My anxiety surfaced during a family council meeting a few days before we boarded a 17-hour train for our move across China. I then faced my 15-year-old's rebuke: “But, Mom, didn’t you say that you were willing to leave without knowing where we were going to live?”
I replied, “You’re right, I did say that. But I didn’t think it was actually going to happen!”
It did.
Our 12-year accumulation of belongings had been sent to a temporary storage location by a moving company, and we carried in suitcases what we would need until those boxes arrived. My husband sent texts back and forth with his PhD advisor on the train about housing possibilities, while we ate ramen noodles and I tried not to think about the fact that we were homeless.
We went straight from the train station to a real estate office, where we discovered that the two apartments we had planned to see were already taken. They took us to see two other possibilities, but one was a mistake and the other was too small. Our last resort was to look at an apartment on the 9th floor with no elevator.
As the sun was going down, we checked it out, negotiated the rent, got the keys, and moved in.
Looking back on all our transitions over the years, that day remains one of my greatest visuals about trusting Him in the dark.
Just before our move, a friend had sent me this quote from Minnie Haskins: “I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.’”
“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” Isaiah 42:16
What helps you to trust God in the dark?
I really like what Brennan Manning says in his book Ruthless Trust: “Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.” Identifying when I am craving clarity and trying to eliminate the risk involved in trusting God has helped me to consciously choose a more childlike trust instead.