Answers

Here are some fun-filled facts about me and my weirdness.

• If I can't find something, I'll tear the house apart until I find it.
• If I don't understand something, I want someone to explain it to me until I get it.
• Other people may call it trivia, but I like all the little known facts about nature, or animals, or foods, or whatever.
• I have a reoccurring dream nightmare where I'm in class taking a test and I'm totally unprepared and don't know what I'm doing.
• I like to know what's ahead of me.
• If I ask someone a question, I darn well want them to answer it.

Yep, there you go. That's pretty much me right there. I like to know the answers. I want to be able to wrap my mind around things so that I can understand. This meant so much to me that as we raised our children, I was constantly explaining why I was doing something, why they were getting in trouble, why things worked the way they did. I felt it was important that they had the answers and that they understood. If I didn't know the answer, I'd dig until I could find it and then explain it to them. It seemed good to me. Everyone needs to have all the answers, right?!

I was wrong.

Don't get me wrong. Understanding can be important. Knowledge can be crucial. But it can't always be the driving force. There are many, many times that things happen in life and it is an impossibility to understand them all. The harder we try to understand, the angrier, emptier, more frustrated we can feel. 

God really brought this home to me in these last few years.

• I wanted to know the "why" … He wanted me to know Him.
• I wanted to wrap my head around the situation … He wanted me to wrap my arms around Him.
• I wanted to have a clear vision of everything around me … He wanted me to look at Him.
• I wanted to feel balanced, in control, secure … He wanted me to be dependent upon Him. 

What I saw was that I was worshipping the answers, and not worshipping God.

Sometimes when I was looking the hardest for the answers, I was looking everywhere but at Him. I was working, seeking, sweating, crying. I was spinning my wheels and going nowhere, and you know, it just didn't seem fair. The circumstances were this huge mountain that I couldn't get past. "God, how could You have allowed this?" "Father, this hurts and I need to know why." "What's true or right?" Why, why, why … 

God alone knows all the answers. Sometimes He reveals them to me. Sometimes He doesn't. But like Job, I've learned (through time and His patient teaching) that I don't need to know all the answers. I don't need to know all the "why's". I don't need to have the roadmap, or the instruction manual, or the answers to the test. Oh, I WANT all those things. I just don't NEED them.

God knows me. He knows my desire to have all the answers. But He also knows what's best for me -- and that's to know Him even more than I need to know the answers. Frankly, if I had all the answers, I wouldn't feel this thirst for Him. I can rest in not understanding it all because my Savior does. His Spirit leads me through those dark moments of time when I can't see, when I'm unsure, when I'm confused.

It all comes down to this. Is God good? Does He love me? Have I seen His work in the past? Do I believe His Word? If I answer yes to those questions, then I can rest in Him, not knowing all the answers, but knowing Him. I can trust Him to lead me where I need to go. I am not alone.

And that, my friend, is better than knowing all the answers.