A man and his dog are in the same car. The dog howls bright-moon-in-the-middle-of-the-night caterwauling howls. The man pleads, promising a daily delivery of dog biscuit bouquets if only the hound will hush. After all, it’s only a car wash.

Never occurred to him—ahem, to me—that the car wash would scare my dog. But it did. Placing myself in her paws, I can see why. A huge, noisy machine presses toward us, pounding our window with water, banging against the door with brushes. Duck! We’re under attack.

“Don’t panic. The car wash was my idea.” “I’ve done this before.” “It’s for our own good.” Ever tried to explain a car wash to a canine? Dog dictionaries are minus the words brush and detail job. My words fell on fallen flaps. Nothing helped. She just did what dogs do; she wailed.

Actually, she did what we do. Don’t we howl? Not at car washes perhaps but at hospital stays and job transfers. Let the economy go south or the kids move north, and we have a wail of a time. And when our Master explains what’s happening, we react as if he’s speaking Yalunka. We don’t understand a word he says.

Is your world wet and wild? God’s greatest blessings often come costumed as disasters. Some of you doubt it. How can God use cancer or death or divorce? Simple.

He’s smarter than we are. He is to you what I was to four-year-old Amy. I met her at a bookstore. She asked me if I would sign her children’s book. When I asked her name, she watched as I began to write, “To Amy …”

She stopped me right there. With wide eyes and open mouth, she asked, “How did you know how to spell my name?”

She was awed. You aren’t. You know the difference between the knowledge of a child and an adult. Can you imagine the difference between the wisdom of a human and the wisdom of God? What is impossible to us is like spelling “Amy” to him. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:9).

I keep taking Molly to the car wash. She’s howling less. I don’t think she understands the machinery. She’s just learning to trust her master.

Maybe we’ll learn the same.

Question: How can we trust God at times when we are confused, frustrated, or just don’t understand where our life is taking us?

About the Author: Max Lucado

There must be a thousand clichés about finding direction.

It’s hard to get what you want if you don’t know what you want.

The first step in considering direction whether it’s for your life as a whole, or your career, is to know what you want. Who do you want to be? How would you like to be remembered? What do you value? These are big questions but there are many tools available to help you work through them.

The best way to go into a decision-making process is to arm yourself with information. There probably isn’t a book titled Dear [insert your name] Here’s What you Should Do With Your Life but there are a few places you can start looking. Consider a book like Lifekeys: Discover who you really are or an assessment tool like the Myers-Briggs personality sorter as a place to start.

It’s a rare person indeed who can sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper and plot out his or her life. Tools like these give you exercises designed to help you think things through. Self-discovery is a process and it takes time but the result in valuable information that you can’t find anywhere else.

Ask God what He thinks

This may sound like an obvious point, but how often do we run into a decision making process without consciously asking God about it, right at the beginning? But even before asking God for wisdom in your circumstances, may I suggest that you first ask Him to help you see yourself that way that He sees you? It is so easy to get caught up in what we do, or don’t do, or used to do. There is an old saying about how we are human beings, not human “doings” but so often we don’t see things that way.

Ask God to give you insight into who He has made you to be, the gifts He has given you, the path He has placed you on. God sees each of us as worthy of His Son’s sacrifice – that’s a lot more value than we sometimes put on ourselves. Ask for a heart of gratitude for your current situation and then for wisdom as you consider a change. Seek godly counsel from a trusted friend or church leader and ask them to pray through this journey with you.

Look for examples

If trying to decide what you want feels like an enormous task, start by thinking about what you don’t want and get those thoughts down on paper. You may find that the information you’re looking for is right there. Think about someone you know who’s life you don’t want to emulate. What was it about their situation that turned you off? Is the opposite of that something that you do want to cultivate? Look to the Bible for examples of lives lived well. Is there something specific that you want to cultivate in your own life?

Give yourself permission to dream. Take an hour or an afternoon, go somewhere where you can hear yourself think and just dream. Take some advice from Donald Trump, “As long as your going to be thinking anyway, think big.” Imagine a world where you could meet all of your obligations, spiritual, personal and financial, doing anything you wanted. What would your day look like?

What really matters to you?

Choosing a direction in life needs to be less about success and more about fulfillment. What makes you smile? What are the things that are so easy for you to do they feel like play? Which topics do you get so excited talking about that people ask you to slow down? Are you including these in your daily life?

Not everyone will be able to make a full time living out of what they enjoy best however, each of us can life more fully by finding a way to include these activities in our lives.

1. Is there somewhere you could volunteer using these skills?
2. Are there recreational activities that you could participate in?
3. Is it time to consider a career change?
4. Is it time to consider a job change within the same company?

The risk of choosing less than the best

I think that often we stay where we are because we’re “happy enough”. It’s nice enough, the money is good enough, the work is interesting enough. We settle because it is familiar. We think that there’s no risk in staying where we are. The truth however, is that staying in the wrong place may be the riskiest thing of all.

Think of what is at stake if you stay in the wrong place. Each of us has a limited number of days to live. Days lived in the wrong situation are irredeemable. Change can be scary but it’s not as scary as looking back on years and realizing that things could have been different.

As long as we’re not talking about marriage, the risks of re-evaluating your situation may be less than you think. Marriage vows are forever. There are situations where forever is no longer possible, but there may be fewer of them than the media would have us believe. If you find yourself looking at your spouse and longing for a change of scene, find a good counsellor. With marriage there is too much at stake.

The thing with direction is this: yes, you have to choose one, but you can almost always change your mind.

When we were growing up my Mom often reminded us that “very few things are fatal”. Her point was to be aware of our decisions but to remember that most of them can be reversed. There will be consequences, delays perhaps, or costs or pain, but there are very few decisions that result in an irreversible outcome. Most of the decision we make are not life or death choices. So arm yourself with knowledge, choose for the right reasons and take a step in a new direction. You just might find the life you’ve been looking for.

You are not on this journey alone. You can find peace and joy even when facing an unfamiliar future by asking God to fill you with His Spirit. God wants to be our leverage in living, binding-up the broken hearted. You are not alone in this. God has left His Spirit as a deposit on what is to come – the hope of Heaven (2 Cor. 1:22).

Just as our relationship with God depends totally on what God has done through Jesus Christ, so the power to live the Christian life also comes totally from God. To live the Christian life as God intends, we must continually draw upon God’s power, through the Holy Spirit. As we allow the Holy Spirit to fill and control us, He will produce godly character in us and enable us to tell others about Christ.

Why not pray this simple prayer and by faith invite Him to fill you with His Spirit:

Dear Father, I need you. I acknowledge that I have sinned against you by directing my own life. I thank you that You have forgiven my sins through Christ’s death on the cross for me. I now invite Christ to again take His place on the throne of my life. Fill me with the Holy Spirit as You commanded me to be filled, and as You promised in Your word that You would do if I asked in faith. I pray this in the name of Jesus. As an expression of my faith, I thank You for directing my life and for filling me with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If you prayed this prayer, we would love to hear about it!