And, It Came to Pass…

Every once in a while, I find myself thinking about the woman I was this time last year, and I wish I could sit beside her for a little while, take her trembling hands in mine, and tell her what I know now.

I wish I could tell her that I remember the things she was praying over, the conversations she could not stop replaying, the circumstances she could not seem to find her way through, and the fears she carried to bed each night because she had nowhere else to lay them down.

I remember how heavy everything felt, how certain worries seemed to follow her into every quiet moment, and how easily she could convince herself that life would always feel the way it did right then.

When you are standing in the middle of something painful, it is difficult to imagine a life in which it no longer occupies so much of your heart, and even harder to believe that the things keeping you awake tonight might one day become memories you revisit from a place of peace.

And yet, here I am.

The woman who once prayed through those uncertain days has become the woman who can look back on them, not because she knew how the story would unfold, but because the Lord carried her through pages she could not yet read.

Some of those prayers were answered in ways she never would have thought to ask for, some of the circumstances that once seemed impossible gradually lost their hold on her heart, and a few things never resolved as neatly as she had hoped; yet even in the unanswered places, God gave her enough grace to keep living, enough strength to keep trusting, and enough time to discover that she could survive without having every question settled.

I have been thinking about that lately, particularly when I consider one of the simplest, most easily overlooked phrases in all of Scripture:

“It came to pass.”

We read those words so often that we scarcely notice them anymore, moving quickly through the passages in which they appear because we are eager to discover what happened next, but lately I have found myself lingering over them as though they were a quiet assurance from the Lord Himself, gently reminding me that whatever has come into my life, however unexpected or unwelcome, does not have to remain the defining reality of it forever.

It came, and then, by His mercy, it passed.

Not necessarily without leaving a mark, and certainly not always in the way I would have chosen, but time moved forward, the days continued to unfold, and the Lord remained faithful through every part of the story I could not yet understand.

I do not mean that every hardship eventually disappears or that enough time can make every sorrow painless, because there are losses that change us permanently, people whose absence we will feel for the rest of our lives, and consequences that remain long after repentance, forgiveness, and healing have begun their quiet work.

Some wounds become part of our history in ways we never would have chosen, and some prayers are answered not by removing the burden we have begged God to lift, but by teaching us how to carry it with a heart that has learned to lean more fully upon Him.

Even then, something changes.

Grief moves through seasons of its own, and the weight that once consumed every waking thought can become a burden we carry differently; the heart that once struggled to make it through a single day gradually learns to breathe again, and sometimes we do not even recognize that healing has begun until we look backward and realize that we are standing somewhere we once begged God to help us reach.

That is what I hear now when I read those four little words, “It came to pass.” I hear the quiet reminder that the moment I am living in, however enormous it feels from the inside, is still only one moment in a life that God is continuing to write, and that the chapter causing me so much anguish today may eventually become a chapter I remember for reasons I cannot yet see.

I know what it is to live through a season in which a single concern seems to attach itself to everything, following me into ordinary conversations, stealing the sweetness from otherwise pleasant days, and settling into the quiet hours when there is nothing left to distract me from my own thoughts.

I know how exhausting it can be to keep turning a problem over in my mind, hoping that one more conversation with myself, one more attempt to understand, or one more hour spent searching for a solution will finally give me the peace I have been looking for.

And then, without any great announcement, a day comes when I realize I have gone several hours without thinking about it.

Some time later, I notice that an entire afternoon has passed without the familiar heaviness settling over me, and eventually I look back and understand that the thing I once feared would define the rest of my life has become only one small part of a much larger story, one that contains laughter and ordinary joys and answered prayers and moments of goodness I might have missed had I continued believing that my pain was the only thing left to see.

Perhaps this is one reason looking backward is such an important part of our walk with God, because we are so easily consumed by what is in front of us that we forget to remember what He has already brought us through.

