Today I noticed that there are three Exit doors in my church’s sanctuary.

Actually, there are four doors in the sanctuary but only three of them have exit signs over them.

Why on earth am I talking about Exit doors??

Let me explain….

Today after work there wasn’t anyone at church except for me so I decided to sit in the sanctuary for a while before I went home. I had a lot of my mind and I felt like I just needed some time to breathe and also to just sit with and listen to God.

The sanctuary at my church is a wonderful place to sit in peace and for some reason when I am in there I feel somehow extra close to God.

For a while now I’ve been feeling called towards something a bit different than the path God’s had me on for the past few years.  Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about putting away my fear (I’m Not Afraid of What You Think of Me).  It was about surrendering my fear of what others think of me.  In the process of surrendering my fear, I also found out that surrendering the fear of what others thought of me was something I needed to do so I could move forward to do this new thing he’s asking me to do.

So I surrendered but now I found myself trying to figure out the how’s and the what do I need to do to get it all moving.

It began feeling just way too big and also hard. I actually really like my life the way it is now and things have actually become quite comfortable. I’m not sure I was ready for any new life changes.

I’ve known for quite some time now that all God stuff is usually somehow life changing. I also know that God has brought me to places that have felt way too big before, but I realize now that he was way bigger and most of those places that used to feel too big and seemed scary are now not scary at all.

So now that I am comfortable I also kept wondering why the sudden switch to something new? Why wouldn’t God just use me where he has me now? For once I finally feel like I know what I am doing.

questions – questions

and so there I sat…

Waiting…

Listening for God.

It was very quiet for a really long time and then I saw …  a red ‘Exit’ sign.

And then I saw another…

and another!

I’m not sure how it happened but suddenly I realized my mind had wandered to how many ways there were to exit this one room.

Four doorways to be exact. Three of which were clearly labeled with a bright lighted ‘Exit’ on top.

I tried to get my mind back to listening for God but then I began thinking about how with all of those exit doors just how easy it would be to get out of that room if someone were to need to get out in a hurry.

I was sitting there thinking about exits and when suddenly … Flashback to six years ago… I sat in the parking lot of this very building afraid to come in. Thank you to Jesus taking me by the hand and walking with me I managed to make my way into this same room.  I know this may sound silly but I was scared to be there that day.  All those Exit doors were there then too but I thankfully I didn’t use any of them. Somehow I knew that choosing to stay was truly my only way out that day. That day I didn’t need to escape the room, though instead what I needed to escape was the life I had been living, or maybe I should call it the life I had been dying…because the life I was living back then was not life.

I chose to not exit the room that day but I did make the choice to exit my old life. To exit my old life seems like it would be the easiest choice but now looking back I realized it may have actually been the harder choice because there was soon to be more feelings of uncomfortable to come.

New people entered my life and things had to change. It seemed hard at first but then but one day I realized life was really good now. So so GOOD.

I learned that in each new challenge or hard place something pretty cool always seemed to follow.

So today I sat in the dark sanctuary pondering another new path and pretty much knowing that it will most likely be uncomfortable and possibly hard… but I have a choice.

Do I take the new path or do I take the nearest exit?

This may sound weird but I’m gonna go ahead and say it anyway… “I think God used exit signs to give me a sign today!“

I had a choice to make – I could take my exit or I could walk with him in faith.

The new path may seem scary and big but my GOD is way BIGGER!

So there was no exit for this lady today!

To be continued….

Have a great Friday!