When What We Want Isn’t What We Get

I’ve always been a little jealous when looking out my back door. I know that Jesus tells us to give to Him envy, but it’s hard to hand your desires over when it seems like everybody else has something you can’t have.

Our family dreamed of having a patio for years. We live in a nice-looking neighborhood, although many days, our special needs crew doesn’t quite fit in. Instead of fancy cars and precisely manicured lawns, our backyard is filled with toys, weeds, and holes from our dogs we still haven’t been able to fix. Usually, our lives are occupied with other time-intensive things like autistic meltdowns and helping our sons treat each other in a manner that reflects God’s heart, regardless of their makeup or abilities.

Most days, we are fine being different than the majority of families. But when it came to our backyard, we wanted to have what all our neighbors had – an outdoor space to rest, play, and connect. Having a patio would provide a needed respite for our family.

You can imagine our excitement when the time finally came to get our own patio! The morning they poured the concrete was the hottest day of summer. I watched the workers stamp the concrete with my perfectly picked pattern as the blazing sun beat down with its unyielding rays.

Halfway through the pour, we heard a knock on our front door. I opened it only to find our contractor shaking his head, wiping the sweat off his red face.

“We lost it.”

I didn’t understand. “Lost what?”

“We lost the concrete. I’ve never seen this in 22 years of construction, but the concrete melted and wouldn’t keep the stamp. We’ve got to jackhammer it out and pour again.”

As I closed the door, I tried not to overreact. It was disappointing, but I assumed everything would be okay, just delayed.

What followed in the next weeks could be summed up as a series of unfortunate events. After jackhammering half the patio away, the new concrete color didn’t match the first. There was an ugly black line down the center of the patio where the concrete started to burn. The middle section’s concrete was scraped up and couldn’t be fixed without starting from scratch, something the contractor refused to do.

More mistakes surfaced until my husband and I accepted a hard reality. The patio of our dreams had disappeared. Half looked as it should, while the other half looked like it was reluctantly birthed under harsh conditions. Even the neighbors made comments about its bizarre appearance. The blessing we were praying for suddenly became a burden.

In my flesh, I knew I had the right to be upset. I had the right to demand every detail be satisfied to our expectations. We paid money for this needed oasis. And yet, even though our perfect patio wasn’t granted to us, Jesus asked us to surrender the unwanted outcome to Him.

Similar scenarios like ours can surface for anyone in life, and often they are exponentially more disappointing and discouraging. We didn’t get what we wanted. We encounter realities we wish we didn’t receive because they are nothing like the life we long to live. Fractured relationships. Unexpected illness. Demanding jobs. Sudden loss. There’s no shortage of “but why’s” on our list.

Still, amid the heartache, our Creator gives us the opportunity to perceive our problems through a different lens. While my husband and I saw how everything with our patio fell apart, our children saw how everything fell into place. They absolutely love it! Our boys have their best light-saber battles and picnics on the concrete we used to criticize. To them, this sacred space is nothing but bliss.

God has used this tale of two patios, as I affectionately call it, to teach me an essential lesson…

Being perfect isn’t a prerequisite for being used for good. Just because something has blemishes doesn’t mean it can’t be a blessing.

When we think about it, God could have easily passed on using humans as ambassadors for His Kingdom. We are flawed and make mistakes repeatedly.

Yet, the Savior hung on a tree because His love was greater than our sin. The Bible says, “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 ESV) God pursued us because we were important but also imperfect.

If we fear our flaws, we really shouldn’t because imperfections point to our need for Jesus, the true Perfecter of our faith. As God’s children, we can rest assured knowing God is asking us to be faithful followers, not faultless. We are saints who are being sanctified. And throughout this entire process, the Father who created us also calls us good and brings good out of all circumstances happening in our life. What hope this brings as we steer through uninvited and sometimes unfair situations!

I’ve decided I like my patio and its story. God used its unique and initially unwanted design to remind me how beauty and blessing can be experienced in brokenness. Looking out my back door, I don’t see a mistake. I see a metaphor for the way God uses us – people who are not ashamed of our weaknesses but boast about God’s grace that is sufficient to cover anything we lack or need.

Everything we could ever want is found in the Father’s faithful hands.