Did you say no or say yes?

Reflections on questions that don’t have simple answers

Do you have any part of you that wonders if God says no or says yes to things when they do or don’t happen? Now, let me be clear: I’m not asking what the correct Sunday school answer is or what you think is most theologically sound. Instead, I’m asking for the most honest and real answer.

When you’re looking ahead at a big life transition or something you’re really excited for, is there any part of you that wonders, What if God says no, and it doesn’t happen? Or, I hope that God says yes and it really happens!

Now, other parts of us might want to jump to intellectualize or spiritualize our thinking with these kinds of stirrings within. Before that happens, I’d love to spend a few minutes with these tender worries, sharing a bit of what they’ve looked like for me this past year. I’m curious if any of this might resonate with you…

A few weeks ago, I sat down at the piano to play a song I wrote months ago—a song that was written when I sat down at my piano in Tennessee, knowing that I was supposed to move to Scotland, wondering, Is this actually going to happen?

You see, I’ve had significant life plans come crashing down before—more than once—even right in the thick of a transition. Meaning, I know that everything seeming to come together for a plan on the horizon does not mean it will actually happen. And more than the grief of lost dreams and futures that had started to be built, the jarring disruptions I never expected also came with a fair share of additional trauma.

And so, I sat at my piano in Tennessee, trying to figure out a way to give voice to the parts of me that didn’t know how to talk about what I was feeling inside and didn’t know how to pray about what was ahead, and this is what came out:

When I look up, what’s gonna be next?

Will you say no or say yes? …

And how long is that road gonna be?

And will you be with me? …

What if it all falls apart?

And I don’t get to see it start? …

I sang these words for weeks, genuinely not knowing if we would make it Scottish soil. It was just too big of a risk for certain parts of me to dare to assume I knew what was going to happen next. I had looked up only to be brutally blindsided too many times before.

And then, I did make it Scotland. I moved into a beautiful rental with my sweet husband who has linked arms with me in this crazy adventure. I walked into the North Sea. I watched the sun set across green pastures as fiercely gentle wind engulfed me. I hiked around a glowing rainbow in the Highlands with mountain goats grazing in the distance.

And still, a part of me kept singing this song.

And then a few weeks ago, at the end, this came out:

When I look up, what’s gonna be next?

Did you say no or say yes?

After those words joined with the refrain I had already been singing for months, I realized that the reason parts of me were still singing this song was because moving to Scotland didn’t answer the deepest questions I was asking—questions that don’t have simple answers, even if I did make it across the pond to ground my feet in the North Sea.

And that’s hard for the parts of me that want life to be as simple as God clearly saying yes or no. The depths of my being that so wish that God’s goodness and engagement with us didn’t feel so messy and complex for so much of life. The weighty corners of my soul that have seen just too much pain as a trauma therapist. The core of my gut that has been sucker punched one too many times in ways that I just can’t make sense of.

And just as I didn’t ask you for the right Sunday school answer, I know that trying to demand that of myself isn’t going to be helpful to any facet of me.

So, where do I go next? While I don’t have shiny spiritual answers or platitudes, I do have this: A curiosity about what it would be like to invite all of me to really anchor in where I am—to see that the move indeed did happen, and hold this in tension with life not being as simple as I wish it might be, that I don’t have answers the questions that still stir in my soul.

As I let my toes and my heart sink deeper into this place, I wonder what it might be like to hold the parts of me that were so scared to really hope for this dream to come true, starting to savor the reality that I am indeed here—and—get more comfortable with the reality that there are no simple answers to why this plan came to fruition while others did not, to why I wasn’t blinded with trauma again, to why this move or any one answer to a prayer doesn’t give us answers to the bigger questions that my pain craves to make sense of.

What might it be like to let the fear of the previous season(s!) fade away as I slowly melt into this place more and more each day?

And this curiosity has come at a sweet time with the shorter days on the cusp of being stretched with more light. In a place where the sun is setting at 3:30pm, the hope of even one more minute of light each day is holding new meanings for me, and I wonder, what might it be like to move with the rhythm of the days ahead, gently letting the darkness of this past season slowly sink away, and noticing the dawning strands of light that steadily enter in each new day.

More on that later this week…

If you’d like to enjoy the melody that goes with the words I shared above, feel free to enjoy the video attached—just know, I am not trained a singer and simply write music as a therapeutic practice, and when I cry, the singing gets worse ;)