When the detour becomes the new path
And the only way out is through
We’d only been settled into our new home for a few months when the usual route I drove to take the boys to and from school closed. Repairs were being done to the railroad tracks we crossed five days a week, two times a day. The first day it happened, I uneasily followed the bright orange detour signs. I’d been burned by detours before when they didn’t lead me 100% to my destination and my own knowledge of the roads was needed to navigate part of the drive. In a new town, that knowledge doesn’t exist. That’s when I wonder how we ever survived without GPS. This time, however, those bright orange signs guided me all the way to their school and this became our new route for several months.
After I became acquainted with the once unfamiliar route, making turns without relying on GPS and orange detour signs, I noticed how beautiful this route was. It took me down a magnolia-tree lined street, which was part of a historic district in our new town, with large Victorian homes that had English gardens in the front yards. Each drive, the beauty along this drive beckoned me to keep searching for more of it, like the house with voluminous lavender bushes lining their entire sidewalk on the road and leading up to the front porch; people walking their dogs, waving to each other as they would pass; lamps on the tables by the cushioned furniture on the front porches, what a fine place to sit and have a chat with a neighbor over coffee, I’d think to myself. This new route was good. It was better than the old one.
Then, one day, the railroad tracks became repaired. And to this day, I haven’t taken that original route.
For many years, I thought our family was on some sort of detour as we navigated unchartered and treacherous waters with our children’s sudden onset neuropsychiatric behaviors; behaviors that led to ER visits and psychiatric facility stays, 911 calls, and appointments with all the doctors we thought could help diagnose these mysteries and help us get our children back. My husband and I would pray earnestly for it to end and to be delivered from the pain our entire family was experiencing. There were times when we thought we had been delivered, where a small reprieve would break through, but then the behaviors and suffering would always come back. And they still haven’t gone away fully. Some things have gotten better; one child is mostly healed, but others are worse than ever. We are still on the same path we began 6 years ago, this path we’d thought would be temporary. And there is no end to it in sight.
One day, words were whispered into our hearts over yet another prayer we lifted for deliverance from this. We heard that the detour we were trying to pray away was our new path, and the only way out was through.
Detours are inconvenient. They’re unknown and that uncertainty causes anxiety, even fear. And they’re supposed to be temporary; but what if they aren’t?
There are no promises that our detours will ever lead us back on the old (familiar) path. But we are promised that on new paths that are provided, we won’t be alone. Isaiah 42:16 states,
“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.”
Furthermore, our final destination may be the same, but our ideas of how we’ll get there may differ greatly from God’s. I’m sure we can all agree that the way of the world is to choose the path of least resistance; a comfortable, familiar, easy, and quick route is preferred any day over uncomfortable, inconvenient, risky, long and scary. I’m a Christ-follower and there are many days, when I’m throwing myself a pity party, I want that for myself and my family. However, when it comes to detours, a kingdom perspective is always the best perspective. As intelligent and logical as we may be, we can never understand God’s ways with our finite understanding.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9
And when we are able to surrender to God’s way, although it may be disguised, often it is (again, our ideas differ from his) there is always beauty to be found along the way because he is a Good Father who cares for us. Good fathers scope out the lay of the land before sending their child into unchartered territory. God always goes before us. Good fathers hold our hands through the hard things. God always goes beside us. And good fathers know that the hard paths we must take are not punishment, they are growing us. I love the quote by Dr. Tony Evans, ‘God is more interested in your development than your arrival. He cares more for your character than your comfort…”.
It’s not about the destination at all. It’s ALL ABOUT who we are becoming in the journey. Detours are a necessary part of our becoming.
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” – Romans 5:3-5
These promises, that suffering grows our character, help to make our detours a little easier. Don’t get me wrong, there were seasons in our long-suffering that nothing felt easy and all we could do was rely on His promises to keep our heads above those treacherous waters. Even opening my Bible felt impossible and my prayers were literal groans because that’s all I could manage to squeeze out. But He promises to always be with us and because our suffering gave me a lot of practice needing to believe that, I became satisfied with knowing that alone is good. My hardest hard can’t be that bad if Christ is with me on this scary new path; his grace can be sufficient. On this detour turned new path, it helped to keep telling myself, He’s at work in me here and I could then understand James’s instruction to ‘consider it all joy’1.
As Christ-followers, we want to become more like him and to do that, we must pass through the refiner’s fire, grow in our character and grow in our hope. We grieve, but not like those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
Emily Dickinson does a great job describing the hope that I’m familiar with; the one that ‘perches in the soul’ (an expectant hope, as all believers should have as we anticipate what God will do) and “sings the tune without the words” (having a confidence while we wait) and “never stops at all” (“as we hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful…” Hebrews 10:23).
God also uses detours to grow our intimacy with him.
Our small group recently read Vaneetha Rendall Risner’s book, The Scars that have Shaped Me, and my husband and I were responsible for leading group on those nights. In the book, Vaneetha has a chapter on this exact topic – the detour becomes the new road. I appreciate her vulnerability throughout the entire book but in this chapter, she emphasizes this tension that exists in suffering Christians which begs us to ask the questions: do we pray for healing and expect God to answer, to change our circumstances? Or do we come to terms with our suffering? Her response, illuminated in bright, neon yellow in my copy of the book, is practical and helpful. She says, “God invites me to ask him to change the things that I long to be different. He invites me to persevere. To trust that my prayers make a difference. But at the same time, God bids me to accept where I am. To let him meet me in the darkness. To find comfort in his presence. To see him as more important than any change in my circumstances. God calls me to do both. Every day. On every road.”
