Breakthrough comes in stages... but may not look the way you wanted it to.

Breakthrough doesn't usually come as a pretty little package, wrapped in a bow, all you asked for and more and nothing you didn't.

Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

Let's define Breakthrough:

Breakthrough: is when you've been holding out hope for a change and that change finally comes.

Sometimes breakthrough doesn't look like what you thought it would, what you hoped it would, and it may not even feel great. But it's still profound and important and you need to pause and be grateful for it, more on that in a moment.

When Breakthrough doesn't look like Breakthrough:

• You've been asking God for a certain schedule and dollars/hour. When you finally get an offer for a new schedule, it's not the hours or days you wanted, but it's still better than what you had. 
• You've been struggling to balance school, work, family, and it's come to the breaking point. It's literally costing you your health but you don't see a way out. Every goal feels important. Finally, a financial setback forces you out of school with no way to return soon. The struggle is over, one of the plates stopped spinning. But it crashed to the floor. 
• You've been struggling in your marriage and it ended, one way or another. The struggle is over, but not like you wanted. 
• You've been trying to figure out how you were going to afford the oil change and your car was totaled the day before you were going to take it in. 

These are just a few ways that the situation changed. But not the way you expected. Sure, sometimes breakthrough comes with all the things you wanted and more things you didn't know you should be asking for, and it comes fully supplied for the future. But let's face it, that's not usually how it comes...

So what do you do when the breakthrough came in a less than an ideal package?

Be Thankful!

Celebrate awkward breakthrough, it's only step one:

That awkward, less than ideal breakthrough, may be forcing you to make a change you didn't know you needed to make or didn't want to see.

Or, it may be just the first signs of the ultimate breakthrough. As the Bible says, first the blade, then the ear, then the full kernel in the ear... maybe this was just the first step towards the ultimate thing.

Maybe this unexpected breakthrough is taking you in a wildly new direction that you'll be excited about upon arrival but from this end of the journey doesn't look like anything positive.

You won't know until you get fully to the other side.

While you wait for the final outcome, in the meantime, be grateful! 

Find a reason to be thankful. If not for the thing that caused it, then be grateful that God is using this ugly thing anyway to take you where you need to go.

Your Turn: Comment Below

Have you had a situation you needed out of change, but in a way you didn't like at first? How did it turn out later?  

Are there things happening right now that you don't like, but could they prepare you for something you want?

Subscribe Now - Pursue a No Hiding Lifestyle 

Shalom: Live Long and Prosper!

Darrell Wolfe (DG Wolfe)

Storyteller | Writer | Thinker | Consultant @ DarrellWolfe.com

Clifton StrengthsFinder: Intellection, Learner, Ideation, Achiever, Input
16Personalities (Myers-Briggs Type): INFJ