“At first, I did not recognise it as an answer.”

The road had narrowed without warning, the satnav had started recalculating with the restrained disappointment of a machine that believed I should have listened the first time, and the sky outside had settled into that familiar British grey that makes even minor inconveniences feel more official. I slowed down, watched the little blue route redraw itself on the screen and felt the irritation rise before anything serious had even happened. I was still moving. I was not stranded. I had simply taken a different road. Yet there I was, mildly offended by the existence of an unexpected turn. I remember thinking how very typical this was of me. Give me a destination and I would like the route, estimated arrival time, parking information and preferably written confirmation that no surprises had been scheduled. This is also, I suspect, why trusting God has occasionally been difficult.

I like plans. I like knowing what comes next. I like dates, timelines, options, backup options and the emotional comfort of believing that if everything has been sufficiently organised, life will behave. I know this is optimistic. Life has reviewed my proposal several times and declined to cooperate. For years, I thought trusting God meant believing that the things I wanted would eventually happen if I prayed hard enough, waited faithfully enough and remained reasonably well behaved in the meantime. Somewhere in my imagination, faith had become a transaction with better lighting. I would pray, God would listen, circumstances would align, doors would open and I would nod afterwards as though we had both followed the agreed project plan. God has never shown much interest in my project management.

Some of the most important parts of my life arrived through circumstances I would never have selected deliberately. There were delays I resented, doors I tried to force, plans that looked excellent in my head and much less impressive once exposed to reality. There were seasons when I thought I knew exactly what should happen next, only to find myself moving in another direction entirely. At the time, those moments did not look like guidance. They looked inconvenient, sometimes disappointing and occasionally catastrophic, depending on how dramatic I was feeling.

It is easy to talk about God’s plan when the plan currently resembles ours. When the application succeeds, the opportunity arrives, the relationship works, the prayer receives the answer we wanted and the road ahead is wide enough to see where it leads, trust feels almost effortless. We call it blessing. We post gratitude. We say everything happens for a reason with considerable confidence. The harder part comes when the road turns somewhere we did not approve. That is where faith becomes less decorative.

There have been times in my life when I have asked God for clarity and received what felt suspiciously like more questions. I prayed for one thing and watched something else happen. I imagined one timeline and lived another. I have looked at situations and wondered whether I had misunderstood God completely or whether Heaven had misplaced my paperwork. I realise how ridiculous that sounds, but unanswered prayer can make even a faithful person wonder whether the line has gone dead.

What I have learned, slowly and not always gracefully, is that an answer does not always resemble relief. Sometimes the answer looks like a closed door. Sometimes it looks like waiting longer than feels reasonable. Sometimes it looks like being moved somewhere unfamiliar. Sometimes it looks like losing something you were certain belonged in your future. Sometimes it arrives dressed so convincingly as disappointment that you spend months complaining about it before realising it has been redirecting you the entire time. That has happened to me more than once.

When I think about leaving Cebu and building a life in England, for example, I can now see a line that was impossible to see while I was standing inside it. At the beginning there was uncertainty, paperwork, waiting, fear and the strange experience of deliberately leaving what was familiar for something I could not fully imagine. Now, years later, some of those difficult beginnings belong to a life I once prayed for. Retrospect is generous like that. It makes the road look obvious after you have already survived it. Faith, unfortunately, usually asks for trust before hindsight becomes available, which is considerably less convenient.

There were also seasons when work stretched me beyond what I thought I could manage. Times when I wondered whether I was capable enough, strong enough or simply too tired to continue becoming whatever this particular chapter required. Yet the challenges I once resented often became the places where competence grew. What felt like being pushed away from comfort eventually became experience. The shifts that frightened me taught me things the easier ones could not. The responsibilities that once felt too heavy became part of what I later carried more confidently.

I would never pretend every difficulty is secretly pleasant. Some things are simply painful. Loss is painful. Disappointment is painful. Waiting can be exhausting. There are prayers whose answers I still do not understand and situations I would never romanticise simply because time has passed. Trusting God does not require pretending every wound was wonderful because it eventually taught you something. Faith is not emotional dishonesty. It is choosing to believe that meaning can still exist where explanation does not.

