“There is a place where your fears must meet the God you know.”[1]

Where is that place? It’s here. Here—as I sit at my desk, books, journals, half-written letters scattered around me, somehow reminiscent of how out-of-control my own life feels. Behind me is difficulty, those haunting memories of trials that only time can work through. Before is the unknown.

And right now—that daily reminder that my life isn’t mine. It never was, for I am bought with a price. But that reality imbeds itself all the deeper when I couldn’t make my dreams come true if I wanted to. “Lord, what are you doing?” His gentle answer isn’t what I’ve always wanted to hear. “I am writing your story with the touch of my pen, a pen whose flourishes you could never copy on your own. Every story must have a climax, and each additional hurdle, what seems uprooting to your much-prized stability, is but another adventure in the grand story of my redemption.”

Yes, the letters are unwritten. At least by me. For I’ve turned over the pen to my Creator, my Savior, the Lover of my soul. No, rather, I’ve crumpled up the failed attempts to write the account of my life, thrown it in the trash, and given Christ the blank sheet of my life. “Here, you write my story.”

Here enters the God I know. In His sight, fear evaporates like those wisps of clouds that appear only at the break of dawn and vanish at the sun’s earliest smile. He has already written all the details of all the stories, with the absolute surety that His tale will come to pass. So sure that He can remind us that His “Lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world.” So sure that my redemption was planned with delight from before I even existed to need it. So sure that He will stop at nothing—absolutely nothing—to carry it out to completion.

And everything I’m experiencing right now is part of that. It’s not unplanned. It hasn’t happened by accident. Rather, it’s from the loving pen of my Father who does not desire merely to write a good story but to create the best possible scenarios to show the wonder of His glory in the rescue of poor sinners.

So Lord, I embrace the unknown. Here, right now, is the place where “my fears must meet the God I know.” In fact, I can sit back and laugh—for He already has it taken care of. As I drop my pen, my hand no longer clinging with white knuckles as I try to scribble my dreams across His glorious story, I can once again enjoy the beauty of the masterpiece the Author of life is writing—right here.

-Julianna

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[1] Casting Crowns, “Oh My Soul” from The Very Next Thing, 2016.