An Everyday Moment with God
Sometimes what you see isn’t the problem.
We were building a website.
A simple enough undertaking, you might think. A place to share stories of everyday moments with God. A place where I could tell of His love, His faithfulness, and the extraordinary ways He reveals Himself in ordinary life.
And somewhere along the way, I found myself in a battle over fonts, colors, buttons, butterflies, and a crew of imaginary Oompa Loompas who apparently couldn’t follow directions.
It was funny.
Until it wasn’t.
I’d ask for something to be changed. I’d be told it was done. I’d look again, and there it was, unchanged.
I’d point it out.
Another assurance. Another celebration. Another declaration that we’d finally made it.
And another look revealed that we hadn’t.
Sometimes things really had improved. Sometimes the correction introduced a new problem. And sometimes nothing had changed at all.
But the words kept coming.
It’s fixed.
Looks great.
We’re done!
And I began to feel the pressure.
Not because anyone was threatening me. Not because the website was particularly important in the grand scheme of things.
But because there’s a peculiar kind of pressure that comes when what you’re being told doesn’t match what you’re seeing.
How many times do you point something out before you begin to question yourself?
How many times do you ask someone to listen before you decide it might be easier to stop talking?
How many times do you hear it’s fine before you surrender and say, Okay, fine?
I nearly did.
And that got my attention.
Because I’ve known that feeling before.
The circumstances change. The people change. The stakes change.
But the pattern can be remarkably familiar.
Someone speaks with certainty. You notice something that doesn’t fit. You raise a question. You’re reassured, corrected, or dismissed.
And eventually the question is no longer whether something is right.
The question becomes whether you’re willing to keep standing there saying it isn’t.
There’s a difference between being stubborn and being discerning.
There’s a difference between demanding perfection and asking for honesty.
And there’s a difference between extending grace and pretending something is true when it isn’t.
I don’t always know the difference in the moment.
I’m learning.
That’s part of this journey, too.
What struck me afterward was that I hadn’t needed anyone to agree with me about everything. I hadn’t needed flawless work. I hadn’t even needed the mistakes to stop.
I needed the truth.
It isn’t fixed yet.
I misunderstood.
Let’s look again.
Those words would have been enough.
Because mistakes don’t have to separate us.
But pretending they haven’t happened makes it awfully difficult to move forward together.
And here’s where I see God’s goodness in the whole ridiculous affair.
He didn’t need a grand occasion to show me something worth seeing.
He used a website.
A few misplaced words.
A butterfly.
And a whole lot of it’s fine.
What a classroom!
I was reminded that discernment isn’t the opposite of trust. It’s part of healthy trust.
That love doesn’t require me to abandon what I see.
That grace doesn’t require me to call something good simply because someone else says it is.
And that the person making the mistakes isn’t my enemy.
We can be wrong. We can misunderstand. We can become so eager to finish that we stop paying attention to what we’re actually doing.
I’ve done my share of that, too.
If we knew better, we’d do better.
Perhaps love makes room for us to learn better.
To listen again.
To look again.
To tell the truth, even when it’s inconvenient.
And to receive the truth without treating it as an attack.
In the end, the website came together.
But the greater gift wasn’t the finished website.
It was recognizing an old pattern while I was still standing in the middle of it—and discovering that I didn’t have to follow it this time.
I could remain kind without surrendering my voice.
I could be patient without pretending.
I could extend grace without abandoning discernment.
And I could keep going.
Not because I had to win an argument over a website.
But because the truth matters.
And love is not threatened by the truth.
I wonder how many of us have stood in some version of that moment.
At home. At work. In a friendship. In a church. In our own thoughts.
Seeing one thing.
Hearing another.
And feeling that quiet invitation to stop questioning.
Perhaps the next time it happens, we’ll recognize it.
Perhaps we’ll find the courage to say, gently and without accusation:
I hear what you’re saying. But that’s not what I’m seeing.
And perhaps we’ll give each other the grace to look again.
Because God is good.
And sometimes He teaches us the most extraordinary things in the most ordinary places.
Even in the company of Oompa Loompas.
The stories don’t end. And neither does God’s love.