Thought Tapestries

What gives you direction in life?

What Gives Me Direction

God—blunt as dawn, the fixed and certain star
that holds when every plan has come undone.
Not thundered from the stage or shouted far,
but lived in ordinary days I’ve run.

A youth pastor once trained these eyes to see
the ocean in a stranger’s picture frame,
to catch the side channels flowing quietly—
unspoken needs, odd facts, a hidden name.
I hunt them still, a thinker bent to find
the Maker’s fingerprints in what most miss,
because the world keeps whispering His mind
in details large and small, in sky and abyss.

We longed for a daughter; my wife had picked her name.
Seventeen years of waiting, prayer, and trust—
church pews our anchor while the seasons came.
Bible college called me early; books and hope in hand,
yet I am no fundraiser chasing distant doors.
“If God had wanted it,” I learned to stand,
“He would have provided.” That truth still shores.

While reading Psalms (Psalm 22 my eager goal),
the nineteenth struck like lightning, clear and deep:
“The heavens declare the glory of God”—no scroll,
no spoken words, yet knowledge oceans keep.
Day unto day and night to night they pour
their silent voice through all the earth below.
That passage stopped me, opened up a door—
creation itself a side channel in full glow.

Then Emily arrived, Down syndrome’s unplanned light,
and every blueprint bent beneath God’s will.
Three heart surgeries through the darkest night—
the last one after cancer claimed my wife and stilled
our home. In hospital halls I learned to stand,
tending monitors, tubes, and fragile days.
My new love watched that steady, father’s hand
and saw the quiet evidence of faith.

If Christians were rounded up tomorrow, would there be
enough in me to earn a guilty plea?
The proof is not in grand displays or creeds,
but showing up, observing needs, and trust
that walks the road as written, not as dreamed—
caregiving hands, a listening ear, the must
of noticing glory where the heavens gleam.

Direction is not mine to force or chart;
it’s following the Hand that writes each turn,
trusting provision from a faithful heart,
and reading every side channel I discern.

God gives the path. I simply walk,
observing, serving, holding what is true.
In every quiet sky and every unexpected talk,
His quiet compass carries me through.