Making Room for the Unexpected - {Fresh Market Friday Link-Up}

By the time you read this, I will be en route to the airport, saying my hardest goodbye, reaching all the way to China. Although this parting is unexpected and filled with mama tears, it is also sweet and overflowing with God’s blessings and confirmations.

Making room for the unexpected is making room for God to bless.

So, this week’s Fresh Market Friday post is pulled from the archives exactly 2 years ago and is a timely reminder of how God’s unseen hand is always going before. To pave the way for some of our most extraordinary, unexpected and life-changing blessings.

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Today, I take the stairs to my third floor office. The anticipation of morning’s first detail of checking email leaves me more breathless than three flights of stairs. So much energy and excitement in bearing witness to a blessing beyond my imagination.

Seven months ago, seeing even one day in front of me was impossible. And let’s just say I haven’t always done well with impossible.

Arranger, Maximizer, Strategizer. I’ve long known these to be my strengths. Give me a problem, and I will work diligently to find the solution. Unfold the big picture, and I will fill in the details. Explain to me where you want to go, and I can show you ways to get there.

But there’s a saying-“Every exaggerated strength is a potential weakness.” And I have trudged in this place of weakness far too long. Control is a beast, growing more vicious with each hearty feeding of self-sufficiency.

Opening the pages of my journal, I relive the desperation of those early days, when surviving such change was unfathomable. My world turned upside down by job losses, car accidents and family tragedy. Worst of all, I was powerless to put the pieces back together.

Sometimes no amount of arranging, maximizing or strategizing can free us from a road we have been divinely called to travel.

What do we do when we can’t see past our own nose to plan for our next day on the job because there is no job? When we can’t imagine how we are going to keep a roof over our head because there is no way to pay for even one more shingle.

How do we live in this place of not knowing and still stand strong when the big picture we spent a lifetime creating fades, and every paint stroke blurs?

The view outside my office window as I raise the blinds is grand only to me. Early morning breezes ruffle the canopy of the massive banyan tree. It’s been standing strong for years, and I feel as though in all my years, I am just learning to stand.

Not knowing what lay ahead tested me to the core. Yielding to the pruning of self-sufficiency brought heart cries and questions never before uttered in my spirit. But the shaping and pruning brought beauty I could never have created by my own efforts.

Often God uses the unknown to make Himself known. Share on X

How can we embrace the unexpected if we never let go? And, how can we let go apart from yielding to the One who has all control?

It’s a haunting reality….when we realize we trust God with our eternity, but we don’t trust Him with our now. Or our tomorrow.

The truth is, there are no tomorrows apart from what God gives. And would we really want a tomorrow without God? A tomorrow with God holds such promise of unexpected beauty. If we can just hold on long enough to let go.

The documents are signed, and uploaded, and I have to pause. This is a hallelujah moment if there ever was one!

This job, this place, this blessing….this GRACE. And I did nothing to deserve such unexpected grace.

We never do. This is the beauty of unexpected grace. It sprawls out in front of us when we finally find the courage to let go of all the knowing. Making room for the unexpected means letting go. I get that now.

I get that what’s ahead is more than all the knowing. I get that what’s waiting beyond the draining savings and unmet mortgage and unpaid medical bills is bigger than the imagination.

Letting go is the one thing that promises to leave us breathless.

This breathless moment brings tears of such joy and a reminding.

In all my team building years, coaxing people to let go and experience breathless, I now understand that I never let go to welcome this glorious mystery myself.

Too much fear. Too much need for control. And my big picture faded in the dimming light of my own clenched fists.

Still, when the unknown attempted to stifle hope in the pounding, God sang melodies of mercy. When earthly knowledge could no longer sustain, eternal grace broke through. And such beauty is never wasted in surrendering to not knowing.

Two emails sit treasured within my inbox. Both confirm full scholarships to a private university for the last two of my children-the same university God led me to through my letting go of knowing.

I am humbled by such unexpected and extravagant love.

God reminds us through all of our unexpecteds that He has is always raining grace over or lives. All to prove his love through our scars and doubts. All to help us make room for Him.

His heart for us is always arranging.

His perfect will is always strategizing.

His everlasting love is always maximizing.

All to leave us breathless….

in the unexpected!

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When was the last time you let go of knowing?

What’s stopping you?

What if your “breathless unexpected” is waiting on the other side?

Before you leave…

Be sure to visit our Featured Fresh Find – Alison Tiemeyer, who shares some great intentional advice for all of us bloggers who find ourselves overwhelmed and discouraged by so much information screaming for our attention. She encourages us to ask ourselves some tough question, all meant to harness our focus and energy to blog well without losing ourselves, our motivation and our unique purpose.

Won’t you please visit Alison’s and leave her some Fresh Market Friday encouragement…because we all need a little encouragement!

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