Transparent Moments

When Bad News Becomes Good News

Anita CarmanEzra, my three-year-old grandson, was delighted because I had agreed to pick up his favorite food, chips, and queso. As we emptied the bag he asked, “Where’s the queso?” That’s when I realized I had forgotten to order it. The adults in the room simply shrugged and said, “Oh well, no queso today!” I glanced at my grandson and saw pure distress take over his face, followed by the quivering of his lower lip. My son immediately jumped out of his seat and said, “I’ll go melt some cheese and make our own homemade queso!” A smile returned to Ezra’s face. My son’s prompt response illustrated so vividly the heart of our heavenly Father towards His children. The Bible tells us, “Praise the LORD…who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Ps. 103:2, 5). How would life change if we truly believed the heart of our heavenly Father was to satisfy our desires? God wants good things for us and even in suffering He’s producing goodness in our lives. Below is a list of seven gifts I never saw coming, as God transformed what I perceived as bad news into something beautiful in my life. 1. Passion. After my mother’s suicide, God transformed my pain into a passion to build a ministry to help women discover God’s purpose and to serve at their potential in missions and ministry. Though at the time I felt like my mother’s voice had been silenced, God’s voice rose through her daughter to empower the voices of thousands of daughters. 2. More Life. When I left an established organization to start Inspire Women, what felt like part of my heart had been ripped out of my body was God’s way to give me more in life, not less. Although it felt safer to stay where I was, God’s call drew me into unknown territory to show me a world of His imagination and not my own. 3. Opportunities. When my house flooded, God used the situation to rally the neighbors to build a new road that blessed the whole community. What showed up in my life as a big nuisance turned out to be God’s instrument to reach people I would never have known otherwise. 4. Crosses. God used my son’s asthma to grow him into a leader who was trained to overcome obstacles in his life. Once I cried out, “Why my son?” Now I say, “Why not my son?” God gets to decide the worship He desires from each of us through the crosses He chooses for us to carry. 5. Letting Go. When God took my spiritual mom home, He had already prepared someone else to walk with me. The new person had a different set of experiences that were necessary to take me into the next phase of the ministry. As much as I wanted to cling to the same relationship, I was clinging to what was temporary. Letting go freed me to continue with God to build something with eternal significance. 6. Friendships. When finances created stress, God showed me my greatest asset was the friend(s) who walked with me through each season. Being in the trenches together marked our friendship and gave us “battle” stories to tell. The end destination was never in reaching a financial goal: it was always in the journey God designed for us to take with each other. 7. Living Urgently. The older I get, the more the Holy Spirit shows me that with age comes less distraction and a choice to live urgently. Our creativity, combined with our earned influence over time, places us in the perfect position to leave more of God’s fingerprints on this earth. In God’s economy, what first appears bad can be transformed into good for His greater purpose. Don’t miss your blessing!

Anita Carman arrived in America at 17, after her mother’s tragic suicide. Today, she is a walking billboard of how God transformed her pain into passion to build Inspire Women, a non-profit that unites thousands of women of all races and invests in their potential to change the world. She has an MBA from SUNY and an MABS from Dallas Theological Seminary. Anita has authored several books and lives in Houston, Tex., with her husband. She has two grown sons. Visit her at inspirewomen.org