When Burdens Turn Into Blessings

God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:5b-6

I once overheard a conversation that has stuck with me for close to thirty years. Two women were talking about God, and one of them said: I don’t like God. He plays favorites.

Now, in the context of the conversation, she was implying that she was definitely not one of those favorites, and that she had deduced this based on the fact that she was a hard-working woman who was never able to get ahead financially.

I’ve always felt this was a classic case of ingratitude, of focusing on what you don’t have rather than on what you do have. There are financially stable people out there who would trade it all for just one healthy child. God had blessed this young woman with three.

But it’s not always easy to see the blessing connected to a burden. Sometimes the blessing is still down the road.

When our first daughter was two years old, we moved from my home state of Missouri to my husband’s home state of Tennessee. That was my husband’s decision entirely. I wanted to stay near family and continue to be part of the church that had been our spiritual family during the ten years we had been there.

So I also wanted to say that my husband was being selfish. I didn’t want to acknowledge his reasons for the move. I didn’t care that he was trying to lead his family to a slower-paced life, to connect his children to their roots, and to get himself some distance from the rat race and the temptations of city life. I just knew that he was wrong.

Fast forward twenty-three years and there it is— boom—the benefit of hindsight. Not everything about our move worked out quite as my husband envisioned, and honestly, if you asked him whether he would do things the same way if he could go back, I imagine he would say no. But if I could go back, I would try to be more humble and more prayerful. I definitely remember fighting with my husband over this issue. I don’t remember whether I took it up very much with the Lord. I was focused on what I was losing with no idea of what I had to gain.

And there’s no way I could have known, but isn’t that the point of faith? This was the path God was leading me down, and I kept trying to snatch my hand out of His. When I look back and think of the blessings I would have missed, like ten years of singing with the David Johnson Chorus, I’m just so thankful that God is in control and I’m not.

Giving God the control can look different depending on the circumstance. The young woman who complained about her financial situation as God playing favorites was a single mom by choice. She had rejected God’s blueprint for family life and then resented Him when her alternate plan didn’t work out so well. Was I better than her because I aimed my resentment at my husband instead of at God? Because I submitted to my husband’s decision in the end, even though I went complaining and criticizing the whole way?

That church that we left when we moved? God used that wonderful group to teach me and mold me, to water the seeds of faith that my parents and hometown church had planted. But they didn’t need us. In Tennessee we became part of some churches that did need us. God doesn’t always put us where we want to be. He puts us where we need to be, like a coach putting in the right player for the right job, or sometimes the player that needs to practice a particular skill. God is constantly working on us and through us, sometimes even when we don’t cooperate. We should be grateful for those opportunities, even when they don’t look like blessings at first glance.

“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (I Peter 5:5b-6).

Dear God, help me to be Christ-like when I’m tempted to complain. Help me, through the eye of faith, to see the blessings that You will provide “in due time.” I trust in Your wisdom and Your goodness and I thank you. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

by Christie Cole Atkins