We remember the fear while we are living inside it, but once the Lord carries us to the other side, we are often so occupied with the next concern that we scarcely stop to thank Him for the last one.

The prayer that once came through tears becomes yesterday's answered prayer, and the situation we once thought would break us becomes part of our testimony, until even that testimony grows familiar enough that we forget how impossible the circumstances once seemed.

Sometimes we need to remember the woman we were before we knew how the story would turn out, because she was trusting God without the benefit of the perspective we have now, praying through uncertainties we have since learned to live beyond, and clinging to promises she could believe in but could not yet see fulfilled.

She had no idea you would be sitting here today.

She did not know which prayer would be answered first, whether the relationship would survive, how the finances would work out, whether the child would be okay, whether her heart would ever feel settled again, or what life would look like after the changes she dreaded had finally come.

All she knew was that she needed Him for that day, and He was faithful to meet her there.

I think about that woman when I consider the one I will be this time next year, because she is already living a part of the story that remains hidden from me, having walked through days that have not yet arrived and discovered answers to prayers I am still bringing before the Lord.

She may understand some of my present circumstances in ways I cannot, and I suspect there are things that feel terribly important to me today that she will barely remember, not because they were insignificant at the time, but because life has a way of revealing that what feels all-consuming in one season does not always remain so in the next.

There may also be hardships ahead that I would rather not know about yet, and perhaps that is a mercy in itself, because God has never asked me to live tomorrow's trials with today's strength or to spend the grace of a future day before I have even arrived there.

How many times have I exhausted myself trying to anticipate every possible outcome, searching for certainty in circumstances that have not yet unfolded, as though worrying far enough in advance might somehow spare me from the pain of being human?

I have spent far too much time trying to live tomorrow before God has given it to me, and I imagine I am not the only one who has done so.

Yet, when I look back over the years, I can see how often He has met me in precisely that place, not by telling me everything that was coming, but by giving me what I needed when I needed it.

I did not know how I would make it through certain seasons, but eventually I found myself on the other side of them, carrying the evidence of His faithfulness in a heart that had been changed by the journey.

I did not know how I would manage certain losses or navigate certain changes, but when those days finally arrived, grace arrived with them, and the strength I had begged God for became sufficient for the very circumstances I had once feared I could never endure.

The strength rarely came as early as I wanted it to, because the Lord seemed far more interested in teaching me to depend upon Him than in allowing me to become so self-sufficient that I no longer felt my need for Him.

He gave me daily bread instead of a year's supply, grace for the trouble in front of me instead of a guarantee that I would never face trouble again, and the quiet assurance that I did not have to understand the entire journey in order to trust the One who was leading me through it.

And eventually, another chapter of my life earned those old, familiar words:

“It came to pass.”

Psalm 30:5 tells us that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,” and while some nights seem to stretch far longer than we ever imagined they would, while some mornings are awaited through entire seasons of weariness, Scripture never asks us to believe that sorrow has been given permanent ownership of our story.

We may not know when the morning will come, what it will look like, or whether the circumstances themselves will change as we hope, but we can trust that our present sorrow is not the full measure of God's work in us, nor is it the only thing our lives will ever contain.

Perhaps you are reading this from the middle of a season that has gone on long enough for you to struggle to remember what life felt like before it began, tired of bringing the same prayer before the Lord, weary of waiting for an answer, and caught somewhere between believing that He can change your circumstances and wondering whether you should stop expecting Him to.

I do not know what the answer will look like for you, and I would never want to minimize the weight of a genuine burden by promising that everything will soon unfold exactly as you hope, because faith does not require us to pretend that suffering is easy or that every earthly story resolves in the way we would choose.

But I do want to remind you that your present circumstances are not the first difficult pages you have lived through, and if you could sit for a moment with the woman you were before some of your previous hardships, you might be surprised by how much she would recognize in your present struggle and how much she would marvel at the life you have lived since then.

