Always Emily

After elementary school, I always did my homework at the kitchen table.

One day, after settling at my usual seat and opening my pink L.L. Bean backpack with a big blue butterfly on the front, my parents suggested that I do my homework in my room.

I looked up at them, confused. All that was in my room was a kids play table with plastic chairs. It wasn’t comfortable and I never did my homework there.

I told them I didn’t want to. They kept insisting. I dissolved into tears. It felt like a punishment and they wouldn’t tell me why they wanted me to go to my room so badly. I felt like I was getting banished.

I remember my dad, leaning over the table, his voice soft, “Are you sure you don’t want to?”

“Forget it, John,” my mom said over her shoulder as she walked away, knowing my attitude had shifted beyond reach in that moment. “It’s not going to happen.”

He retreated and I was left to do my homework in peace, sniffling and wiping my eyes.

When I was finished, I put all of my work back into my backpack and headed upstairs to put it away in my room.

I opened the door and my jaw fell to the floor. Inside was a brand new white furniture set. A dresser, a nightstand, and, you guessed it, a new ‘big girl’ desk.

At the same moment excitement coursed through me, my stomach dropped. My parents’ coaxing and insistence made sense now. They knew something better was waiting for me.

That’s what it can feel like with God. He asks us to do something—calls us into a new season—and we don’t understand.

We fight and grieve what He is taking us away from without realizing He is bringing us into something better. Only for us to realize, later, that all our worrying and fighting was so unnecessary.

Almost two decades later, and I still have that white desk. It sits in a different bedroom in a new city, and every day I get up and spend my mornings writing at it.

My parents’ gift—despite my initial resistance—has lasted the test of time.

What would it look like for you to trust God? To say to Him, “I don’t understand why you’re asking me to do this, but I trust that it is for my good. That I have no need to worry or fear, and Your plan will exceed my expectations.”

Try it out and see how God moves.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

Always,

Emily