Trusting God’s plan when you can’t see the whole picture can be difficult. Join me for a day of homemaking, homeschooling, and homesteading as I reflect on God’s faithfulness.
There is something that happened to me yesterday that really took me off guard. I was at Costco, and I noticed this lovely family because they were a large family, and they were all dressed so nicely. They looked like they had just come from church, and they just caught my attention.
I had my whole rowdy family with me, and when I was walking through the produce section, the woman from that family came up to me and asked if I did YouTube. I said yes, and she told me that she knew me from my YouTube videos and that they had been a blessing to her. And honestly, I was completely flabbergasted. I wish I could tell you that I had this beautiful response and asked her all kinds of questions, but I was so surprised that someone recognized me that I don’t think I said much of anything.
So if you are the lovely lady with the very well-put-together family who approached my family where there were kids hanging off the edge of the Costco shopping cart, I just want to say thank you for coming up and saying “hi” and I really wish I had composed a better response to your generous feedback about my videos.
I see the views and the numbers, and I know when a video does well and when one doesn’t, and there have definitely been times when I’ve wondered whether what I’m doing is actually making a difference. My videos used to get thousands of views, and now I’m lucky to scratch a few hundred. But that interaction reminded me that I only ever see a tiny piece of the story. What if God is doing more than I can actually see? And maybe a more revealing question is: is that worth it to me?
So today I thought I’d bring you along for a normal day around here and share some of my favorite things in homemaking, homeschooling, and homesteading right now. But underneath all of that, I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking about a lot: what it looks like to trust God’s plan when we can’t see the whole picture.
We naturally want to know what God is doing. We want to understand the plan, know we’re making the right decision, and know that the next step is going to lead to something good. But Proverbs 3:5–6 tells us,
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
That is difficult because our own understanding is usually exactly what we want to lean on, but trusting God means believing that He sees things we cannot see.
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Homemaking: What Ordinary Work is Shaping More Than I Can See?
One of the things I’m really enjoying right now in homemaking is getting back into the kitchen with time-tested recipes for my family. I think we all have recipes we naturally fall back on for each season, and I’m sure it’s even more pronounced in a state like Minnesota where there are such clear weather lines between all four seasons. There’s something about returning to those familiar recipes that feels like coming home, especially when you’re making good things for the people you love.
Today I’m making a cottage cheese egg bake for the kids’ breakfast, and hopefully there will be some leftovers for tomorrow. Then I’m also going to be making einkorn biscuits this morning before starting homeschool, and I’m going to make a double batch because my family just gobbles them up. I like to long-ferment my grain recipes, so these definitely need to get started this morning, and honestly, I love these little rhythms of daily life that make up homemaking.
And I think homemaking is such an interesting place to think about this because so much of what we do is invisible. You clean the kitchen, someone eats in it, you wash the dishes, and somehow there are more dishes, and you can spend an entire day caring for your home without feeling like you have much to show for it. But what if my ordinary work is shaping more than I can see? What if the meals around our table become memories, the conversations that seem insignificant today shape my children’s understanding of family, and the simple rhythms of everyday life are teaching them what it means to serve and care for other people?
I think this is where we have to learn to trust that God sees the big picture when we don’t. Our own plans can be so focused on what needs to happen today, while our Heavenly Father sees things we cannot see and works according to His wisdom and His perfect timing.
Galatians 6:9 says,
“Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
I love that phrase, “in due season,” because it reminds me that God’s timing is not necessarily my timing, and sometimes we’re simply called to be faithful with the work God has placed in front of us and trust His grace to take care of the rest. Maybe that’s the deeper trust homemaking teaches us: that even when the work feels ordinary and repetitive, God can use the small things in our daily life for purposes we may never see. That’s a simple truth, but I think it can bring a lot of comfort when we’re tempted to wonder if any of it matters.
Homeschooling: What If My Children are Learning More Than I Can See?
There is so much going on in homeschool right now, partly because I’m feeling a little behind. We’ve had some personal things happen over the last few weeks, including cars breaking down—we finally joined Team Ford Transit—and some really difficult things happening with our kids that I can’t really go into here, but they stretched both Dan and me in ways that have been hard. It’s the kind of season where, at some point, you probably need a good therapist or a trusted friend to help you digest everything that’s happened. All that to say, we’re about five days behind our original homeschool plan, which is totally not me, and I’m trying to remind myself that five days behind is not a homeschool crisis.
