Seeing God When the Windshield is Dirty

Lucy Thompson here.

Life has been tough lately. Tough enough to need an extra pair of these:

Pic credit.

Seems like my (mostly) smooth driving through life has been hit by a series of boggy stretches of road and churned up byways that have left my windshield mud splattered and rearview mirrors smudged.

Times like this, sometimes God can be hard to see, if I'm being very honest. 

© Mg3141592 | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

And I don't know about you, but sometimes I don't loosen my white-knuckled grip of the steering wheel as early as I should. Cos, you know...pride. Thinking I can do this all by myself... More pride... Shame. Being overwhelmed.

Sometimes there are no answers. But there is God. Surprisingly, he is enough.

There's that saying  "Sometimes God calms the storm, sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child." (Source unknown). 

In those moments when the wheels are churning, demands are unmet, and the view through the windshield is blurred with gobs of mud (stuff life throws at us) I sense God nudging me. Saying "hey... Be still. Sit with me for a spell. Wait."

Wait.  

I don't do waiting very well. Anyone?? Even when trying to sleep I'm more like this:

Credit: Facebook :P

But God.

 He doesn't leave us in our mess. He doesn't leave us alone. He doesn't leave us. He will never leave me. Or you.

Want to know why? 

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. John 3:16-18The Message (MSG)

 Because he loved. Because he gave. In spite of our messes and mishaps. In spite of our distraction by shiny things and squeaky toys. 

God loves you.
Know that.
Trust that. 

Take your gaze off the dirty windshield and look closer. Perhaps you'll see that God is sitting right next to you just waiting for your attention. :)

About Lucy:
Hi! My name is Lucy Thompson. I’m a stay-at-home mum to five precocious children and wife to the ultra-handy Dave by day and a snoop by night, stalking interesting characters through historical settings, and writing about their exploits. 

I enjoy meeting new people from all over the world and learning about the craft of writing. When I can be separated from my laptop, I’m a professional time-waster on Facebook (really!), a slave to the towering stack of books on my bedside table, or can be found hanging out with my five children. 

My home is in central Queensland, Australia where I do not ride a kangaroo to the shops, mainly because my children won’t fit

 Try my books: A Cowboy's Dare if you like full length historical romance. Or if time is shorter, Waltzing Matilda,  a novella in Barbour's Oct release.

Writing Through the Dark Times

It was the fall of 1994. My father had just been diagnosed with cancer. Apparently, the disease had been at work for a long time. At Thanksgiving, we traveled to my parents’ home in Alberta for a bittersweet weekend. 

Meanwhile, my mother-in-law, who had been feeling poorly for years, was told she had a brain tumor. Surgery would take place Thanksgiving Monday, so we rushed home from Alberta to see her before surgery.

We were in the midst of moving my in-laws to a retirement home in the city, and we were moving into their house. Through a number of renovations, moving households without the in-laws in attendance, visiting my dad and my husband’s mom—we carried on with force of will and prayer that sometimes seemed to bounce off the ceiling.

How did this affect my writing?

I obviously had long stretches of time where I couldn’t write, either because I was otherwise occupied, or because my mind was in neutral. But I did learn a number of things about life, about my level of endurance, about responses to trials.

What did I do with what I learned?

Over the years, I’ve transferred some of these experiences into the lives of my characters. This is not a manipulative move, but a logical use of suffering. Why waste it? We want our characters to be realistic, so we allow them to make convincing responses. We provide them with true-to-life challenges to deal with in our stories. We keep throwing difficulties their way, and look for their reactions.

As writers, we are always opening up our lives to public scrutiny by sharing our deep thoughts, our struggles, our victories and defeats…through our characters. We become vulnerable to our readers. That’s the name of the game. We are writing about life.

What else did I learn from the dark times?

That God is faithful all the time, even when we don’t realize it. That He is always seeking us out, offering comfort and healing. And that’s why I weave a thread of faith and hope into every one of my novels. I don’t want to force it; I want it to be organic to the story, but hope is something God has given me, and I need to share it with my readers.

For those interested in how my personal plot turned out: my dear dad passed away ten weeks after diagnosis, shortly before Christmas 1994. We miss him deeply, but he has gone ahead of us into glory. My mother-in-law’s surgery went well, only to be followed by a disabling stroke. She struggled for ten years before she passed on to her heavenly reward. We endured and healed, and are enjoying the lovely home we’ve now lived in for twenty-two years.

Life is not easy. Sometimes it’s very dark. But in Christ, we have hope in all things. That’s something I want to share.