We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.  C.S. Lewis

The problem with believing God is in control is that when you don’t get what you want–or get what you don’t–it feels like he could do better.

I heard a lot of “no” last week. No, your manuscript isn’t a good fit for my list. No, you will not be working here any longer due to corporate restructuring. No, you are not pregnant this month.

The nos always seem to drown out the yeses.

In the middle of the week, I exited the office. My scrubs were sweaty. My hair was unkempt. I was sporting one of my recent facial breakouts caused by constant mask-wearing. I picked up The Kid, whose lunch menu I could have read from his outfit. We picked up The Mom and headed out for an errand.

My grandmother left me a three-stone ring that has been sitting in my drawer for months–since she got really sick. After she died in September, I opened the box and plucked the ring from its velvet seat. It slid around my finger, several sizes too big. Last week, the jeweler called and said it was ready. And so The Mom and TK and I headed into a gleaming showroom, marble floors and glass cases surrounding greasy hair and cheese stains, to pick it up.

The ring slid onto my finger perfectly, like the two were made for each other. I picked up TK, who farted loudly and yelled “OOH!” On our way out, we passed an older woman drenched in pearls and fur.

I don’t remember the last time I felt so out of place, so ill-fitted to my surroundings. And yet I belonged there, because the ring fit. It had my name on it, left by someone who wanted me to wear it.

TK will endure another CT tomorrow, and The Husband and I will hold him down again while another IV is placed into his tiny wrist. We’ll talk to the neurosurgeon after, try to decipher from the images what the next step should be, flying without a map.

I think about how I’m waiting for a yes: from an agent, from a plastic stick, from a doctor…feeling as though I’m trying to put together a puzzle with missing pieces, or read broken tea leaves, and I know that this is not how he works, with games and hiding. There is a difference between trickery and mystery, and somehow he is in the No just as much as the Yes.

Sometimes we just must learn to bear the beams of love. The love that drives the car to the hospital and holds us still while they place the IV. The love that inspires words but doesn’t couple them with a business plan. The love that creates life in its own perfect timing. The love that shows up, mapless, because stories aren’t told with a compass: they are unfurled.

And I read it this morning: that I am being unfurled too.

I have not had anything pulled out from under me, because I stand on rock, not rugs. And any time I reduce this season to waiting–waiting on the agent or the stick or the doctor–I am trying to wrap up with a bow what is meant to be opened as a gift.

So each day begins and ends with its own questions and mystery, and I open the box to find that it fits perfectly, this circle of love that never ends and puts me right where I belong.