you.

INTRODUCTION

Have You Misplaced God?

Somehow I misplaced God. In the midst of growing up and getting married, starting a career and then a family, I lost track of him. He wasn’t out of the picture completely—I knew he was around . . . somewhere . . . but I just couldn’t put my hand on him at a given moment.

It’s not as though I misplaced him on purpose. I went to church, was part of a small group, and I didn’t doubt his existence. I knew I’d see him on Sunday morning at church, at Bible study on Thursday, and perhaps at night when I tucked my kids into bed. He was still part of my life, but somewhere on the fringe. He wasn’t the center of my day-to-day life—driving around, going to work, hanging out with friends, and spending time with family. I wanted him to be central, but I didn’t quite know how to make that happen.

I went through phases of having quiet times, but it never lasted long. Quiet time was a good place to start, but it didn’t feel like enough. Spending time with God each morning started something off right, but it quickly stalled as the day got underway and filled with so many other things. I wanted more.

It happens to many of us. We sit in church on Sunday mornings and long to soak in his presence, to make this week different, to practice the presence of God as Brother Lawrence said so well. We leave church knowing God is real, and we want to take that certainty with us throughout the week.

We want to spend time with him each day, to grow in relationship together. But making prayer a daily commitment or reading the Bible or finishing this week’s Bible study homework somehow gets pushed lower and lower on our list of priorities.

I have a lot of lists: the list of things to pick up at the grocery store, the list of chores to do, the list of errands to run. It’s often not until the end of the day that I remember I wanted to make today different—to spend quality time with God. I blew it again, I think, and resolve to make tomorrow better.

Can you relate? But when tomorrow comes and life pushes in from all directions, we find ourselves once again hoping for a realness with God that we can’t seem to find.

The desire is there and it’s real. Why is it so easy to misplace it, so difficult to follow through? We want more of God, we want to be filled with his presence, we want to hunger and thirst for him in a way that changes our everyday lives. But how?

How do we find time and space for God in the midst of a world that fills our time, clutters our space, and offers so many substitutions for our hunger for God? How do we remember that God is offering satisfaction that lasts beyond the temporary filling we find in a trip to the mall, a bowl of ice cream, or an afternoon nap?

Life is full—often too full—and so many pressing, urgent things need to be done. Dinner must be cooked tonight, the kids have school projects due tomorrow, and—unless I want to go to work in my pajamas—the laundry has got to get done . . . now! We’re ruled by time, and there never seems to be enough empty space on the calendar.

We want to make God the number one priority in life, but knowing God doesn’t seem to have such an urgent deadline that we feel the need to meet it today or lose the opportunity. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and it stands to reason he’ll be there next month or next year when life slows down.

I often find myself living in the future instead of in the present moment. I imagine that life will get easier next week, next month, or next year, and I’ll find more time to do those things I dream of doing. I used to think, I’ll have more time for God when I quit my job and stay home. But by the time that happened, Audrey hadn’t yet learned to sleep all night, so I was always tired. Then I thought I’d have more time when Audrey started school, or when both of the girls were in school full time.

But we’re one week into both of the girls going to school full time, and those empty days just waiting to be filled still aren’t here. Sure, there are quiet moments throughout the day, but there’s still laundry to be done, a house to be cleaned, a book to be written, and commitments almost every day of the week.

We long for a day when there aren’t quite so many things on our to-do lists. Until then, it’s so easy to put off God or even put off working out how to bring him into our moment-by-moment lives.

Yes, commitments end, appointments sometimes get cancelled, and time opens up for a moment. But it’s quickly filled again with the next commitment, the next project, the next next thing. The truth is, there’s really no such thing as empty space or time. Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the family calendar.

Still we have a nagging sense that if we could only figure out how to make God a priority, the rest of life would somehow improve. We’d find a hidden resource of patience and contentment and energy, as well as some certainty that what we’re doing is really worthwhile. The problem is, figuring it out would take some time we just don’t have.

I’ve often been left feeling discouraged, wishing for a different kind of life—the kind of life I imagine really godly women have somehow attained. A life filled with open space, where everything is just a little easier. A life where the only bumps in the road are small, where children are well mannered and do their homework when they’re told. A life where marriage is always joyful and smooth. In other words, a life totally unlike the one I have.

Maybe it’s just better to wait, I reasoned, until I get it all together before inviting God into the messy details. Maybe I’m just not quite spiritual enough, I thought as I’d try and fail to make him more central. Maybe God doesn’t really want to be part of my daily life, I feared. Maybe I’m just not good enough, I concluded.