One of my favorite things we’re doing right now is our new morning time routine around our calendar area. We do the calendar, read a devotional from our Gather ‘Round Living off the Land unit study (see our unit study picks for the year here), or do a catechism chapter from The Gospel Way, and I’ve typically been reading another book as well.
I just received two new releases from New Growth Press that I’m thinking about integrating into our routine: Becoming You: Everything You Wanted to Know About Growing Up and God and Me: The First Story, Genesis 1–2. I think God and Me is much more likely to make it into our morning time because it’s by Marty Machowski, who I’ve come to love as a children’s author, and I think it would make a really wonderful Bible study for us to work through together.
The biggest change we’ve made to our morning time, though, has been music. I try to do a hymn study, or at the very least sing a hymn together, and then we do something a little more upbeat that’s closer to a preschool movement song. I recently decided I wanted to go a little deeper with our hymn study, so I picked up Still Singing: Hymn Stories for Every Season from Not Consumed. I also ordered tin whistles for myself and our older two boys, and I’m hoping we’ll eventually learn some of these hymns on the tin whistle together. So far, we’re loving it, and I think it’s going to be one of those unexpected things that becomes a really sweet part of our homeschool.
And honestly, I think that’s another place where this question comes in: what if my children are learning more than I can see? When we’re five days behind, or when unexpected events disrupt our plans, it’s easy to feel like we’re not doing enough, but some of the most important things happening in our homeschool aren’t things I can check off a lesson plan.
Maybe they’re learning to love God’s Word, learning that worship belongs in our daily life, learning to slow down and listen, or simply learning that even when difficult things happen, we can still make room for good things. We don’t always get immediate evidence that something is working, and sometimes we won’t see the fruit until months or even years later, so I’m reminding myself that I don’t have to have everything perfectly caught up to be faithful. I can adjust my own plans, take the next practical step, and trust God with the long run, knowing that He is still working even when I can’t see the bigger picture. Maybe that’s one of the life-changing truths of homeschooling: we don’t have to control the outcome; we simply need to faithfully walk out God’s desire for us today and trust Him with what comes next.
Homesteading: What if Something is Growing Beneath the Surface?
And then there is homesteading, which may be one of the best illustrations of this whole idea. Today I’m going to be harvesting and then planting carrots, and quite honestly, our garden has been pretty forgotten this year. I’m tired, we’ve had some hard times, and I just haven’t cared about it as much as I normally would, but I decided I wanted to get our carrots in anyway. And maybe that’s part of the plan sometimes—not doing everything perfectly, but simply doing what we can with what we have.
There’s something about putting a seed in the ground that reminds me that we don’t always get to see the process. You plant it, water it, care for it, and then you wait, trusting that something is happening beneath the surface even when you can’t see it.
The story of Abraham comes to mind because he had to trust God one step at a time without knowing exactly how the promises would unfold, and I think that’s often what God asks of us too. We don’t always need to know the best plan or understand what He’s doing; sometimes we simply need enough faith to take the next step and trust that God is working, even when the harvest isn’t visible yet.
Trusting God’s Plan: What if God is Doing More than You Can See?
And maybe you’re watching this, and you’re in a season where you feel like nothing is happening. Maybe you’re homeschooling and wondering if all this work is actually making a difference, or you’re caring for your home and wondering if anyone notices. Maybe you’re praying for something and wondering why God hasn’t answered yet, or you’re taking a step of faith and you have no idea where it’s going to lead.
I want to encourage you with this: what if God is doing more than you can see? What if the answer isn’t that nothing is happening, but simply that you aren’t being given the privilege of seeing all of it yet? Isaiah 55:8–9 reminds us,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.”
We don’t have to understand everything to trust God. We don’t have to see the outcome before we take the next step, and we don’t have to know how every part of the story will fit together. We can trust God’s Word, seek His wisdom, listen to the Holy Spirit, and keep being faithful with what He’s placed in front of us.
Maybe you won’t see the fruit of the work you’re doing right now. Maybe you won’t know how your faithfulness affected someone else, how a conversation shaped your child’s life, or how God used a season you thought was completely wasted. But just because you can’t see what God is doing doesn’t mean He isn’t doing anything.
Maybe that’s the reminder I needed from that woman at Target yesterday, and maybe it’s the reminder you need today, too. Keep taking the next faithful step, trust God with the things you cannot see, and remember that God may be doing more than you can see.
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