Sometimes I Just Don’t Know

It was almost two months ago that I had lunch with a couple of friends. We talked about the many different things going on in each of our lives, as friends often do. It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining and a cool, spring breeze was blowing. We sat outside soaking up the sunlight and each other’s company.

My husband and I had just (literally before lunch) signed the paperwork to adopt our children and now the waiting for a court date was in motion. Everything seemed to be coming together and I felt like I was on the verge of exhaling. Holding your breath for forever makes one weary.

But I was at war within myself. A struggle between feeling mediocre and adequate…neither made me feel good. So many uncertainties and so little answers.

As we all sat eating our lunch and listening to each other speak…that moment of silence fell on my ears and sent a message to my brain. You know, that moment when no one is talking because the current conversation just ended and now the table is open to start a new one. And before I could stop myself, I asked that universal, no-answer question. “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?”

Bad part about it was it wasn’t rhetorical; it was deeper than that superficial inquiry. I expressed my concerns regarding my middle child. She has struggles that I feel so ill-equipped to help her with as a mother. I felt like she and I were being squeezed to a point where I needed to do something. The point seemingly narrowed to a place that split; I had two options and neither seemed like a good idea.

I just didn’t know what to do! But I have good friends who listened to me pour my heart out with tears. They helped me talk through my options carefully, they asked questions and I answered, yet it all came out to them exactly as it did me. They didn’t know what to do either. And then that silence again…

But one spoke up after a few moments and said something that I honestly never heard said before, “Not knowing what to do is perfectly OK…as long as you do it together.”

Speechless. What is that supposed to mean?

But she continued. “Just because you have two options doesn’t mean you have to take them. Take a different path…the ‘I don’t know what to do path’ and walk it…together.”

Together.

She relayed to me how she felt during some of her childhood when there just wasn’t a good answer…times when no one knew what to do. But it would have been OK if someone would have just been there to go down the ‘I don’t know path’ and walk it with her. Instead, she felt abandoned. “Just being together when you don’t have the answers is the best thing you can do.”

One day at a time walking the ‘I don’t know what to do path’ together. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. This wasn’t one of those places where I didn’t want to make a decision and by not making one, I was actually making one. No…this isn’t the case at all. I’m making this decision on purpose because the other two options are not going to yield good results. And until something becomes clearly the right way, I’m going to keep walking here…going wherever it is God takes me.

It isn’t easy though. Everyday I have to make it work. I have to cut my way through the vines and branches so that she and I can walk together. We will walk together! God may not always make the path clean and clear, but He will make the impossible possible.

I had never really thought about it before now but there have been other times in my life when I really didn’t know what to do. Times when I didn’t have the answers no matter how much I searched for them. But during those times I was walking with Jesus…we were together.

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

– Proverbs 3:5-6 NLT

So, I’ve just learned to trust Him. He knows and just because He hasn’t revealed it to me yet doesn’t mean I give up. No! I keep going day by day and trusting that He’s taking us somewhere…we just don’t know ‘where’ is.

Abraham found himself in this place. It may seem like it’s completely out of context but it isn’t. I feel this verse resounding within me. I truly feel as if God has called me to this path of uncertainty.

“It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going.”

– Hebrews 11:8 NLT

He went.

I’m going.

And just like that I went from turmoil to complete peace. I listened to the advice of a friend and found it to be sent from above.

“For we walk by faith, not by sight:”

– 2 Corinthians 5:7 KJV

Sometimes I just don’t know what to do, and that’s OK. As long as I do it with those who need me the most and I’m following the One who knows right where we are and right where we’re going.

“Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you. Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you.”

– Psalm 143:8 NLT