start where you are.

“Any updates?!”

I have one friend I can count on who asks me this question every time she sees me. While most friends generally ask how things are going, she asks for an update immediately and expectantly every time. She knows I’m believing for big and specific things, and she knows I will keep asking God about it for as long as it takes, even when it seems like nothing’s happening.

For a long time, it wasn’t. The only update was how God was changing me and not what I was praying for. Not yet, at least.

But I love her question. Because even on the days I’m tired and there isn’t really a lot to say, she asks like she fully expects that this could be the day she will get the answer we’re both waiting for.

It’s been playing out quite differently though. These days, there are updates. But it’s not unfolding in a straight line. God is moving, for sure. And don’t get me wrong – I am deeply grateful and wildly in awe at how I’ve seen God answer prayers down to the detail. But I often still come back to Him and ask, What’s happening here?

It’s interesting to me how I ask that same question whether I can see God answering my prayers or not. I guess that’s what it means that His ways are higher than mine. Even when He says yes to what I ask for, it still looks different than what I thought. I still look to Him and ask, What am I supposed to do with this?

A few years ago, I met Morgan Harper Nichols at an event where she would write live poetry for people in the audience. We got a ticket as we arrived and if they called your ticket, you’d go on stage and she’d write something for you. On the spot.

“How do you do that?” I asked when I met her. “How do you know what to write? And how do you immediately give it away like that?”

“I’d start with that,” she said.

“With what?”

She repeated my words back to me and said, “If that’s what came to mind, I would start with that and go from there.”

It kind of blew my mind, especially as a writer. I can get caught up in not knowing what to write or how to write it because I am resistant to start with the first thing that comes to mind. I think that if it probably won’t make it into the final draft, it doesn’t belong on the page at all. But that’s not true.

You can’t start on the final draft. You have to start where you are, with what you have.

When God called Moses and Moses questioned Him about it, God asked him, “What’s in your hand?”

When God called Gideon and Gideon questioned Him about it, God told him, “Go in the strength you have.”

When God calls me and you, and we question Him about it, I’m pretty sure His response is the same for us too.

As much as we want the final draft version of our lives, as much as we want the fully answered prayer, we have to first be present where we are. Even if (or especially if) it doesn’t look like we thought it would.

What do you have? What’s in your hand? Start where you are.

The power of God is in you, even on a Thursday.