Don’t Ignore What’s Right in Front of You

“Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is right at their heels.”

Bertolt Brecht

I think it’s really easy for us to simply miss the complete obvious. I know that I’ve done that before, and I’d consider myself a pretty observant person. I think that the easiest things for us to ignore, though, are the messages that we don’t want to hear.

Let me give you two examples, a funny one and a more serious one.

Say Gerald McHarold (not a real person obviously), the grossest guy at the office, has been giving you boxes of chocolate, saying hi whenever he saw you, and complimenting that ugly sweater you wear to please your grandmother. Well, you definitely don’t want to imagine yourself with Mr. McHarold here, so you pretend and even tell others that he has no interest in you. Yet clearly, as your best friend loves to point out, he clearly has been bitten by the love bug. But you might have tricked yourself so much into believing that he doesn’t like you that you stop noticing the evidence.

Or, you see a friend who you have always relied on suddenly changing. She is quiet, and distant, and she’s even stopped enjoying her favorite things. But you can’t stand the thought of her not being happy or not being there for you, so you ignore the signs that something is wrong. You might ask her if she’s okay, and she lies and says she is, but really, she isn’t. However, you don’t want to disturb this perfect image you have of her, that something could actually be going wrong, so you ignore the signs that you need to take uncomfortable action.

For me, neither of these particular instances prompted me to write this post. It was just a rather direct realization of mine that struck me hard, but has been sticking with me a lot lately.

What we have planned out in our heads may not be what ends up happening. And with a few particular things, God has been showing me that perhaps I have gotten as close as I can, and I will venture no further.

This reminds me of Moses, actually. He thought that he would go to the Promise Land. Come on, he KNEW it! He wouldn’t have traveled 40 years if he didn’t think he would reach there eventually. This could be like that dream job you were hoping for, that dream person you had your eye on, that dream connection with a family member or friend that you have been waiting for. We all have our “Promise Land”.

Yet he didn’t even reach the border.

And sometimes we don’t get what we deeply desire either. The job is given to someone else, our dream person doesn’t notice us, that connection never happens because the other person isn’t ready or can’t resolve their differences.

For Moses, the reason why he didn’t was because of a punishment for disobeying God. But for us, it can be a variety of reasons. Perhaps we didn’t actually do anything wrong, it just wasn’t part of the plan for our lives. But it hurts the same way.

There are so many stories of how people were being saved for something or someone greater. But they mean nothing at the time of the pain.

Moses, however, was given something to keep his hopes up. He was able to take a look at the Promise Land.

Now, for a while, I thought that God was being cruel by doing this, because I felt like it would like seeing your favorite dessert but not getting to eat it. (Only a million times worse, of course!) But over time, I realized that maybe this wasn’t a bad deal after all.

When God gives us a glimpse of what could be, of the greatness He has in store, we are more motivated to try harder. We can have hope that even if this isn’t the person, the job, the relationship…there is still something amazing out there for us.

But if we ignore the signs that we have to move on from our dreams and look to God’s dreams, then we might miss out on the glimpse of hope. We might even miss out on what God is trying to teach us from the heartache or from the potentially “not-what-we-exactly-wanted” outcomes.

It’s really difficult being real with our feelings. Sometimes it’s hard to admit how much disappointment we feel when our plans don’t work out. But if we are vulnerable and honest with God, then He can help us move on faster. He can help us see what we want for the future, and how we can become who we want to be.

All we have to do is stop, take a deep breath, and notice.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Hebrews 11:1