Many people have asked how I am doing. Some watch me processing through the aftermath of the explosion of my marriage and want to know how I’ve seemed to wrestle through it and find contentment and health.

It’s a simple answer and a complicated one. I want to encourage others, yet I don’t want to bog anyone down with the heaviness of it. It might seem like an oversimplification to some, as if it is a pat answer that I give just because it’s easy. Here it is:

I am finding contentment and health – spiritual, emotional, relationship, physical – because of God. Because of choosing him.

But there is nothing easy or excessively simple about it. It is a constant choice, and I battle against other choices at times – bitterness, anger, jealousy. They don’t stick around long, because I’ve developed habits of weeding them out often and quickly, but they are there.

Choosing to move forward with God, going constantly deeper with him, emptying my life for him to fill, inviting and trusting him to heal me, is a one-step-at-a-time choice. A choice swimming among many other choices. Sometimes I move forward with a spring in my step, and other times, it is like trudging through a quagmire of sludge or leaning forward into biting blizzard winds.

It is exhausting, yet exhilarating at times. It is burdensome yet full of freedom.

I share because I know many others struggle with whatever you are facing. It might have a completely different context, but the process is often similar. So many of our journeys have more similarities than differences. And each of our journeys include a myriad of choices. We can get overwhelmed and stuck, or we can let God orient our lives and trust his direction to take one step. Then another. And another.

Take one step forward today.