When We No Longer Know Which Way to Go

"When we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The impeded stream is the one that sings."- Wendell Berry

 I just wonder how many of you find yourselves in a season of WAITING; a time of indecision, a tossing to and fro, a conflicted mind and heart.  I have a great desire on my heart that seems to erupt into a fountain of joyful possibility one minute - and then gets crushed and relinquished the next.  I cannot really move forward with this little dream until God decides it's time. So for now the stream is impeded. But can I find a way to sing?  Perhaps.

Finding a way to sing in the impeded stream, I think, must mean finding the way to contentment right where I am.  How am I to do that when it means I cannot move forward, but I dare not move backward? Allow me to quote again from Ann Voskamp's wonderful book Waymaker: "Do I have to figure this out? Or is God figuring it out and I just have to wait and be receptive?"

I set the book down and let that question swirl around my brain for a while. So...that would mean turning it all over to Abba and then leaving it there. That would mean not re-visiting it several times a day, or looking it up on the internet, or chatting about it constantly with a friend. Right? Right. That would mean surrender. A total surrender to the One who already has it figured out, but dares not reveal it yet to me, lest I eagerly sail off into the sunset, only to steer into a wrong direction and  cascade head-long into an unanticipated storm. 

Oh yes. The Waymaker. Yes, that means turning my sail toward HIM and then waiting for HIS WIND to blow.  His Wind - His Holy Spirit - has all the charts. He knows the way.  He peers far, far into my future and knows whether this little plan of mine would bring blessing or disaster. Above all, He knows whether it is in the will of God - or only in the wilI of Kelly! I have only to let God figure it out and wait and be receptive. "The sacrament of waiting can feel the hardest of all," writes Voskamp. "And yet - in all this waiting, this is what comes: waiting is a letting go to let something grow. Waiting is generating a greater grace."

So this is really the good part of where I am right now. I guess this is what makes the impeded stream sing! Refusing to act before God acts. Finding contentment right where I am. "When we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey." It is an obedience to wait on the One who knows the way. And obedience brings the blessing.