You Didn’t Expect It to Be This Hard
Introduction — Headwind
You’re doing the right things. You know you are. You’ve been faithful — maybe for a long time — and you still woke up this morning carrying the weight of something that shouldn’t be this heavy. The prayer you’ve prayed a hundred times. The door that still hasn’t opened. The calling you’re sure of, and the road toward it that seems to push back at every turn.
You’re not asking whether God is real. You passed that question a long time ago. What you’re carrying now is quieter and more specific: Why is this so hard? And underneath that, the one you don’t always say out loud: Did I miss something? Did He?
I want to sit with you in that question for a few minutes before we go anywhere else. Because that question is the right place to start.
Here’s what I’ve learned — not from reading about it, but from being in it: the wind that’s pressing against you right now may not be what you think it is.
Sailors know something that most of us don’t. A boat cannot move directly into a headwind — but it doesn’t have to. A skilled sailor doesn’t wait for the wind to change. They adjust the sails, change the angle, and use the wind that’s pressing against them to generate forward motion. They tack — back and forth, at angles to the wind — and they make real progress toward a destination the weather seems to be blocking.
But the deeper thing is this: without wind, the boat goes nowhere at all. It isn’t the fair weather that fills the sail and drives the boat forward. It’s the wind. Even the wind against you.
That’s the reframe this series is built on. Not that the hard things aren’t hard — they are. Not that the wind doesn’t cost you — it does. But that what you’ve been reading as opposition may, in the hands of a God who wastes nothing, be the very force He’s using to form you into something you couldn’t have become on a calm day.
I’ve known weather that turns into seasons — where the storm stops feeling like an interruption and starts feeling like the whole story. Where you lose sight of the destination, and your resolve goes with it. Where all you have left is your trust in the Captain.
I’m not writing to you from a lighthouse. I’m writing from the deck.
Starting next Monday and for the next 20 days, we’re going to name nine specific winds — disappointment, fear, uncertainty, rejection/betrayal, unanswered prayer, loss, failure, weariness, and resistance — and we’re going to trace them through the lives of people in Scripture who felt exactly what you’re feeling. We’re going to hold them up against the character of a God who has never once been surprised by a storm, and who has been to the other side of every one you will ever face.
The arc is not confusion to clarity. It’s disorientation to formation.
What if the wind is not a mistake. Not an obstacle to outlast. Not a judgment to endure. What if it was fuel?
A Prayer for You
Jesus, I’m praying for the person reading this right now — the one who picked this up because something has been pressing hard against them and they don’t fully understand it yet. You know exactly where they are. You know what the wind has cost them already — the sleep, the confidence, the plans that didn’t hold. Meet them here, before the first day begins. Let them feel, even now, that You are already in the boat. That the weather didn’t catch You off guard. That the destination You have for them hasn’t changed. Give them enough courage to take the next step, and enough trust to believe that what’s pressing against them isn’t working against them. Not in Your hands. Amen.
Invite a friend to journey with you by sharing this post.
To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind
© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way