Recently I learned that the path that we choose for ourselves and the path that God has for us can be very different. For the most part, life has gone according to the plans or ideas I had in my mind until recently, when God took me right out of my comfort zone and put me right in the middle of my most uncomfortable zone.

About three weeks ago I had to address all that was stirring inside of me. As the day progressed, I began to feel the weight of my anger and hurts and realized it was time to sit and pray about it. So, God and I had a real heart-to-heart. I was angry and God just listened as I vented all my hurts and anger about the entire situation.

I prayed that God would speak so clearly through the Bible what it was that He wanted me to learn from my situation. And boy, did He speak! He shared His purposes for putting me in a most uncomfortable situation so clearly and the reason was—love!

First, I needed to recognize that God loves me and desires to see me grow and mature in my faith, and the best way to grow is to go through a trial. I was not in this situation so that I would be miserable, although I was for a bit. There was a lesson to be learned here, which leads me to the second reason I was in this situation:  I am to love others and I was not loving my neighbor as Christ has called me to do. I was thinking only of my feelings, my desires—me, me, me! I was allowing my circumstances to control my behavior. This is a lesson that God has been trying to teach me for some time now.

For seven days God spoke to me through His scripture and my circumstances. I wish I had learned this lesson years ago when I went through a similar situation. Wouldn’t it be great if we could go through life getting our way all day, every day? Of course, that’s not the reality of life. Life lessons are hard to take—especially when you’re experiencing the lesson for the second time because you didn’t learn it the first time around.

Isn’t that what we go through as moms? We constantly have to teach and discipline our kids (many times for the same thing) through life lessons to build their character. Why do we do it? Because we love them.

It is no different in our relationship with our heavenly Father. He does it because He loves us.