To see him as more important than any change in my circumstance. Wow. That’s good. And convicting.
So, I ask myself, what if we hadn’t experienced the detour? What if God had answered our prayers and delivered us in the early days of our suffering?
Here is where the beauty in detours comes into play, because without them we would have missed out on so many Kingdom-character building opportunities, such as: joining in Jesus’s suffering2; growing in intimacy in my relationship with Jesus; learning to lean into Him instead of my own understanding; learning to surrender so very many things we have had to over these six years, including losing all of our belongings3 and jobs and having nothing BUT GOD thus, learning to be content ‘in all things’4; learning to minister well to others in their seasons of suffering; sharing our testimonies of faith through the suffering which has inspired the faith of others, particularly others who are also struggling in a season of suffering (I have more to say on this later because I know many people don’t feel comfortable sharing their suffering experiences); even bringing others to Jesus because of our suffering. We’ve grown stronger in our marriage; we’ve had our eyes opened to new experiences through therapy and our healing journeys; we’ve learned to appreciate beauty and the act of wonder in fresh, new ways because I’ve learned that you can’t truly appreciate beauty for all its worth until you’ve lived through dark, deep valleys of pain (more on that topic later, too).
There is so much purpose in our pain. And we would have missed it all if we hadn’t been lovingly taken on that detour, the one that became our new path.
Now that we are six years in this season of suffering, and I can see how God has worked so many things for our good5 (just growing in intimacy with Him is enough, but look at all the things that were added bonuses!), I wouldn’t want that deliverance we so desperately prayed for all those years ago.
This is my personal experience. My three children, the ones who also became sick and lost so much, have their own long-suffering experience from this season, each with unique nuances. I pray that one day they will be able to use all of it for His glory. God doesn’t waste anything - not our suffering, not our pain, our grief…none of it. I don’t want to waste any of it, and I don’t want them to, either. I wrote before about how personal ministry is often born out of pain and suffering, and I assure them that because God put them through this, or allowed them to go through this, He WILL use it for their good; now it’s up to them to be obedient with it.
So for all of us in our family, had God delivered us from the pain and suffering in the beginning, there wouldn’t be a story here. And we wouldn’t be equipped to use it to help others. Our detour-turned-new-path and the suffering along the way is all a part of something so much bigger.
Our pastor had a great quote this past Sunday that I have enjoyed sharing with my kids. He said, “Part of becoming a Christian means resigning your role as the main character in a movie about you and taking up a supporting role in a movie about Jesus…”6 Amen!
And all of this reminds me of the scene that went viral from ‘The Chosen in season three where little James and Jesus are talking about James’s physical deformity. He asks Jesus how he’s supposed to go out into the world and perform miracles when he has this limp. He asks why hasn’t he yet been healed. The emotional instrumental music begins, I feel the tears start welling up, and Jesus tenderly approaches little James and puts his hands on him. He tells him, “When you do great things in my name in spite of this (his limp/deformity), the impact will last for generations…A man like you, healing others…oh, what a sight…” The implication that as we show our faith to others, in spite of our detours, suffering, grief, pain, loss…we are sending a bigger message than if He were to merely take it away: that we can praise and worship Jesus even if he doesn’t take away our pain/the detour never returns back to the old route, and so can you.
The magnolia trees are in bloom right now in North Carolina. The giant white blossoms stand out among these impressive trees with their dark, waxy leaves. Lining the sidewalks, late spring/early summer blooming flowers call out an invitation for the eye’s delight. There is so much beauty here. It’s funny to think it was here all along and I missed it because I took the route GPS recommended as the quickest route instead. This new path now serves as a lovely visual reminder of God’s goodness through the detours turned new paths. And, when the only way out is through, let us try looking for the beauty there - I promise it is abundant - because God is there, too.
Journal Prompt/Question for Reflection:
Think about a time when God put you on a detour that became your new path. You may also be on one now. Ask God to reveal to you what Kingdom-character building took/is taking place as a result of the new path. Jot that down in your journal. In addition to the beauty of this character-building growth, what other beauty did He put in your path along the way? Now, thank Him for all of His goodness and grace. This journal entry might one day serve as an Ebenezer when you walk through dark valleys again.
Final Thought:
I love this quote by Adrian Rogers:
“God loves us just the way we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way.”
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4 NIV)
I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it. (Philippians 3:10-11 The Message)
I have briefly mentioned ‘our story’ in notes. When all of our family members became sick, someone suggested we get our home tested for toxic mold. After a few failed attempts to find it, because it was hidden, God revealed it to us (seriously, it’s a spine-tingling story) and we escaped our family dream home, throwing all of our belongings away and moving into a hotel with absolutely nothing. Plus, we were all sick and my husband lost his job because the behaviors we were managing with the kids (severe rage, homicidal and suicidal ideations) required all hands on deck and he was in sales so his boss fired him. We literally lost everything BUT GOD.
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:11-13 NIV)
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28 NIV)