That Difficult In-Between Place

Many of us are in-between. It’s that horrible place where one season of our lives is ending and the new season has not begun. It sucks. I hate this place.

And maybe part of what makes it so difficult is that we did not decide this season was over.

I did not plan this ending. I did not prepare for it. I did not sit down one day and decide that it was time to move on. There was no carefully considered transition, no sense of completion, no satisfaction of having finished what I came here to do.

Something began to change. What has held us in place no longer seems able to hold us there the way it once did. I have found myself becoming increasingly aware that I cannot remain where I am but I also can’t go forward. It is very different from being ready to leave.

Sometimes we talk about seasons as though they arrive and depart with the casual precision of the calendar. One ends, another begins, and somewhere in between we neatly recognize the transition. But life rarely behaves that politely. Sometimes a season begins closing before we understand that it is closing. Sometimes things begin slipping from our hands before we have decided we are willing to let them go. And sometimes there is no new thing waiting on the other side. That is where things begin to feel less like transition and more like limbo.

I’m hearing something like this from others; “I know something is changing, but I cannot tell you exactly what. I know I cannot stay where I am for long, but I have no means to move forward yet.”

The familiar ground beneath us may no longer feel stable, while there is no visible path forward. Nothing has fully collapsed, but nothing feels secure enough to build upon yet either.

Everything feels up in the air. And that is where entering 5787 has felt particularly strange to many of us. We crossed into a new Hebraic year, but we cannot honestly say that crossing into a new year means we have entered a new season. A date changed. The calendar turned. But life did not suddenly arrange itself around a fresh beginning. If anything, the turning of the year has made the tension more noticeable.

There is all this language around new years about beginnings, expectation, direction, and what God may be doing next. And yet many of us find ourselves standing in a place where “next” is exactly what we cannot see. We do not feel as though we have stepped into something new. We feel as though something behind us is ending while whatever lies ahead has not yet begun.

That is what makes this place so unnerving. Something seems to be preventing us from staying where we are. It might be circumstances. It might be something specific. But whatever it is it’s like we cannot stay settled where we are.

It’s not that we feel like something is yet unfinished. It’s more like I have no reason to leave where I am. Yet, I feel suspended. Dislodged. As though the place that once held me is releasing me. And there is nothing comfortable about that. It’s as if we are being forced to move forward without knowing exactly what that is supposed to be.

We like movement when we know where we are going. We can endure endings when we have some sense of what they are making room for. Even uncertainty becomes easier to bear when there is at least a direction attached to it. But this is different. This is standing in a place where the old is becoming increasingly unavailable and the new remains invisible.

I wish I could tell you how long this will last. I wish I could tell you that by next week the direction will become obvious, the door will open, and whatever has been hanging in the air will finally settle. I cannot tell you that. But I can tell you something I believe we can rely upon: direction will come.

God does not leave His people in limbo forever. He leads us. He guides us. He directs our steps. And He has not suddenly stopped doing any of those things simply because, for the moment, we cannot see where we are going.

When everything feels up in the air, it is easy to begin wondering whether we are supposed to figure this out. Maybe we missed something. Maybe we should be doing something we have not done. Maybe there is some clue we have overlooked, some prayer we have not prayed, some act of faith we have failed to make that would finally get things moving.

I don’t think God has brought us this far only to stand somewhere ahead of us shouting directions we cannot hear. His Spirit is not somewhere out there waiting for us to find Him. Holy Spirit resides within us. The One who leads us is already here.

We do not have to produce the direction. We do not have to force ourselves into certainty. We couldn’t even if we tried. We do not have to muster up more faith, trust, or confidence to somehow get ourselves through.

But we can let Him carry us. For those of us that are get’er done kind of people that may not be easy. But we can trust Him to carry us through this uncomfortable and unnerving place.

If you’re like me sometimes I think we need permission to be carried. Not because we are weak. Not because we have failed to hear God. Not because we should have figured this out by now. We need to be carried because there are stretches of the journey when we simply do not have enough information to know where to put our foot next.

And only He does.

And that may be the word I want to speak into this strange beginning of 5787. 

We do not have to know the way forward before the One who leads us does.

The direction will come.

The clarity will come.

What currently feels suspended will eventually move. What seems impossible to sort out from where we are standing will not always look the way it looks today. Holy Spirit knows how to make direction unmistakable when direction is needed. We won’t miss it.

Until then, we are not abandoned in the in-between.

We are being held in it.

There is a difference.

God is not standing at a distance watching to see whether we can navigate this well enough to earn the next instruction. He is not testing our ability to remain cheerful while everything familiar shifts beneath our feet. And He is not withholding direction just to make us uncomfortable.

He is right here with us.

He has carried us through places we did not know how to navigate before. He has gotten us through things we could not see our way through before. He has brought direction out of confusion, made roads visible where we could not see one, and moved us forward when we had absolutely no idea how forward was going to happen.

He has not changed.

When the urge to figure everything out becomes overwhelming we can remember He will come through. And we know He will not leave us high and dry.

He will lead.

And when it is time to move, we will know enough to move.

We may not receive the whole map. We may only recognize the next step. But Holy Spirit is entirely capable of making that step known to us without our exhausting ourselves trying to discover it ahead of time.

So if you are standing where I am standing right now, I am not going to tell you to embrace the in-between. I am not going to tell you to enjoy it. And I am certainly not going to pretend there is something spiritually impressive about being comfortable here.

It sucks.

But we are not alone in it.

And we are not staying here forever.

Direction will come. Holy Spirit will lead. And until we can see where our feet are supposed to go next, the God who has carried us before will carry us here too. The way will clear. We will know which way to go.