Brick by brick, a road is being laid beneath my feet.
Some days, I can see only the brick directly before me. Other days, I turn around and marvel at the distance I’ve traveled. Somewhere between where I began and where I’m going, I’m learning that this road is more than a path beneath my feet. It is a testimony of the One who is leading me home.
Every brick is a moment of my life, gathered from the places I’ve been, the people I’ve loved, the battles I’ve fought, and the pieces of myself I’ve discovered along the way.
One holds my testimony, while another bears the wounds that molded me into someone I might never have become otherwise. Some bricks are people who entered my life for a season, revealing parts of me I might never have discovered had our paths never crossed.
Some bricks are polished by time, their edges softened by grace. Others are covered in the dirt and dust of seasons I’d rather forget. Some shimmer in the sunlight, grouted with hope and sealed with love. Others are cracked beneath the weight of memories I still struggle to carry.
And then there are the bricks I wish I could bury.
The ones I would have left in the mud had the choice been mine. The ones bearing the names of people who hurt me, the weight of decisions I regret, and the memories I once believed had no place in the life I was trying to build.
If it were up to me, I would have chosen differently.
I would have selected only the beautiful pieces, the answered prayers, the open doors, and the moments that made sense while I was living them. I would have built a straight road paved with certainty, where every step felt like confirmation and every turn led exactly where I expected.
But God never asked me to design the road.
He asked me to trust the One who knows where it leads.
See, each brick is proof that God is taking me somewhere I once asked to go. Somewhere I prayed about, wept over, hoped for, and believed for. Yet somewhere along the way, I began to confuse trusting Him to lead me with expecting Him to show me the route.
And those are two very different things.
I asked Him for the destination, but I wanted a say in the directions. I wanted to know which roads we’d take, how long we’d travel, what the scenery would look like, and whether the journey would require anything of me that I wasn’t prepared to give.
But the road is being laid, and I don’t always get to stop and ask God why He chose this direction, why this brick had to be placed here, or why the path seems to be taking me farther away from the very place I prayed to reach.
Sometimes my own decisions introduce a few unexpected twists. Sometimes I take a step in the wrong direction and have to learn how to find my footing again. Sometimes a brick is laid that catches my toe, sends me stumbling, and leaves me wondering how something on the road could hurt so much when all I wanted was to keep walking.
But even then, I am learning.
A stumble is not the same as a dead end. A detour does not mean the destination has disappeared. And a difficult brick does not mean the One leading me has forgotten where we’re going.
Every step teaches me something about how to keep walking.
Some lessons teach me patience. Others teach me discernment. Some teach me to release what I was never meant to carry, while others teach me to take responsibility for the very bricks my own hands helped lay.
Because trusting God does not mean pretending I never made a wrong turn. It means believing that even when I have to face the consequences of my choices, I can still turn toward Him and follow His lead.
And perhaps this is the real work of the road: learning to trust the Guide even when I don’t understand the journey.
I think of God as my travel agent.
He sees the destination before I’ve even packed my bags. He knows the terrain, the climate, the roads that wind through unfamiliar places, and the bridges I’ll need to cross to get where I’m going. He knows which turns will stretch me, which valleys will humble me, and which mountains will reveal strength I never knew I had.
And me?
I’m still finding the right clothes for the climate and figuring out how to read a map.
God keeps leading me into places where I don’t speak the language. He takes me through cultures I don’t understand, introduces me to people who challenge everything I thought I knew, and allows me to stand in seasons where nothing looks familiar.
I’m looking around, trying to translate the signs, asking why the scenery has changed, wondering whether I’ve somehow gotten lost.
Meanwhile, He knows exactly where I am.
I mistake unfamiliarity for abandonment. I mistake discomfort for a wrong turn. I assume that because I cannot interpret the language of this season, I must have misunderstood the directions.
But what if the problem isn’t that God has lost His way?
What if I’m simply standing in a place I’ve never been before?
I cannot demand that every destination look familiar. I cannot expect to understand every culture before I enter it. And I cannot insist on knowing the entire route before I take the next step.
The One leading me knows what I do not.
So I am learning to put down the map that I keep trying to redraw and trust the One who sees beyond the bend in the road.
I am learning that faith is not always knowing where my feet will land. Sometimes it is placing them down anyway because I know who is leading me.
And brick by brick, the road continues.
There are still bricks ahead of me that I haven’t touched. There are prayers I haven’t prayed, people I haven’t met, joys I cannot yet imagine, and lessons I haven’t yet learned how to name.
I don’t know the shape of every bend or the length of every stretch. I cannot see every stone between here and home.
But I know this, I do not have to understand the whole journey to trust the One who does.
One day, I will stand at the place I’ve spent my life walking toward. Perhaps I’ll turn around and look at the road behind me. I’ll see the bricks I polished with pride, the ones I stumbled over in sorrow, and the ones I begged God to remove.
I’ll see the dirt.
I’ll see the dust.
I’ll see the cracks time could not conceal.
And perhaps, for the first time, I’ll see what I couldn’t see while I was busy trying to understand every step.
I’ll see a road that carried me through things I never would have chosen but that did not have the final say over who I became. I’ll see the places where I stumbled and learned to stand, the turns where I learned to listen, and the unfamiliar territories where my trust grew deeper than my understanding.
I’ll see that God was never asking me to know the way as He did.
He was asking me to walk with Him.
And perhaps home was never simply a place I was trying to reach. Perhaps home was learning, brick by brick, to trust the One who was leading me there.
So I’ll keep walking.
I’ll honor the beautiful bricks. I’ll make peace with the difficult ones. I’ll take responsibility for the turns I’ve chosen, and I’ll trust God with the roads I cannot yet explain.
I won’t call every wound good, and I won’t pretend every loss was something I needed. But I will refuse to believe that a painful chapter has the power to render my entire story meaningless.
Because I do not have to love every brick to be grateful for the road.
I do not have to understand every turn to keep following His lead.
And I do not have to see the destination to believe that the One who knows the way is worth trusting.
Brick by brick, my life is becoming a road.
A road shaped by people, marked by moments, weathered by sorrow, brightened by joy, and held together by a grace I could never have laid on my own.
And when I finally arrive, I imagine I’ll look back at every brick and understand something I could only believe while I was still walking:
I thought I was asking God to take me home. All along, He was teaching me to trust Him with the way there.
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