Last week I talked about how God provided my specific desires for a new place to live in Sandy Lake years ago.  When we left Sandy Lake to serve as missionaries in Japan, our plan was to live in Sandy Lake when we returned even though we sold our home. As our missionary work was coming to an end in 2011, I searched the Internet for weeks for a house in Sandy Lake–a house that would meet our needs in this season of life at a price we could afford. I found nothing.

To my dismay, the home I found that met every criteria I’d asked for was in Greenville, a place I’d always disliked. What was God thinking? The only point in its favor was that three of our grandchildren lived there.

Seven years later as I sat at a red light on the five-minute trip to Walmart thinking of all the reasons Greenville had been the perfect location for us, I said, “Thank you, God, for not giving us what we wanted.”

If God had provided a home in Sandy Lake, we couldn’t have done child care before and after school for our grandson, Connor, who lived in Greenville. We wouldn’t have been five minutes away from all the home sporting events our sports-minded grandchildren participated in. We wouldn’t have been in the same town as Keystone Adolescent Center for whom we did foster care and respite, American Scholar for whom we gave a home to an international student, and Fresh Grounds where I join the Tuesday morning prayer meeting each week to pray for Downtown Ministries.

In the OMS Outreach magazine, Mark Dinnage, OMS Taiwan Field Director, says, “…Michelle and I have often commented how grateful we are that God didn’t do what we expected or asked for. What we perceived as God saying no was actually Him saying yes to something even better.”

The same could be said of our experience. God said no to our request for a home in Sandy Lake because He had a better plan for this season. We still love Sandy Lake and still miss our friends there, but we’ve also come to love Greenville and our new friends here. Even though the years of adjustment were hard, we understand now why God chose to “prepare a place for us” here, and we’re so thankful He didn’t give us what we asked for!

Heavenly Father, help us trust you when your answer is no and we don’t understand why. Remind us that you say,  “I know the plans I have for us, plans not for evil but for good to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).