That’s what I had, and it was all I’d ever wanted. Well, except coach was only an assistant, and he wanted to be the head guy.
Don’t get me wrong; I tried to convince coach to wait it out. “Let’s just wait and see if the current head coach leaves and the school promotes you.” But the opportunity for the head coach to take a “better job” and leave it to the AD to promote my coach happened enough times for us both to know it wasn’t going to ever truly be an option.
A few years ago, while reflecting on a difficult point early in our coaching journey, I wrote about trusting in God’s plan and surrendering to His will. Even when you don’t want to, even when it doesn’t make sense, I swore that if you just do what God calls you to, it would be much better than you could even imagine. (I should probably mention that the difficulties ended in that picture-perfect setup, so it was easy to preach it from where I was sitting at that point.)
If I’m being honest, I only said that to make myself believe it. I wasn’t actually all in with my heart and definitely not with my head. Deep down, I worried about when God would call me out and force me to put my words into action again.
When He finally did, I was faced with a choice between leaving this life and community I loved for one I always said I’d never move to OR staying and ignoring God’s guidance.
After too many times of watching God come through with much better results when I did it His way, I knew there really wasn’t a choice at all. So, we decided to follow God’s path.
God’s will be done. I repeated over and over to myself while going through the all-too-familiar checklist of moving. I wish I were exaggerating when I said my body was in our new town, but my heart and thoughts were in our old one. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was decide to leave all that perfectness behind for the unknown.
The thing that kept me going, helping me to put one foot in front of the other when all I wanted to do was turn and run back to where we’d left, was knowing that, eventually, I would see the fruit of my obedience.
The only thing that makes this crazy lifestyle even more exhausting and even more difficult is trying to open doors that aren’t yours. It wasn’t until I found faith that this life became manageable. All the experiences in the world could never overcome a lack of faith.
But, once faith became my foundation, I could stop trying to claw open doors that were divinely locked. And I could trust that the divinely opened doors led to a much greater road than I could ever imagine.
It didn’t take long for me to see why it was best for us to leave. But it did take my heart longer to catch up to my head. And that’s okay. God isn’t surprised by our plans. He’s not phased when we think we know what’s best. Even Jesus asked if there was another way to do things.
God wants you to trust Him and take it one step at a time in obedience. Following through with the response of trusting “God’s will be done” is the hardest approach to take but ultimately leads to the best possible results this side of Heaven.
*originally posted on Lessons From The Sidelines*