Have you ever been that one person in the grocery store who is getting in everyone else’s way? Every time you depart from an aisle, someone else is trying to enter it.  Each item you want to investigate is located behind the old friends having a reunion conversation that can’t happen anywhere else. You are moving too slow for the person who is rushing through the store to grab only a few things, and you are moving too fast for the old couple walking side-by-side in a narrow aisle. There is simply no where you go that someone else isn’t rolling their eyes at the inconvenience you are causing.  

Have you ever been that person? I have. And it is uncomfortable. When I have experienced this, all I can think about is getting to the safety of my car – away from the madness that tells me I am “in the way”, “out of place”, or simply put: “a pain in the ass”. 

Right now, that is how I feel about my relationship with God.  

I am in the way. 

Everything I do or say seems to interfere with His plans for me. The recent surfacing of so many issues that I need to work on shows me that I know practically nothing about how to follow Him.  I wonder if, after all this time of thinking I have been carrying out His will for me, I have only been living in a state of hypocritical denial that has perfected the art of rationalization and martyrdom. 

That’s a lot to wonder about. And, it’s painful…until I remember the one thing I have learned and embraced during the years and years of becoming more aware of God’s presence in my life:  He loves me. 

No matter what I am doing or not doing, God loves me. 

No matter how annoying I am being or feeling – no matter how tired I feel – no matter how many times I fail and end up marinating in self-pity – He loves me.  

Even now, as I feel like my defects of character and human failings are in His way, and I wish I could just run away to the safety of a space where He is not, He loves me.  

I am not in His way – I am on His way. As I stumble, rip my hand away from His, and run off His path to investigate a shiny object that promises something unrealistic, He looks on me with compassionate understanding…because He loves me. 

And it is most important to remember that it is because He loves me that He will never leave me – even if I am, simply put, “a pain in the ass.” 


If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
Psalm 139:8, NKJV