How to Embrace the Unexpected When You Get What You Pray For

Be careful what you pray for, we’ve heard before, because maybe you’ll get it, and maybe you won’t like it. But I’m not thinking of that on Good Friday as I endeavor to work doubly hard and equally as much faster. Spring break is coming, ready or not. We’re heading to Hilton Head, that island I hadn’t returned to since the run along the beach where the sunrise filled my footprints with a kaleidoscope of colors. I’ve longed for the serenity and untainted beauty. Bike rides on beaches. Local smoothies. Blue sky. Blue water lapping the shore.

There’s a writing project I want to finish soon, not because there’s a deadline, but because the words are tumbling out fast and I want to carve space for that to happen. At the beach.

So that’s my plan—wrap up everything that would feel like work now so I could meander the shoreline and unlock these words bubbling up furiously inside me. Then God interrupts, as I’ve known Him to do. Corporate restructuring, says my husband when he calls me. Effective immediately.

In our far fetched dreams, we’d never imagined a reality where he left this job and it not be his choosing. Not once had we questioned its stability.

Corporate Restructuring

If I left you at corporate restructuring because it tells your story too, I’m deeply sorry. You’re not alone, even when it feels like it. God won’t leave, even if it appears He already has.

Your story might be fresh or far behind you. Dreaded or unexpected. Long or comparatively short. But you know how it chisels through your gumption to self-provide and find pride in what you do. Strips away what muffles God’s voice. Leaves you reflecting and questioning and repenting.

As much as we think the greater blessing is smooth sailing, we’ve got it backwards. Lisa Whittle says it like this in her book, I Want God:

Comfort stops the important conversations, settles us into a complacent life, convinces us we lack good opportunities to serve, justifies our inactivity. It supports spiritual comparison, has us comparing ourselves to people who are doing less than we are, serving less, being less sold out for God; it makes us feel better about the things we do not do and ultimately facilitates pride. It hushes the God moanings inside us and tells us, No need to listen. You love God. That is enough.

I’ve been there, coasting until I’m numb and don’t even know it. Thinking good is what makes sense right now. Comfort. Stability. Fruit I can hold in my hand—as if I had anything to do with it.

I’ve let timelines live in my head and sway my heart. Expectations cloud the sky so I can’t see His higher-than-me way. Outcomes trigger worry, self-pity, pride. Work steal my attention.

In His great kindness and impeccable timing, God unearths the ways we’ve overstepped Him. Tugs us gently back to Him. For that I’m incredibly thankful.

In His great kindness and impeccable timing, God unearths the ways we’ve overstepped Him (Twyla Franz quote).

When You Get What You Prayed For

Back to Good Friday. I wrap up the day and it’s late. We eat dinner even later, and I regret I wasn’t more present, less selfish with my time. We have Saturday to talk and pack and last-minute-prepare for Easter. Then we’re off, driving south, straight into a series of coincidences that have us asking what we’re missing and why the arrows are pointing here when relocating was not on our radar.

God’s like that too, aligning and rearranging things on our behalf to get our attention. Awakening wonder and curiosity so we will lean hard into Him and spill honest conversation in front of the kids. We notice our newly baptized daughter is paying close attention as we welcome God’s wisdom, share how He withholds none of it. She repeats to her siblings that we ask God to lead us and trust that He knows best. And maybe that’s His point—demonstrate 1 Corinthians 11:1. Follow me as I follow Christ.

We get to the beach and it’s cold and the wind blows, but the water bounces light in a million directions and the waves bring peace and the sun still burns us. I walk and pen lines that maybe someday will be in a book and it hits me: all of this was on purpose. It’s an unexpected answer for my prayer that words will flow. That I’ll be able to capture what He’s authoring.

God knows the words that come from living it raw land differently than when there’s more distance. The message He’s stirring has to be written in real-time. In the middle of prayer and questions and uncertainty. In the midst of choosing trust. In the tensions of surrender. As we come together instead of letting fear isolate.

So I wrote, and we half-joked that if the tornadoes back home nabbed our house we’d stay on the island. Our first morning back home I voiced a question I’d been mulling over: “Is it okay if we share?”

Losing a job isn’t something you’d ordinarily broadcast. But there’s something very different about writing words while you’re living them and opening up to actual people who can draw assumptions, talk behind your back, use it against you. We’re human and we calculate risk and how much is too much.

Fear will keep us quiet, telling stories once they’re behind us. But past tense stories tend to make us look better and God appear smaller. Instead of honoring the true hero who walked besides us as we failed or wailed, wandered or wrestled, we zoom to the end. Zero in on how we’ve walked away with the lesson, accepted the miracle, sorted out the decision, hung on for dear life.

Past tense stories tend to make us look better and God appear smaller (Twyla Franz).

Stories told in present tense take a different tone. They’re softer. More tender and transparent. Instead of self-elevating, they extend an arm. There’s solidarity and depth that only happens in the presence of vulnerability. When we let each other into the tangled mess of being human and in need of God, we find hope in each other’s stories.

And that’s what happened. We risked sharing, and the return was support. Encouragement. Prayer. Remembered stories. Tips. Interviews. Open doors. Far more than we’d imagined. It felt like the warmest, giant embrace.

I can’t say it will always turn out this way, but I do know that many won’t take the risk unless someone else goes first. Tells the unfinished story she’s living. The honest, unfolding stuff like raw conversations with God. What wakes her up at night. How she was fine and then she wasn’t–and what she’s relearning and unlearning in the process.

Let’s pray.

Jesus, give us courage. To stand in our right-now stories and declare that no matter what, You’re good. Even when we need to reorient or unwind, You’re kind. All the times we fail You, You simply hug us tighter.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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