In November of last year, my husband and I moved into a new apartment. Eager to settle into our new place, we quickly got everything set up the way we wanted. We hung curtains, put pictures on the walls, and told all our friends we couldn’t wait to have them over.
Then, halfway through January, after the holiday hustle had died down, we began to notice some unwanted visitors in our home. We were regularly squashing bugs, yet they continued to grow in number. One night, after killing about twenty of these unknown bugs, we did some research and discovered they were German cockroaches.
No bug infestation is fun, but our web searches told us that this was the worst kind. German cockroaches are small and reproduce rapidly, making them almost impossible to eradicate.
The pest control website suggested moving our appliances to find out if we had a full-blown infestation or just a few pesky tenants; we pulled our fridge away from the wall, and all the signs of an infestation were there. Our hearts sank. They were in the walls.
That night, we began looking for a new home. I didn’t know it at the time, but God was about to use that infestation to teach me one of the most valuable lessons I had ever learned.
Mourning the Way Things Should Be
I have always been a very organized person. One of my favorite things to do before my wedding was unpack wedding gifts in the apartment that my husband and I would soon share. I loved making the place feel like home. But the day we discovered the roaches, that apartment immediately quit feeling like home. We packed a suitcase a few days later to stay with my parents. I was incredibly grateful for a place to stay, but I mourned the loss of the home I had worked so hard on.
The roaches weren’t the end of our struggles. For several weeks, it seemed as though each new day held some significant development: after the roach infestation, sickness, the death of a grandparent, car trouble, more sickness. I woke up every day thinking, “What’s next?”
As a person who loves order, this complete lack of unpredictability left me anxious and exhausted. I felt like I had nothing stable to hold on to.
My schedule, our finances, our transportation—everything was off kilter. Nothing was going the way we wanted it to. And not having a home where we could rest or regroup made everything feel that much worse.
Even after my husband and I found the townhouse we wanted to buy and put a contract on it, I felt like I was living in limbo. We didn’t have ownership of the house yet, most of our belongings were at the apartment we were still paying rent for, and we were living out of suitcases and sleeping at my parents’. It felt like we had three homes and no home at the same time.
My Order is Not God’s Order
Then, one day, I decided to do some prayer journaling. I had hoped to process some of what was going on, and maybe gain some peace or stability. Instead, God graciously showed me my sin.
I was trying to find rest in where I lived rather than in God, the true provider of all comfort. I had made an idol of my physical surroundings and seemingly could not be happy until I felt “settled” again. John 16:33 spoke directly into my circumstances: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
We are called to find our peace in Christ. Nothing else will do. We are never told that living in a broken world will be easy (that verse actually says quite the opposite), but fixing our eyes on God, relying on him for everything, resting in him, and trusting his promises puts a silver lining on every cloud.
God showed me my idolatry of comfort and predictability by removing both of those things entirely, but he also showed me that he is the ultimate source of rest and contentment.
Christians are never without hope. In all things, in difficulty and ease, we can rejoice and rest in the goodness of God; in ease, because of the many blessings God has poured out on us; in difficulty, because God is always at work, and his plan is greater than we could ever truly grasp. Habakkuk 1:5 captures this well, saying, “For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.”
As Christians, we have the gift of joy in all circumstances. In seasons of unrest, we can always find peace in Christ.
At Home in God’s Providence
In tandem with every negative development in our lives, there was always something positive. The roach infestation caused my husband and me to leave our apartment, but my parents welcomed us into their guest room with open arms. We started looking for a home to buy, and had an offer accepted within three days. I got very sick and was unable to work on getting our new house move-in ready, but our families and church community stepped in and spent hours painting our home and helping us pack.
Every day, I felt like I was provided with the opportunity to walk through one of two doors. Through the first was despair, stress, and frustration at my lack of control. Through the second was trust, surrender, gratitude, and whole-hearted reliance on God. Sometimes I picked a door and later backtracked to the other one. Through God’s grace, I was able to keep my eyes on him and his provisions for us throughout the majority of that very unusual season.
Proverbs 3:5 reads, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” As sinners living in a broken world, we are quick to do the opposite. In a culture that praises self-sufficiency, it is very easy to lean on our own understanding. I may have continued trying to navigate this situation on my own, but by the grace of God, he put me in a place where I was reliant on the help of others in order to show me that he would always provide for my family and me.
My husband and I often look back on this season as an example of God’s love and provision for us. God desires good for his children, and he gives us the gift of his faithfulness. When he uses hard things to draw us closer to him, those hard things become landmarks for us to look back on, examples of his goodness to us. Instead of forgetting God and trusting in ourselves, we can remember all that he has done in the midst of hardship and celebrate.
