Our daughter, Bekah, was born on a clear November evening. As we celebrate her birthday this month, I reflect on her life. I also remember the long months leading up to her birth, months that taught me what it means to navigate detours in life.
Throughout those months, I planned to continue teaching high school students in my Life Skills classroom right up to my due date.
My husband and I planned to vacation in the summer.
I imagined that I would continue mentoring teens throughout the pregnancy. I was sure I’d be able to keep running five miles a day until at least the seven-month mark.
None of that happened.
Navigating Detours in Life
Much to my surprise, shortly after we discovered that we were expecting, I was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum (HG). HG is a severe pregnancy sickness that mirrors the worst case of the flu.
I often spent entire nights hunched over the toilet. My body felt as if it had been poisoned. For days, I was housebound and too ill to cook or even read. My head spun and ached. I often prayed for God to call me home to heaven.
Amid the illness, my life came to a halt. So much for running, mentoring, and teaching. It all had to stop.
It was a crushing detour.
What do we do when life takes an alternate route?
What happens when all of our best-made plans are suddenly stripped away?
Looking back, I’ve realized that often, what I thought was a detour was actually the destination God had ordained for my good. He used the illness in many ways (read more here). I also learned a few insights about detours in life.
If you’re facing a detour, here are a few encouraging words for you as well:
Detours in life offer lessons we cannot learn elsewhere.
For me, the months of hyperemesis were a powerful tool that taught me countless lessons.
Throughout those months, I learned that my worth is not at all related to what I can produce or whose life I can make an impact upon.
I learned that God loves me relentlessly even when I’m too sick to engage in any sort of spiritual discipline.
The sickness taught me that it’s okay to need other people. I learned that if all I had left in this life were Jesus, he would be enough. It wouldn’t be easy. But I’d make it.
Detours in life remind us of God’s goodness.
Toward the end of the pregnancy, I made a list of 102 things I learned through the sickness.
One of the greatest lessons was that God is always good. He used the sickness to draw me deeper into his love and tend to my heart. He revealed his care and character to me.
In his goodness, God used the difficult time to show me that as much as I crave control in my life, he is truly in control. Furthermore, I can trust him.
The experience reminds me that life often seems to move in the opposite direction of what I had planned or hoped. Sickness comes, sickness more serious than hyperemesis.
Dreams are crushed.
Plans are shattered.
But God is still good. We only learn this lesson through situations in which we find ourselves questioning his goodness. When we can make it to the other side of life’s valleys and attest that God is good, we have grown in spiritual maturity. This is part of the blessing of life’s detours.
Detours in life often turn out to be God’s destinations.
Sometimes, I fully believe God has called me to climb to the top of a certain mountain in pursuit of a goal or dream. I do everything I can to reach the summit.
When an unforeseen valley springs up, I begin to wonder where God went. Maybe I heard him wrong?
God has taught me that when this happens, the issue is rarely an issue of mistaking his voice. Instead, he often shows me a mountain to nudge me to move in a certain direction.
The valley is not a surprise to him. Instead, it is a necessary part of the journey, a part of the journey he ordained for me because he wanted to teach me something in the valley.
I thought the valley was a detour. God knew the valley was actually my destination.
If you are facing what feels like a detour in your life, pause to acknowledge the God who carves out the paths before you. Ask him to reveal what he wants you to know amidst this detour.
Thank Him for closing off the wrong paths, and thank him that this detour might actually be the destination he has in mind to shape you to his image and usher you into the abundant life you crave.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Stacey Pardoe
Featured Image by Alexey Taktarov on Unsplash
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