I was walking the prayer path at church today, the kind of walk where your feet move but your mind is somewhere else entirely — turning over the same worries it always turns over. The ones that whisper: this is it. This is as far as you go. You’re stuck.
That’s what life does to us more often than we’d like to admit. A loss we didn’t see coming. A diagnosis that changes everything overnight. Money trouble that keeps you up at night. Someone’s opinion of you that you can’t quite shake. Some of it we bring on ourselves, some of it we never asked for — but either way, it chips away at us bit by bit. And before we notice what’s happening, doubt has moved in and settled. We start to believe this is as good as it gets. We stop moving.
That’s where my mind was when I looked down and saw an ant.
It had hit something in its path — some small obstacle I couldn’t even identify — and I watched it pause. Not panic. Not give up. It just assessed. Turned. Found another way around. And within seconds, it was moving again, no less organized, no less purposeful than before the interference ever happened.
I stood there longer than I probably needed to, just watching it.
Because that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the whole thing.
The ant didn’t waste time pretending the obstacle wasn’t there. It tested it, found it wasn’t going to move, and let that be its answer — then it stopped just long enough to see clearly, and kept going toward exactly where it was headed the whole time.
Proverbs tells us to consider the ant and be wise. I’ve always read that as a lesson about hard work and diligence — and I still believe that’s exactly what it is. But I think the resilience we see in the ant isn’t separate from that diligence. It comes from it. The ant doesn’t just wait for the obstacle to move. It does its part — assessing, adjusting, sometimes rerouting, sometimes pushing straight through. And I think that’s the invitation for us too. Diligence looks different depending on what you’re facing. If it’s a hard diagnosis, maybe it’s cleaning up the parts of your lifestyle within your control. If it’s financial strain, maybe it’s finally sitting down and looking the problem full in the face instead of around it. Whatever it is, it starts with stepping back, getting a bird’s-eye view of the situation, and asking God to show you the best route forward. And sometimes — the old saying is right — the only way around is through.
Because here’s what I know to be true: disappointment, hurt, and loss are not detours away from your purpose. They’re interruptions within it. A health problem that has you sidelined right now, a season that has you wondering how you’ll ever get through it — none of that means the path has disappeared. It means it’s time to pause. Observe. Pray. And let God show you the new route.
The ant never once looked like it had lost its way. It just looked like it was finding it.
So if you’re in a season where you feel stuck — where the obstacle in front of you feels too big to move and too permanent to wait out — I don’t think the invitation is to force your way through it, and I don’t think it’s to sit down in defeat, either. I think it’s to do what that ant did. Stop. Look at the thing honestly. Bring it to God. And trust that the way forward is still there, even if you can’t see it yet from where you’re standing.
You are not as stuck as you feel. You’re just recalculating.
What obstacle has you standing still right now? I’d love to hear what “recalculating” might look like for you.