There have been moments when I wanted God to explain Himself before I agreed to continue. A full briefing would have been appreciated, preferably with dates. Instead, I often received enough for the next step, not the whole staircase, not the whole route, just enough. That can be frustrating when you are someone who wants to understand the ending before committing to the middle. Yet when I look back, I realise how many times I was carried through seasons I could not have planned for myself. Some answers came quickly. Others arrived years later. Some came in forms I recognised immediately. Others wore such convincing disguises that I almost rejected them: a detour, a delay, a no, a relationship changing, a plan falling apart, a season of waiting, a door closing when I had already mentally decorated the room behind it.

I have learned not to call every closed door rejection too quickly. Sometimes it is protection. Sometimes redirection. Sometimes preparation. And sometimes, I still have absolutely no idea what it is. That last category has required the most faith. I am more comfortable now admitting that I do not understand everything God does. I do not need to turn every difficulty into a neat lesson before the day is over. Some questions stay open. Some prayers remain unfinished. Some circumstances make sense only much later, and perhaps some will never make complete sense to me at all. Trust has become less about understanding every decision and more about remembering who has been faithful before.

That memory matters. There are days when motivation does not come from enthusiasm. There is no dramatic surge of inspiration, no internal soundtrack announcing that I am ready to conquer the world. Sometimes motivation is simply remembering that I have been carried through previous seasons I once thought I would not manage. I remember the prayers that were answered and the ones that were answered differently. I remember the doors I cried over that I am now grateful never opened. I remember the things that took longer than I wanted. I remember arriving eventually. That is where much of my motivation comes from now: not certainty about what happens next, but evidence that God has been present before.

Family motivates me too. Their sacrifices, love and presence have shaped the way I understand responsibility. My work motivates me because I know there is still more to learn and more I can give. Writing motivates me because sometimes a thought I wrestled with privately becomes something another person needs to read on exactly the day they find it. But underneath all of those things is faith: the belief that my life is still being written beyond what I can currently see, that unfinished does not mean abandoned, that delay does not automatically mean denial, that confusion does not mean God has disappeared, and that some of the chapters I would have skipped turned out to contain things I needed.

This has changed the way I think about purpose. I used to imagine purpose as something large and final, as though one day I would discover the exact reason I was here and everything would suddenly organise itself around that revelation. Now I think purpose is often much more ordinary. It can be doing today’s work well, showing kindness when nobody applauds, calling home, learning, serving, resting when your body needs it, writing the next paragraph, or making the next good decision without knowing where it ultimately leads. Faith has become less about constantly asking, “What is the whole plan?” and more about asking, “What is mine to do today?” That question is easier to carry, and it leaves more room for God.

I still pray specifically. I still ask for things. I still tell God exactly what I hope happens, occasionally with enough detail to suggest I believe Heaven requires clarification. I suspect He manages. But I have become more willing to add another sentence: if not this, lead me somewhere better. That sentence is difficult because surrender sounds beautiful until it involves releasing something you actually wanted. It is easy to surrender hypothetical things. Real surrender has fingerprints. It involves loosening your grip on timelines, expectations, people, outcomes and versions of yourself you were certain you needed to become. Sometimes faith is not gripping harder. Sometimes it is opening your hand.

That road eventually widened again. The satnav stopped recalculating. The little blue line settled into a new route as though none of the previous drama had been necessary. Trees gave way to houses, familiar signs appeared and eventually I reached where I was going, a few minutes later than planned. Naturally, I survived. I think about that road sometimes because so much of my life has worked in the same irritating manner. I have panicked over turns that later made sense. I have resented delays that protected me from something I could not see. I have asked God why I was being taken away from a route I had already decided was correct.

Years later, I can recognise some of those moments for what they were: answers. They simply did not arrive wearing the clothes I expected. Some came dressed as opportunity. Others came dressed as disappointment. A few looked remarkably like failure until time changed the lighting. And several came dressed as detours. I still prefer the direct route. I am not pretending to have evolved beyond that. But when the road changes now, I try not to assume immediately that I am lost. Sometimes the destination has not changed at all; sometimes only the road has. And sometimes, what looks like God taking me away from the plan is exactly how He is leading me into it.

Still learning not to argue with every detour,

Anj🖤