Today’s guest post is from Karis Wagner of North Carolina. If you’ve ever questioned the providence of God or walked through a time of confusion as you’ve walked through hard things, this one’s for you.

No one schedules a car wreck into their day. No one plans for it. No one sets a time, place, and date. All we can do is pray for safety at the beginning of the day, for ourselves and our family.

My mind goes through several thoughts in quick succession:

I’m not hurt.

No one was in the car with me (thank God).

The people in the other car are okay.

Then…

Did this really just happen to me?

What could I have done better?

Why was I here at the wrong place at the wrong time?

During those few weeks, I located and purchased a safer vehicle. The insurance companies placed blame for the accident on the other party for turning into my lane in front of me. I started going to chiropractic care regularly… and yet I couldn’t shake the feelings that had sunk into my bones. When all I wanted to do was move on, I found myself stuck.

The next few weeks after that are a haze, dragging by slowly and yet rushing on and giving me no time to get my feet underneath me. Taking my pre-scheduled day off to go car shopping rather than going out for holiday traditions with my family. The pain in my back and chest relegating me to chiropractic care twice a week for almost two months after that. The seemingly endless phone calls with insurance companies. The emotional carousel of elation, sadness, and irrational anger that would come on at random.

I remember crying as I confessed all my confusion and hurt to my dad. How I felt that everything had gone wrong, how I couldn’t stop the misery that refused to leave my chest, and most of all, how I kept questioning why this happened to me?

I had been driving safely.

I hadn’t been somewhere I shouldn’t have been.

Why had God allowed this to happen to me?

The words my dad said, while staring at me as if I’d lost my mind, broke me out of the fog I’d been trapped in for weeks:

“You were driving a vehicle that wasn’t safe anyway. We probably wouldn’t have been able to sell it. Now you’ve got a sweet insurance payout and a down payment on a safer car. You needed chiropractic care anyway and now it’s covered. You’d already taken the day off work and our plans had changed: we had a day to go shopping with you. God put you exactly where you needed to be when you needed to be there. He’s brought nothing but good out of this.”

As I thought on his words, I felt torn between laughing and crying. What I had assumed was a disaster that I could have avoided if I had just been more careful (if I had just not gone into town, if I had just skipped one of my stops, if I had just left the parking lot from another exit, if I had just…) was a blessing— many blessings— in disguise.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

In my frustrations, I had questioned, “Why did God let this happen?” Now I had my answer.

All the problems I’d been putting off because I saw no way to solve them had been solved by Someone greater than I.

From my limited vantage point, I couldn’t see the way the dominoes were set up until they fell: not a single thing that happened that afternoon had surprised God. He had a plan in all of it.

I didn’t know the end of the story, but He did. His plans for me were plans of peace.

So often when things don’t go according to plan, we tend to question God. It’s very easy to assume that bad things are happening for no reason whatsoever or that maybe we did something wrong to deserve it. But Romans 8:28 reminds us that “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

God can take the bad things in our lives and turn them into something beautiful.

Yes, we live in a sin-sick world, and yes, terrible things happen because we live in a fallen society. A car wreck can turn into the worst pain imaginable for someone and we are to weep with them that weep (Rom. 12:15). Our God sees and knows our pains.

But often the troubles and trials we go through are not because of us: they are for us. For our good… for our growth. God uses each and every experience in our lives to shape us and mold us into His image and draw us closer to him. His thoughts toward us are never evil; His thoughts toward us are thoughts of peace. In His perfect will, He often allows things we never would have put into our plans for ourselves.

Like a master painter, God designs and structures our lives. He carefully plans each brushstroke and color, creating His plan with perfect patience and infinite kindness. In our humanity, we can’t always see what He has planned, but we don’t have to see the full picture: we just have to know and trust the Artist.