Do you remember in school when you would sit down for class and the teacher would announce a “pop quiz”? What was you immediate reaction? Mine was panic! My hands would get sweaty, my heart rate would go up a little and I panicked! Most of the time I did fine but it was the fact that I didn’t know before hand that the test was coming so I couldn’t even scan through the chapter quick before school, right?!

Sometimes I feel like that is my life. I look back and think about what I thought my life would be when I was a grown up and wonder if this is it? I don’t mean that in a bad way, I love my life, my family, my husband etc. I just never pictured myself where I am at now.

Just when you are in high school you start thinking about where you want to go in your life and picture what it will look like but you can never actually know for sure that what you pictured is actually how it will turn out. Well, maybe not never but it’s very unlikely. But just when you think you are starting to figure out where you are headed and things are going so well something happens and throws you off a little. It could be a job that you’ve been waiting for but you’ll have to relocate, or a significant other has to move for work. Maybe there is an accident in your family you have to work out how to handle that situation. Maybe you got pregnant unexpectedly so you have to plan for that a couple years before you thought you would. It could be anything.

Life seems to throw us a lot of “pop quizzes” and I haven’t studied for any of them. 5 years ago my husband fell off a roof in the middle of January and fell 15 feet to the frozen, ice hard ground. He ended up breaking both legs. This was 1 year after we bought a company. We were not ready to have him be gone from work, running a new company, for a week or 2. He ended up having an external fixator on one leg and a boot on the other, so a wheelchair it was for the next 4 weeks for him. We did not have a handicap accessible house at the time, no way to get a wheelchair inside let alone through our very narrow interior doorways. Luckily my brother-in-law was a contractor at the time and was able to build us a wheelchair ramp before we got home from the hospital 3 days later.

There was a time when my anxiety go so bad that I didn’t want to drive to work just a few blocks from my home. I wasn’t ready for that test! But together we figured it out and got my anxiety under control.

Right now we are dealing with some stuff with our 15 year old. I didn’t study for this! They don’t hand out books when you have kids on how to deal with certain issues you might encounter in the future. I’m being tested.

The only thing I’ve know through all of these tests and trials that I personally have had in my life is that while they don’t give you a book on parenting and how to handle these “pop quizzes” we are thrown, God is with me through all of them and He has ALL the answers! And he is not keeping them from me, if I ask Him for help, He gives it. He’s not thinking, “good luck, hope you make it through this one! ” He’s thinking, “just ask me for help. I know the answer and I want you to have it but you just have to ask.”

While we don’t physically have the book in our hands, we do have access to the answers if we’ll just get out of our heads and ask for it. It’s easier said than done for sure but if you are at a loss as to what to do, why not try asking for the answer? You may just get it!