We get turned around for a variety of reasons.

• We’re in a lot of pain, experiencing a crisis, and it’s all too confusing to figure out which way to turn, which way is up and which way is down.
• We thought we were on the right track, but we got confused, and now we’ve taken enough wrong turns to not even be certain which way we’re headed and how to get to where we want to go.
• We don’t really want to be clear on our directions. We’d rather wing it, be adventurous, and fly by the seat of our pants.
• We don’t even know we’re turned around. Things that shouldn’t make sense seem perfectly sensible. Things that make sense seem ignorant. But we’re clueless. We don’t think we are, but we are.

Unless we know where to turn, who to cry out to, where to stand on a firm foundation, we will flounder, whether we know it or not, whether we want to admit it or not.

We can only recognize we’re off track if we know the right track. We must be able to discern the right from the wrong.

Right and wrong aren’t want we want them to be. They’re not what make us most or least comfortable. Right and wrong really aren’t about us at all.

God knows. He cares. He instructs. He corrects. He defines. He equips. He challenges.

A dear friend is struggling with some ugly, devastating health issues. Her husband regularly posts updates for a small army of us who have been loved by her over the years and continue to love her the best we can through what seems to be a downward-spiralling process. Her husband is transparent through the good and bad moments. He recently posted,

We do not see this circumstance as a reason to question God’s goodness but we see God’s goodness as a reason to question our perceptions of this circumstance.

Yes.

This family, like so many of us at some point in our lives, have been turned around and around and upside down. It feels like one of those insane amusement park rides that blurs the lines of the horizons and makes it impossible to make out anything on the ground or in the sky. Yet in the middle of the chaos, right smack in the center as the rest of the world seems to spin out of control, there is certainty. Certainty in God and His perspective, His goodness, and His will.

It doesn’t make sense, but He is still in the center of it.

No matter how turned around we feel at the moment.