This was a driveway moment and I felt compelled to listen to the “rest of the story”  on the radio. As she pulled up to the toll booth, the attendant said “how are you today?” The routine reply is “fine” and the parties depart. Well today, the driver noted, “I’m not okay” as she was pouring out tears of despair.

The toll attendant used this moment as a God hug, and stated that she was covering the driver in prayer. The driver had never met the attendant and even though she was sharing a difficult moment, this didn’t mean she was in need of psychological help. The driver left uplifted and full of hope.

Why are people so zealous to inform those enduring challenges that they need emotional and/or mental assistance? Only today, I received an email that because my life has not been typical that I need such support. Even though the one making this statement is a church staff member, they apparently have never had a need of bible studies reminding Christians that life is challenging and filled with problems we may not have caused. Yet, often we are the recipients of another’s sin or poor choices in life.

As a group of us gather weekly for the bible study, It’s Not Supposed to be This Way by Lysa Terkurest, we know many of us have lives we didn’t plan nor anticipate. We are a diverse group of different backgrounds, ages and life experiences. Yet we all have the commonality that we didn’t plan for our lives to be as they are. Lost jobs, illness, accidents, wayward children, broken homes and marriages face many Christians.

Did they do something wrong to deserve these trials? Were their sins so immense  this was a necessary punishment? God doesn’t bring hardships to his children for chastisement.  Just as he brought sorrow and difficulties to Job, it wasn’t because Job had sinned. Job 1-2 notes Job was “blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil…so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.” Satan believed Job would curse God, but God proved Satan wrong. He allowed Satan to “test” Job with illness, loss of family and all he owned, but Job remained steadfast to God. “The Lord Gave, and the Lord has taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.”

As our bible study group sits around my table sharing our lives and the realizations that it was not what we planned for our“life’s story”, we all know God is maturing us in His love. Lysa states in her study, “Longsuffering is long because you can’t sprint through it. It’s one step. And then another that might be more treacherous …sometimes God lifts us up in an instant, and other times He wants to join us on a bit of a journey.”

Yet, through it all, it doesn’t mean we are mentally and/or physically weak. We may at times benefit from Christian counseling, but it never is indictive that because we are on this journey, we are helpless. Just as I listened during the “driveway moment”, God gives us hugs in many forms.  I Peter 5:10 NIV “And the God of all grace…after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong.”