But Acts 17:26 says that God determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God chose the time and place for each one of us to live. And Psalm 139 tells us he knows each detail of our lives:

O LORD, you have searched me

and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

you know it completely, O LORD.

Psalm 139:1–4

If when and where we live, when we stand up and when we sit down, the words we think before we speak—if these aren’t the stuff of daily life, I don’t know what is. God knows you and God knows me and he wants to be in relationship with us in the midst of our real lives—not make-believe lives we dream of while in the midst of whichever chaos we happen to find ourselves. He wants to come into our lives and make a difference now; he’s not waiting for us to get it all neat and clean before he’ll come in.

Finding God in the Midst of Real Life

When we moved to California in 2003—away from family, friends, and everything familiar—my marriage fell apart. Toben told me he didn’t love me, that he’d never really loved me. He disappeared for long stretches of time and was completely silent for days on end.

During the two years that followed, he was diagnosed as bipolar, suffering massive mood swings through various prescriptions as each medication was tried and failed. His alcoholism worsened, and there were days I doubted he’d come home.

Everything familiar was gone. Life changed from day to day. The only future plans I made were the what if the worst comes to pass, and I find myself alone with two small children kinds of plans. Would I stay in California? Would I move home to Colorado? Would I need to get a job? Would I want to get remarried someday?

In the midst of suffering, I found passion for God—a very real desperation for his presence in each and every moment. He was always there, of course, had always been there. But going through such a difficult time showed me the importance of giving him first place in my life, of making space for him to work. I learned that finding space for God was something I couldn’t afford not to do. Spending time with him became the most important thing for my sanity, my soul, my survival. It might sound a little dramatic, a little overdone, but I learned the only way to make it through the day with any kind of success was with him.

It sounds backwards, but it’s not through a life that’s rosy and smooth that I understood God’s desire to move in and take first place in my life. It was when my life was the messiest, most falling apart, most desperate. I simply could not wait until things got a little easier, a little neater to invite God into the everydayness of my life. Because, at that time, things just kept getting worse.

I figured that if God wanted to be part of my everyday, real life—if he could come in and make things new—then there was no time like the present. Instead of waiting for life to get better, maybe it was time to invite God to make it better.

God met me and ministered to me in a variety of ways during that time—through other people and their prayers and practical help, through a heightened awareness of his love and care for me, through his Word.

He met me and ministered to me daily during that time as I learned to set aside time for him and as I prayed to seek him first.

Things didn’t improve right away—but slowly, day by day, life has returned to normal. I praise God for the wisdom he gives doctors who create medicines that heal us. Toben is whole and healthy and full of hope.

God held us together, redeemed us from the pit. He set [our] feet on a rock and gave [us] a firm place to stand (Ps. 40:2).

I learned that giving God priority means that he is the one responsible for holding us together. My job is simply to hold on to him for dear life.

We can find God in the midst of our real lives—the lives we know we live but hope no one else sees clearly. We can walk through our days with him and make time with him a priority, and we can do it in the midst of a marriage crisis, babies who don’t sleep through the night, doubts about our faith, and whatever else we’re dealing with. God already knows the truth about our lives anyway, so it makes sense to approach a relationship with him from honesty.

In John 4, Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well. Tired and thirsty, he stopped for a drink of water. She was there, and so he asked her for a drink. In the conversation that followed, this woman learned that it’s no use pretending with a God who knows the truth of your life.

As they talked, the Samaritan woman tried to distract Jesus with arguments of when and where to worship God. Jesus responded by telling her that the place of worship isn’t the point. What God wants is for us to worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). Pretending all’s well may work—for a while anyway—with people, but not with God. As Beth Moore has said, we need to approach God from where we really are—from what we’re really dealing with. If we’re in the midst of crisis, we come from that. If we’re in doubt, we come from that.¹

Instead of pretending for now and waiting for life to be perfect later, be honest. God, I don’t have it all together and I’m tired of pretending I do. I want to make time with you a priority, but I don’t have a clue where to begin or how to do it. I think you can improve my life, and I want to live each day in step with you. I’ve tried and I can’t do it on my own. Help me!

Where to Start

That’s it. That’s the start. When you invite God to help, he will. He’s not pushy, not overbearing. He’s going to wait until you ask before stepping in.

When we make spending time with him a priority each day, life does get better. That’s the good news. Of course, your husband might not change, your problems won’t automatically disappear, your children won’t suddenly sleep all night long. But you will find a greater sense of purpose, resources beyond yourself, and a partner to walk with throughout the day. In other words, spending time with God will change you.

The bad news is—there’s always bad news, isn’t there?—it’s going to involve making some changes, making some choices. And those choices may not be easy. Making God a priority and giving him space in our lives mean that