I’m somewhere in the middle of a story.  My own. I know the way it started, but I have no idea how it will end.

I need to embrace the adventure of it all, to excitedly anticipate the next chapter, to eagerly stay with it until the drama resolves and all these middle pages make complete sense.  Because I know eventually, they will.

But the middle part of my story right now seems kind of crazy.

Recent middle pages tell the tale of having to actually resign from a job I didn’t even start because technically I was already hired when I found out it wasn’t what they had promised me in the interview.  My sister said it was like an annulment. Loved that! My middle pages include the story of what seemed like a perfect job that I looked into a few weeks before I moved and they said to let them know when I had relocated and when I did, I found out they had hired someone – two days before.  My middle pages have job applications that were submitted but never acknowledged and email inquiries that were sent and never answered.  My middle pages have two delays on the closing on my condo in Florida – with the threat of Hurricane Dorian thrown into the mix just for added drama and unexpected bills to pay because I still owned it crossing over into a new month.  My middle pages have me living temporarily in the home I grew up in, with 99% of what I own in 58 numbered and stacked Home Depot moving boxes in a storage unit 5 miles away.

But these middle pages have some high points too. Working through some vocational and calling assessments to make sure I’m on the right track and to help decipher some new longings in my heart. My middle pages have walks on hills(!) and in woods(!) where some leaves are already hinting at the Fall season just around the corner and that makes me deliriously happy.  My middle pages have long talks with God about His plan for my future before the rest of the house gets up in the mornings.  The middle of this story has texts and calls and messages from precious friends near and far who are praying for me and encouraging me while I wait for new chapters to be written.

My email address has always started with “middlechild”.  It refers, of course, to my birth order.  It always gets a smile from anyone I give it to. We middle-born children have somewhat of a reputation. But today I wondered if I should let it remind me to be another kind of “middle child” – a child of God who is OK with all the middle pages because she knows and trusts the Author of her story.  She knows He is writing a perfect ending that won’t let any of these crazy parts between the first and the final chapters be wasted.

And so, I’ll embrace them.  Sink into them.  Let them draw me closer to God.  And I’ll keep my eyes open, watching for the pages to turn and the story to move forward.  Someday I’ll read the Epilogue.  Maybe on this side of eternity, maybe on the other side.  And I’ll know once more that the Author knew exactly what He was doing all along.

Especially in the middle.

Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.”  John 13:7

Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it.  Philippians 1:6

Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith…  Hebrews 12:2

God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. 1 Corinthians 14:33