In 2017, my family took a wonderful trip to Colorado for Spring Break. We made so many
memories on that vacation. We visited the Garden of the Gods, drove up to Estes Park, rode
horses, and spent good, old-fashioned quality time together as a family.

On the last day of our vacation, we planned to leave early in the morning to drive back to
Oklahoma. Almost two hours into our road trip, my Dad looked at my Stepmom and said “Where
is my phone?” As we pulled off the road to search the car for his phone, my Dad realized he
didn’t have his watch or his wallet either. My Stepmom frantically called the hotel and we held
out hope that my Dad’s belongings were still in the room.

Thankfully, the valuables were exactly where he had left them: under the pillow he had used.
We made an immediate U-turn on the highway and headed back to Colorado Springs. At the
time, I was 17 years old, annoyed and angry at my Father for “wasting” two hours of drive time
(to be fair, my Stepmom was probably pretty annoyed too). For the rest of the trip, I was bitter. I
had a bad attitude, I was mean to my brother, and all because of one hiccup on our trip.

This might seem trivial compared to the grand scheme of real-life hiccups… But I had lost sight
of everything GOOD that had happened on our trip. I had lost sight of how much time, effort,
and money my parents had spent to ensure a memorable family vacation.

Sometimes we lose sight of God’s miracles in the mess. We often skip the messy parts because
we don’t even want to deal with it on our own so we’ll fast-forward to see the highlights, who
won, and to find out about the prize. We usually don’t care about the details and we definitely
don’t care about the process. We know the miracles God can perform in our lives but sometimes
can be ignorant of the suffering. There has to be balance too, so don’t focus so much on the
mess that you miss the miracle either.

In my own life, I only saw the mess but didn’t understand how something really meaningful
could be birthed out of it. There’s a term called “Stick and Stay,” stick it out and stay with it until
your breakthrough occurs. If the breakthrough hasn’t happened then you must stick and stay
until it has. God sees you in your mess, and He loves you even more for it!