‘My task is not to make God show up but to patiently wait, fully expecting, fully anticipating some form of awareness that He is truly with me’ (Nate Foster)
Someone once told me that guidance stood for: God; U & I, DANCE. Its the idea of partner dancing, where when initially paired up, we want to be told which foot to put where and when, when to move left or right…but the longer we dance with our partner, we begin to learn and get a feel for how He moves, what His style is, the pace, the feel for the dance…and we learn to simply follow and mirror the way He moves. It becomes less about right and wrong steps, but more about sensing the direction, responding to the prompts to move, and trusting the dance partner to guide us more clearly when we need it.
I entered Guidance month with two main questions which I needed guidance on: first was about whether to pursue study/ training next year, and second was about where to give birth to Eli.
Words, and the meaning of words, mean a lot to me, and I’ve often experienced God speaking most clearly to me through Scripture, quotes from books, or phrases that come to my mind. Reading the designated chapter on Guidance, the author shared his experience of God encouraging him to ’embrace the desert’ – as I read it, these words just seemed to stick with me. At a church service a few days later, the preacher was talking about community being where ‘I becomes we’ and it felt applicable to how God was working in us as a family during this phase of life – and that this was to be my focus for the meanwhile. I knew that I was to delay applying for any training for another year. No fireworks in the sky, but a few words, through text and talk, through which I sensed a divine ‘step this way’.
I had been exploring whether to pursue a home birth with Eli and was anticipating a visit from the home birth team early October. In advance of the midwife’s first visit, I was praying that God would guide me really clearly on whether a home birth was the right thing to do. The midwife who was assigned to me happened to be Italian, and was familiar with the Spanish healthcare system where I had had Sol; she understood the experience I’d had, and was able to speak with understanding, experience and specific reassurance about the prospect of labour in England. Out of the whole team, only she would have understood my experience previously – it felt like she had been divinely hand-picked and sent to me, a token of God’s care and reassurance. Much of the conversation, and her whole manner towards me, made me feel safe, listened to, respected and understood – an encounter with someone else gave me the guidance I needed. I felt peace about this being the best option for me despite a sense of the unknown about how the labour would go. The whole home birth experience was peaceful, trauma-free, and somehow empowering, reinstating a confidence in me that I feel had been lost through my previous labour; a restoring of what had been lost and a healing of what had been broken; a revisiting of what had been full of fear and distress and turning it into something peaceful and fear-free. No thunderbolts from heaven or messages in the clouds, but from the first visit to being signed off, peace was my guide.
My experience of God’s guidance this month, and at other times, has been very much about the infusion of God into very ordinary things…something someone says, a collision of circumstances, a word in season, a moment of provision, a dream, something catching my eye. I think its about being alert to the small prompts, but also about really believing that God is behind what can seem so ordinary, and using these simple things to guide and speak to us.
One of my old mantras that I used to bleat out to our teams in Ibiza was: ‘The only expectation we have of you is to follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit’. Lets ditch the self-help guides and the google-search; let’s start listening for the still small voice and really believing that we are able to hear His voice, looking out for the peace and the prompts that will be given.
The road may be full of twists and turns, there may be long years of waiting or moments of snap decision and about-turn, but I don’t think God is into playing hide-and-seek with us. We cannot expect to be told where we are going with Him, but we can expect for Him to be with us. We may not know how the dance will unfold, but we can be sure that our Divine dance partner will not leave us dancing alone or unable to follow His steps.
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