Did I Make the Right Decision? Learning to Trust God Through Uncertain Seasons

Trusting the Lord with your life’s decisions is such tricky business, isn’t it? I really do believe God speaks—sometimes loudly, sometimes in the quiet nudges that only make sense later. Our move to South Carolina felt like one of those unmistakably loud seasons. Door after door swung wide open. Little blessings popped up everywhere like breadcrumbs. It was as if the Lord Himself was saying, “Come on, this way.”

But I still find myself wondering how God works and what His leading looks like in the in-between moments. If you’ve listened to my podcast episode about the miracle home God provided after we had to short sell our condo, you know without a doubt He was our Jehovah-Jireh in that season. His hand was all over it.

Yet when those two years were up—the two years we were house-sitting for our friends while they lived in China—I sometimes wonder if the next move was us trying to make something work rather than God opening the way. That’s the thing about hindsight: it makes you curious about what you didn’t know at the time.

At that point, my husband was working right outside New York City. Living close to his job would’ve meant sky-high rents in apartments squeezed onto the second or third floor. And with three little kids, homeschooling, and being home all day, I desperately wanted easy access to a yard. I didn't want to spend my days explaining why my kids weren’t in school or to feel cooped up above someone else’s life.

So we moved further west—further away from his job—to make the yard and the budget and the homeschool life all fit. I prayed about the move, but if I’m honest, it wasn’t with the same intensity or surrender as the move before it. We were still in a tight financial season, but not as desperate. And desperation has a way of sharpening our spiritual ears, doesn’t it?

The Lord still met us with blessings. We ended up in a little townhouse squeezed between two older ladies, with only two bedrooms—meaning all three kids shared—but each bedroom had its own bathroom, which felt like luxury in that season. And the sweetest gifts were the friendships: one of my closest friends lived right there near us, and another dear friend moved from Upstate NY to a home ten minutes away. Those felt like the Lord was near.

But at the same time, the cost of those blessings showed up in my husband’s commute. His job was demanding, and traffic outside NYC is no joke. He’d wake up painfully early to beat the morning rush, then leave work late or sit for hours trying to get home. By the time he walked through the door—if he made it for dinner—he was exhausted, with maybe twenty minutes to see the kids before opening his laptop again.

I could feel the strain on him. I could feel it on me too. I was homeschooling, pouring everything into our days, and longing for a little margin. He tried to give it when he could, but the reality was: we had built a life that cost him more than we realized.

After three years, we finally moved again—this time to a tiny home just fifteen minutes from his job and with no highway between us. The relief was instant. It felt like we could breathe again.

And yet, I still catch myself circling back to the same question: Was that middle move the Lord’s will—or was it just us doing the best we could with what we understood?

What if we’d chosen the tiny apartment close to his job?
Would those three years have been easier?
Would the strain on him—and on us—have been lighter?

I don’t know. And I think that’s the point.

Main Point: The Will of God Isn’t Always a Single Perfect Path—It’s a Faithful Journey

If there’s anything this season taught me, it’s that life isn’t a neat line of “right” or “wrong” decisions. It’s a million intersections where we do our best to listen, to trust, to take the next step in faith. Sometimes the path is unmistakably marked by God’s provision. Other times it’s quieter, foggier, or full of choices that all seem imperfect.

But even then—especially then—God doesn’t abandon us to figure it out alone.
He walks with us, blesses us in unexpected ways, and gently uses every season, even the stressful ones, to shape us into people who know Him more deeply.

In the end, the goal was never to nail the “perfect” decision.
It was always to walk closely with the One who never stops leading.