Not The Life I Would Have Picked…

After a lifetime of disappointments and double-crosses, there’s a pivotal line in the book of Genesis that Joseph conveys to his brothers that has been speaking to me lately:

“What you meant for evil, God used for good.”

My life experiences weren’t “evil” in the same sense—no brother sold me into slavery (though if you’ve worked in church-world long enough, you may have felt the emotional equivalent). But I can look back now and see moments where the enemy could have used my circumstances to destroy me:
Moments of disappointment, disillusionment, trauma, grief.
Moments where despair could have become the final word.

And yet, somehow, it didn’t.
Not because of my own grit and determination, but because God was present.

When I was twelve, listening to a missionary on a Sunday night, sensing God’s call on my life to serve His people; I thought ministry would be simple.  Not easy, but at least predictable. I had a naïve picture of how my life would unfold—orderly, meaningful, consistent. I didn’t expect comfort, but I certainly didn’t expect collapse.

Yet collapse came.
Burning quickly out of pastoral ministry…
Being told I’d misheard God’s voice…
Feeling like a failure to my family and to the calling I thought I carried.

The enemy would have loved to calcify that shame.
To turn it into bitterness, cynicism, or a vow never to trust again.

But God didn’t let it stick.

We moved to Calgary, and I found myself pulled into disaster response—ironically, a job with enough trauma exposure to crush a normal, feeling person. I stepped into crisis after crisis, convinced that because I was doing God’s work, I would be immune to the cost.

I wasn’t.

The nightmares, flashbacks, and hypervigilance came anyway.
The enemy would have gladly used that season to undo me entirely—to hollow me out, to drown me in other people’s tragedies until I couldn’t tell their pain from my own.

But God sustained me.
Even when I didn’t recognize it as sustaining.

Then came the hardest chapter: Kimberley’s diagnosis.
Caring for her while raising our kids and watching life as we knew it unravel.
The enemy would have loved to use that season to destabilize my faith, destroy my hope, and swallow me whole in despair.

And I felt that pull many days.

But again—God preserved me.
Not with some dramatic rescue or miraculous healing, but with daily mercy.
Quiet survival.
Strengthened weakness.

Joseph’s line keeps ringing in my ears because it reframes everything:
"What was meant for harm, God used for good."

Not because the harm wasn’t real.
Not because the pain wasn’t devastating.
But because God refuses to waste any part of our story.

He weaves even the ugliest threads into a pattern that, somehow, still leads to life.

Now I stand in a season of ministry I never imagined—one shaped by wounds, not naïveté; by honesty, not idealism; by dependence, not bravado. And I can see something I couldn’t see at twelve, or twenty, or thirty, or even five years ago:

God has taken every heartbreak, every obstacle, every collapse, every loss, and is using it for good.
Not in a sentimental way.
Not in a “tie a ribbon on suffering” way.
But in the way of a God who promised to “make all things new” and to “complete the good work He began.”

There have been moments in my journey where the enemy would have delighted to crush me.
But God’s sustaining presence turned what could have destroyed me into something that is remaking me.

I wouldn’t choose the path I’ve walked.
But I wouldn’t exchange what it’s producing.
Because I can now say with Joseph:

“What was meant for harm, God is using for good.