When God Says, "No"

What do you do when God says, “no"?

I have been praying, hoping, wishing and asking God for our life to go in a specific direction—or more accurately—to remain the same. I don’t want to move, leave my house, lose the beautiful creek in our backyard, work in a different Synod, or say goodbye to the congregation I am currently serving. More importantly, I want to keep our home base secure for our son, who’s changing colleges and our daughter, who is starting college in August. My parents moved my freshman year of college, and while I survived and learned important life lessons, it was extremely difficult. Why would God ask me to do the same to my own kids?

I have been like the persistent widow in the parable Jesus tells in Luke 18, who, as Dan’s Dad once described her, “blackened God’s eye with her prayers” in order to receive her preferred outcome. Jesus doesn’t tell us who is her opponent, nor what justice she sought; perhaps my prayers don’t rise to the level of justice required for God to give me the satisfaction the widow receives.

Or maybe God wants me to let go of fear, resistance to change and trying to control my children’s experiences based on my past.

Shoot. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

A wise person once said that what we fear is not change, but loss. How true. I don’t want to lose all that we have built in our life in St. Louis over the last 18 ½ years. Yet, this seems to be what God calls us to do. Last Sunday, Dan was unanimously elected to be the Pastor of Legacy Presbyterian Church in Frisco, TX (about 30 miles north of Dallas). He will begin in mid-July, and I will stay in St. Louis until after our house sells and we move our daughter to college (perhaps early October). One silver lining to this move is that we will be close to my Dad, who lives near Ft. Worth, and to one of my sisters, who lives in Dallas.

Has God said, “no” to my prayers? Yes; God has said “no” to my preferred outcomes. But God also has said, “yes!” to me. More than graceful grieving, God wants me to be more than I am right now, to trust more deeply than I ever have, and to embody my faith with more courage than I can muster on my own.

God calls us to trust that what she has in store is much greater than what we can ever ask or imagine. In fact, I’m counting on it.