There were days when you did not know how you would make it through, when the future seemed impossibly uncertain and the weight of the present felt heavier than you could bear, yet here you are, carrying memories of things you once prayed about with a desperation that time has softened, even if it has not erased them entirely.

Perhaps your circumstances were different, but you know what it is to feel helpless, to wait for an answer, to keep putting one foot in front of the other because there was nothing else to do, and to discover afterward that God had been sustaining you through days you could not have navigated in your own strength.

The woman who prayed through those days would probably be amazed to see you now, and I wonder if she might gently remind you of the very thing you are in danger of forgetting:

The Lord carried us here.

That is worth remembering as we look toward the year ahead, because the woman we are today will eventually become another woman looking backward, remembering the prayers we are praying now, the uncertainties we are struggling to surrender, and the circumstances we are trying so desperately to understand.

Perhaps she will wish she could sit beside us for a little while, take our hands, and tell us how the Lord was working in places we could not see, how He sustained us when we thought we were running out of strength, and how some of the things that frightened us most eventually became part of a story in which His faithfulness was more evident than we could recognize at the time.

She cannot come back to tell us those things, of course, so for now we must learn to borrow courage from the evidence God has already given us, remembering that the same Lord who carried us through yesterday's uncertainties has not changed simply because today's circumstances are different.

His faithfulness has already accompanied us through every season we have lived, every prayer we thought might never be answered, every change we feared we could not bear, and every moment in which we had to trust Him without knowing what would happen next.

One day, I may look back at this October and remember what I was praying about, the uncertainty that kept me awake, the concern I could not resolve, or the burden I kept bringing before the Lord because I had finally exhausted my own efforts to make everything turn out the way I thought it should.

I may remember how desperately I wanted answers, how difficult it was to wait, and how little I understood of what God was doing beyond the narrow view I had from where I stood.

And perhaps, with the perspective that only time and the faithfulness of God can give, I will recognize once again what Scripture has been quietly teaching me all along: that the trouble came, but it did not have the final word; that grace met me in the very place I feared I could not endure; that time continued to move forward even when I felt stuck; and that the Lord remained faithful through every moment I could not yet see beyond.

It came to pass.

Not because every circumstance unfolded as I would have chosen, or because every prayer was answered in the way I expected, but because the days I once thought I could not survive eventually became the days I had survived, and the woman who once trembled beneath their weight became the woman who could look back and recognize the hand of God carrying her through them.

Because the God who carried me then is carrying me now, and the woman I will be a year from today will have her own story to tell of the things that came, the grace that met her there, and the faithfulness of the Lord who never once abandoned her along the way.

One day, I will look back and understand more than I understand now.

Until then, I will keep trusting Him with the page I am on, believing that even this season, with all its unanswered questions and unseen mercies, will one day find its place in the story He is writing.

And perhaps, when I read those four familiar words again, I will finally understand just how much hope they have been holding for me all along.

It came to pass.

Biblical Womanhood

Two additional studies that may help if you’re in a hard season:

1. The Bitter Root: How Bitterness Destroys the Heart and Home

Over seven days, we look honestly at bitterness through a biblical scope and walk through practical, scriptural ways to keep your own heart tender before the Lord so that what grows in your house is grace instead of an old family wound.

1. “When You Can’t Control It: A 6-Week Bible Study for Those Who Are Tired of Worrying, Overthinking, and Carrying Everything” for the friend whose mind has been working three shifts while the rest of the house sleeps.

   You love your people, take your duties seriously, and have slowly begun carrying outcomes, hearts, decisions, and futures that God never placed under your authority.

   This study is a fundraiser for this ministry.

   The base price is $5.25, but you can choose to give any amount.

   Giving over the baseline helps me put this in the hands of friends who cannot afford any amount.

   Some of you have already generously given, and I’ve been able to bless a handful of ladies with this study free of charge.

   If your circumstances don’t allow you to purchase this today, but you feel it would benefit you—please reach out privately and I will happily give this study to you as a free gift.