I have proximity to family has also helped immensely.

I desire certainty, but God keeps reminding me that only His love is certain. Everything else just isn’t the point.

Just as Peter the Apostle fretted and feared about how to pay taxes and Jesus told him to go drop his line in the water and the first fish he caught would be enough to pay the debt, Christ reminds me to render that which is of the world to the world and to be loved. To be beloved.

No matter how dark your current trials are, I pray you remember these things.

God loves you.

You are beloved.

Yes, this pain and suffering sucks. It seems unfair and dark and twisted.

But please have faith and take the next step.

In my experience of pain and anguish, God has never left me alone when I seek Him. And He has always sent angels on both sides of the veil to comfort me and help me to identify the next step.

My prayer for you is that you find that same comfort in your current misery.

And that you take the next step.

By Pete, Writing Team