There has been inconvenient construction on one of our main highway roads for over a year. When I say inconvenient, I literally mean one slight flick of the wrist in the wrong direction while your hands are on the steering wheel will result in a deadly crash to the cement blocks separating your road from the construction area.

To say I struggle to breathe while driving on this road is an understatement. All of my senses shut down the outside distractions and narrow in on getting my minivan full of people I love safely to our destination. The worst part about this construction is the very little margin of error and the overly aggressive drivers who seem to worry less about whether or not they will survive.

Most of us can relate to having roads closed due to construction and the frustration it causes us, but can we relate to the construction workers who have been working on the same project for over a year?

As I was driving through the five miles of construction, I noticed men scattered along the entire road with large equipment, vehicles, and bright yellow hats. I also noticed the large cranes and equipment they were using earlier in the week were vacant, left in the middle of the piles of rubbish under the blistering heat.

The Spirit interrupted my thoughts, “What does this look like to you?”

Well, Lord, it looks like a mess; as if there are a hundred different activities going on at once without a single one completed.

“That’s what it would seem.”

From there, my mind began to shift instantly into the profound revelation the Spirit was eager to give me.

Do you ever feel like you pour your life into so many different areas and the first moment you have to reflect on your life, you realize you’ve been working hard for an entire year and all you have to show for it are a lot of beginnings without endings?

For me, driving through the multiple unfinished tasks resonated with me. I, too, had some vacant cranes lingering. Tasks and assignments I believed would be completed by now have been paused, left behind, unfinished while I was directed to begin a new project.

Each time I would deeply reflect on my life, I felt overwhelmed and discouraged. My progress perspective was focused intensely on my lack instead of my gain. The areas I knew were left unfinished became the measure for which I gauged my growth and spiritual maturity.

The truth is, the path of God is unpredictable.  “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8 emphasis added).

When we live with the Holy Spirit, our lives can also look like a mess– without rhyme or reason. Unfinished projects, unanswered questions, and very little closure. It can sometimes feel as if someone were driving through five miles of our spiritual construction looking at the multiple unfinished projects and trying to understand our purpose.

Even more realistic is imagining ourselves driving through our own spiritual construction and trying to understand the bigger picture.

The peace of knowing Jesus as Lord is knowing our God is a God of endings. He leaves no task unfinished. However, He leaves the beginnings to us. We have to be willing to begin a new assignment regardless if we have received closure from our previous assignments. If we say yes to the Holy Spirit, we are saying yes to a lifestyle where we “cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” We are saying yes to living by faith, trusting the Lord to bring us and every last one of our assignments to completion.

So, if you have been driving through your spiritual construction with your eyes fixated on the vacant cranes and equipment you poured your life into yesterday, last year, or five years ago, my hope is you begin to gain a new progress perspective. We can either view our lives with discouragement–as if we aren’t making progress–or we can celebrate the spiritual growth we experience and ability to be used by God and for God in everything we do.

After all, we cannot predict the movements of the Holy Spirit, but we can say yes to His adventurous, fulfilling life.

Even if our lives look and feel like a mess… temporarily.