When We Get Into A Pickle

Long story short… I was in a pickle. Backed into a corner of bad option number one or bad option number two. And when it came down to it, the woman in authority told me something that keeps ringing in my ears. She repeated the sentence three times. I could tell she even wondered why she was saying this on repeat. She said:

“It’ll take 3-5 days, depending on the Lord.”

“It’ll take 3-5 days, depending on the Lord.”

“It’ll take 3-5 days, depending on the Lord.”

As she said this three times, I looked at her like she was a burning bush in the desert.

By the tone of our first few minutes meeting each other in this conversation, that didn’t seem like something she would normally say in a situation like this. And then I realized, that since southern accent’s are new to me again, she was saying “depends on the lawyer.” They say that word with a totally different inflection in North Carolina than they do in Colorado. Ha!

And yet, what I heard and what is true and what I needed to know is this:

“It depends on the Lord.”

I depend on the Lord. This situation depends on the Lord. My welfare and healthcare and stability and security… my children, our future, the plans He has for us… they all depend on the Lord!

And that was such a relief to me to hear. And I needed to hear it three times!

A verse my little one has taught me this summer is, “The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.”

Does a horse’s training and breaking and learned ability to follow the nudges and lead and command of the master matter? Yes! You cannot take an unbroke horse onto a battle field or everyone will just get hurt. But that horse is trained to trust the lead of the master over his first instincts. And that’s what this whole summer has trained us for. That’s what the last few decades of my life have trained me for. To follow the lead of the Lord over what people may think about me. I’ve been in training to follow the lead of the Lord over what my emotions about the situation are. To follow the lead of the Lord no matter how much I don’t want to go that direction or do that thing.

And while all that training matters deeply, the bottom line is that it’s all depending on the Lord. Whatever you are facing today, whatever decisions you have to make, your job is to do your best to follow His lead. And everything else depends on the Lord. Your courage to face the situation, your strength to endure the hard thing, your resilience to keep going when it’s already being going for years… it all depends on the Lord. And in this, we can take relief. The battle belongs to Him. The victory is His.