What if God isn’t asking me to have it all together before I begin?
Maybe growth doesn’t always look. like finally having everything together.
Sometimes growth looks like walking into the next thing with dishes in the sink, butterflies in your stomach, prayers under your breath, and enough faith to say, “Okay, God…I’m going anyway.”
All day today, I’ve had this little voice in the back of my mind saying:
Get the laundry caught up, wash the dishes, straighten the house, put everything back where it belongs, make sure tomorrow is organized, make sure everyone had what they need…because tomorrow starts a new season for me.
Somewhere along the way, I think I convinced myself that if I could just get everything perfectly in place tonight, then tomorrow could be the perfect first day… A clean house, a clear mind, a good schedule, everything already laid out, no chaos, no falling behind before I even begin, but tonight I started wondering…
What if God isn’t asking me to have it all together before I begin? What if I’ve spent so much time trying to prepare the perfect starting point that I’ve forgotten that most of the things God has grown in my life didn’t begin when everything was perfectly lined up? They all began right in the middle of real, everyday life.
In messy rooms, during hard seasons, with kids needing me, with laundry overflowing, with questions I didn’t have answers to, with prayers that sounded more like, “God, I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I know you brought this far.”
Tomorrow, I start something new…again.
I would love to tell you that my house is spotless, that every schedule is perfectly planned, that I know exactly how I’m going to balance everything that will fill my days, but I don’t… and maybe that’s okay.
Prepared and perfect are not the same thing. Maybe preparation looks less like controlling every detail and more like doing what I can, then trusting God with what I can’t.
Maybe being ready doesn’t mean someone won’t need me right when I sit down to do work, maybe it doesn’t mean the schedules will work perfectly on the first try, maybe it simply means that I’m willing to take the next step.
I keep thinking about how many times in my life I’ve waited to feel “ready.”
Ready enough, good enough, organized enough, strong enough, disciplined enough, capable enough…
If I had waited until I truly felt ready for everything God has brought me through, I probably would have never started.
So much of the growing happens after we say “Yes.”
We learn while we are walking a new path; We become stronger while we’re carrying something we weren’t sure we could carry. We learn to trust God when our own plans don’t work quite the way we had imagined, and sometimes we discover that the version of ourselves we were waiting to become is actually being formed through the very thing we were afraid to begin.
So, tonight I’m going to wash some dishes…I’m going to switch the laundry, I’m still going to do what I can to make tomorrow a little easier…but I’m trying to remind myself that I do not have to earn a peaceful tomorrow by exhausting myself tonight. The house does not have to be perfect, I do not have to be perfect, and tomorrow does not have to be perfect either. God is already there, and the same God who has carried me through every season behind me will meet me in this one too.
Maybe growth doesn’t always look like finally having everything together. Sometimes growth looks like walking into the next thing with a little laundry left to fold, butterflies in your stomach, prayers under your breath, and enough faith to say: “Okay God… I’m going anyway.”
Maybe that’s what it means to be ready. Not having everything figured out, just knowing Who is going with you.