By Eddie · A word from the storm we are still standing in
The contract was signed. The repairs were done. The house in Heath was ready. Cindy and I were two weeks from closing — two weeks from carrying boxes back through the same front door, two weeks from sleeping under one roof again, two weeks from a separation of more than a year finally coming to an end.
Then the contract was withdrawn.
If you have ever stood in that exact place — where the thing you prayed for was almost in your hands, and then it was simply gone — you know the silence that follows. It is not a loud grief. It is a quiet one. It settles in the chest. And it whispers a single, exhausting question: What is the point of trying anymore?
This post is for you. And honestly, it is for me.
When You Did Everything Right and It Still Fell Apart
There is a particular kind of pain that does not come from doing wrong. It comes from doing everything right and watching it collapse anyway. We did the repairs. We prepared the home. We obeyed what we believed God had set before us. Selling this house was never just a transaction — it was the bridge back to each other. So when the buyer walked away, it did not simply cancel a sale. It delayed a reunion. It reopened a wound. It devastated Cindy, and it broke something in my heart too.
Here is the lie that arrives in moments like these — and it arrives dressed up as wisdom: If God were truly good, and if you were really following Him, it would not hurt like this.
Scripture says otherwise. Galatians 6:9 tells us, “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” Notice the assumption buried inside that verse. Paul does not say you might grow weary. He assumes you will be tempted to. The command is not “never feel like giving up.” The command is “do not lose heart” — do not let the weariness make the final decision.
God Is With Us Inside the Storm
So how do we trust God while the storm is still overhead and the rain has not stopped?
We begin by remembering that the Bible never promises a life without storms. It promises a God who is with us inside them.
“Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”Isaiah 41:10 · NASB1995
Read that slowly. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you. Three promises — and not one of them is “I will remove the difficulty.” God’s nearness is not a reward for a calm life. It is His provision for a hard one.
And Proverbs 3:5–6 hands us the posture to take:
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”Proverbs 3:5–6 · NASB1995
Trust is not the absence of questions. Trust is the decision to lean — not on what you can see, not on what makes sense, not on the closing date you had circled on the calendar, but on the LORD Himself.
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What I Believe: God Is in Complete Control
Here is what I have come to believe, and what I am holding onto right now with both hands.
God is in complete control. Nothing — not a withdrawn contract, not a delayed reunion, not a single day of this separation — happens without His permission. Daniel 4:35 says of God that “He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand.” Ephesians 1:11 tells us He “works all things after the counsel of His will.” All things. Not most things. Not only the things that go well. All of them.
That truth could sound cold if we stopped there. But Scripture does not stop there. The same God who is sovereign over the storm is the God who loves you inside it.
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”Romans 8:28 · NASB1995
He does not waste pain. He allows His children to walk through valleys not to destroy them, but to build them — to deepen them, to equip them. James 1:2–4 is blunt about it: the testing of our faith produces endurance, and endurance is allowed to finish its work so that we become “complete, lacking in nothing.”
And there is a purpose that reaches beyond us:
“…the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.”2 Corinthians 1:3–4 · NASB1995
Did you catch the word so? God comforts you on purpose, with a purpose. The comfort He pours into you in your worst week is meant to spill out of you into someone else’s. Your storm is quietly becoming someone’s shelter. You simply cannot see it yet.
So — Do I Trust God?
Let me ask the question plainly. It is the one I have had to ask myself this week. Not do I understand Him. Not do I like what He is doing. Not is this easy. Simply this: do I trust Him?
“Yes. Absolutely yes.”
Not because the pain is gone — it is not. Cindy still grieves. The reunion is still delayed. The home in Heath still has not sold. But I can say yes because of a discipline I would put into your hands for your own storm: I looked back.
When You Cannot See the Road Ahead, Look at the Road Behind
When I look back over this separation, I do not see abandonment. I see His arms around us the whole way. I see provision that arrived right on time and never a day before. I see strength on the mornings I had none of my own. I see Cindy sustained when I could not sustain her. I see grace — in a hundred small mercies I would have missed entirely if I were not watching for them.
Psalm 55:22 says, “Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you.” He has sustained us. That is not a wish. That is a record. And a God who has sustained you faithfully up to this very day does not run out of strength tomorrow.
This is why gratitude is not a soft afterthought for the believer — it is a weapon. When you count what God has already done, you starve the fear of its oxygen. Our gratitudes in this season are too numerous to count. Lamentations 3:22–23 reminds us that “the LORD’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease… They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.” New every morning. Including this one.
So here is how you trust God when you feel like giving up. You do not manufacture a feeling. You make a decision — and you make it on the evidence. You remember His character: He is good, even now. You remember His record: He has carried you before. You cast the burden — you actually hand it over, instead of carrying what was never yours to carry, because 1 Peter 5:7 says to cast “all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” And then you refuse to let the weariness write the ending of the story.
“Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines… yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.”Habakkuk 3:17–18 · NASB1995
Habakkuk’s yet is the most defiant word in that passage. The crops failed — yet. The contract was withdrawn — yet. The separation continues — yet. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
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Why We Can Trust Him at All: Friday and Sunday
And this is where every storm must finally land — at the God of our salvation.
Because the deepest reason we can trust God is not that He has fixed our circumstances. It is what He did at the cross. There was a Friday when it looked, to every human eye, as though God had withdrawn the contract — as though the promise had failed, as though death had won. The disciples felt like giving up. They did give up.
And then came Sunday.
Psalm 30:5 tells us that “weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.” The cross is the proof that what looks like the end in God’s hands is never the end. He took the worst thing that ever happened and made it the doorway of salvation for everyone who would believe. If God can be trusted with a cross, He can be trusted with a house in Heath. He can be trusted with your separation, your diagnosis, your prodigal, your closed door. The God who did not spare His own Son will not abandon you now.
So Cindy and I keep going. We keep trusting. We keep believing that the same loving arms that have carried us this far are not letting go now. The home will sell in His timing. The reunion will come in His timing. And whatever He builds in us through this waiting, He will use to comfort someone else who is standing exactly where we are standing today.
If you are reading this and you feel like giving up — please don’t. Look back. Count the mercies. Cast the burden. Trust the God of your salvation. He is writing an ending you cannot see yet.
A Request & A Promise
Pray for us — for Cindy, for our home, for our reunion.
And we will pray for you, right in the middle of whatever storm you are walking through today.
SmithForChrist
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— and trusting the One who holds both. ✦