If you think about your life and how God has been leading you, what comes to mind? For me, I have a lot of questions about why God led me to certain places instead of others. For example, we had orders to go to Japan. The children were excited, my husband was anxious to get there and start his new responsibilities, and I was resigned about moving again but looking forward to a new adventure in a foreign land. We had sold our car, packed up all of our belongings and the military movers had come and put everything into large crates to be shipped overseas. Then, the memo came from command; my husband and children could go to Japan but I was not allowed to accompany them because of my health issues. The closest hospital to our new base was too far away for them to risk sending me there. So, prayer and discussions followed, and my husband reluctantly turned down the orders. That is how we ended up in northern Maine. Let me tell you that this southern girl thought I had died and gone to hell and it was a cold and barren place.

On the way to Limestone AFB, I was driving one car with my daughter and my husband was leading us in the front car with our sons. He says jokingly that you can see the brake skid marks on the pavement all the way from the south up Interstate 95. To say that I was an unwilling participant in this little adventure is putting in mildly. The highway ended an hour from the base, so on our journey into what I considered a wilderness of trees and cemeteries (honestly, that was the view for miles and miles), we had to stop for gas. When my husband came to my car window to ask how I was doing, I remember his asking me how I was doing. He had a big smile on his face, and I burst into tears. Having passed numerous cemeteries, I sobbed,”The only reason people come here is to die!” He talked quietly to me, comforting me and letting me know that God was with us.

When we arrived at our duty location, it was the beginning of September, and it started to snow. I got the kids settled into their new schools, worked every day on unpacking boxes and making our base housing as familiar to the children as possible, with all of their favorite pictures in their rooms. As I did this, I kept looking out the window and it kept snowing. After settling in, I started looking for a teaching job. Certified in Spanish and history, I was not too hopeful that I would find a job in the one high school in Aroostook County, but when I applied, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the one Spanish teacher for the county was retiring at the end of the year, so I applied. And I ended up getting the job.

My next obstacle was driving in the snow. I am from the south, and where I came from, there is no school when it snows. An inch? No buses would run. In Maine, we had almost two hundred inches of snow the first winter I lived there. In fact, I could reach out our second story window and touch snow, not drifted snow, but snow that had freshly fallen and that’s how high it reached. The children were adjusting well, with gym classes featuring skiing and snowmobiling, and they were loving it. I, on the other hand, was terrified to drive in it. So, I prayed and asked God to help me be safe and not hurt me or anyone else. My husband’s one piece of advice was not to touch the brake. Knowing that I had signed a contract and would be teaching in the fall, I started to venture off the base and drive a little. One bright sunny day, I went to the Ames Department Store. It was about half an hour away, I didn’t see any chance of snow even though it was March, so I was confident that the roads would be plowed and safe. I had finished my errands in town and started to get into my car when the snowflakes started falling. The March snow in Maine was often a wet snow, heavy and very slick. Before I could get halfway home, the roads were covered and I was a nervous wreck. I remember heading downhill on the road and the car started to slide. I had no idea what to do, but I remembered my husband’s admonition not to touch the brake. So, I took my foot off the pedals, my hands off the steering wheel and prayed, “God, you need to take over because I have no idea what to do.” Guess what? I slid nicely to the side of the road into a snow drift and the car stopped. After I cried and thanked God, I backed up very slowly and went home very slowly praying the whole way, aware that I was a menace to others who knew what they were doing.

Was my Maine adventure a pleasant experience? Not at all! But I made good friends there with other base wives, used my crocheting skills that the wives at the Arkansas base had taught me, and I learned to lean into God. He kept providing for me in situations that seemed hopeless. One of our neighbors, a nice older lady named JoAnn, was teaching math at the same school where I taught. She offered to drive me to school every day so I didn’t have to be so stressed about winter driving. Another new friend named Joyce invited me to her house at least weekly just to get out and have coffee or tea. We even went to Canada together one weekend. (Canada was actually the closest place to shop for decent clothes for our children.)

Why am I telling you all of this? Just to let you know that I learned a lot about myself and my relationship with God from my “wilderness” experience in Maine. God did not take me immediately to the place I wanted to go (South Carolina), but I did get there eventually. Maine was a long way from home, but the four years I spent there were a school for the rest of my time as a military wife. I learned to use resources that the base provided, not to be afraid to tell people that I needed help and to always have an attitude of prayer because I never knew when the snow might start falling again.

Moses did not get to go right to the Promised Land using the shortest route possible. Instead, he went through the wilderness. And when the Israelites disobeyed and rebelled, they ended up spending forty years there, even though the journey was really only a few weeks. Paul did not go straight to Rome. Instead, he was taken prisoner, shipwrecked and finally ended up where he wanted to be all along. We have a lot of epistles penned by Paul that tell us about his experiences getting there.

My point is that we don’t know what God’s plan for us is, but He does. We don’t know why things happen the way they do, but He does. In trusting God in the wilderness, I have found that He is with me in the oases, too. He walks with me on the mountaintops and in the valleys. I’m not fond of the valley experiences, but I have learned to depend more on my Father in heaven and know that whatever I am going through will not be forever. He may be taking me the long way, but I can trust that He is always leading me in the right direction, home to Him.