My grandmother used to always say, “If you want to see God laugh, tell him your plans.”

For many years I never knew the true meaning of that phrase.

You see, there used to be a time when I would look toward the heavens and ask God why he allowed certain things to happen – why he allowed certain people to cross my path or for my heart and spirit to be broken repeatedly.

In those moments, I felt as if he never answered me. I felt forsaken and forgotten.

With each heartbreak, empty promise, break in my spirit or lost dream, I never heard God. I only heard my own weeping. I heard only my despair.

As time went on, my tears faded and I became outwardly jaded – growing increasingly resistant with each blow.

Then, something happened.

I suffered a tragedy and when it was done ripping through my life, slapping me around, and tearing my foundation apart there was nothing left but me and my God. There was a stillness in the air. I cried. I cried until I could cry no more. I cried for all the things I had lost and for my battered heart and soul and then I became numb. I became as still and quiet as the air around me.

It was then that I heard Him.

It took the silencing of my cries to hear the word of God and know I was healed. It seems now that all the times I thought He wasn’t hearing me, He was busy directing me, guiding me, mending me, making me whole in his vision.

Making me not only able to hear, but to understand as well.

I heard my grandmother’s voice once again, “If you want to see God laugh, tell him your plans,” and I finally understood.

Though I could have never seen this place from where I started, I always wished this is where I would be. For all the days I fought, for all the times I cried, for all the trouble I caused, I am thankful if this understanding is the result, the answer.

Director, direct me.

Mariah