Ep. 22 | When Life Doesn’t Go According to Plan: Learning to Stay Rooted in the Waiting

Most of us have a picture in our minds of how life is supposed to go.
We make plans. We set goals. We pray. We dream about the future.
And then sometimes, life takes a turn we never saw coming.
Maybe it’s a diagnosis. A loss. A job that falls through. A child who needs more than you ever imagined. Or maybe it’s simply a season that feels heavy, uncertain, and completely out of your control.
If you’ve ever found yourself there, we want you to know something that took us a long time to learn:
A rooted family isn’t one that avoids storms. It’s one that learns how to remain anchored to Christ in the middle of them.
That truth wasn’t something we learned from a book. It was something God gently taught us through our daughter, Darla.

When Everything Changed

Not long after moving our family from North Carolina to the mountains of Colorado, we found out we were expecting our seventh baby.
The timing surprised us, but we trusted that God had a purpose.
At our 20-week anatomy scan, everything changed.
Kayla went to the appointment alone, expecting another routine ultrasound. Instead, the doctor pulled up a chair beside her and quietly said, “Your baby has something wrong with its heart.”
In one conversation, the future we had imagined disappeared.
We suddenly found ourselves asking questions we never expected to ask.
Would our baby survive?
Where would we deliver?
What would life look like for our family?
There were very few answers. Just a lot of waiting.

The Waiting Was Harder Than We Expected

Looking back, we realized something surprising.
The hardest part wasn’t only the diagnosis.
It was living in the unknown.
Every new appointment seemed to bring another question. Another possibility. Another reason to worry.
It’s amazing how quickly our minds try to jump ahead and write the rest of the story.
But God rarely gives us the whole story at once.
More often, He gives us enough grace for today.

What We Could Control

When so much felt uncertain, we found ourselves holding tightly to the few things we could still do.
We chose to learn our baby’s gender early so we could pray for her by name.
We named her Darla, which means “beloved.”
We filled a wall in our home with prayers written by our children.
We kept planning meals, folding laundry, reading Scripture when we could, and showing up for one another.
None of those things changed our circumstances.
But they reminded us that faithfulness often looks ordinary.
Small rhythms don’t remove suffering. They simply help steady your heart while you walk through it.

Faith Doesn’t Mean You Never Ask Questions

One of the biggest lessons we learned was that strong faith and honest questions can exist at the same time.
There were days we believed God could perform a miracle.
There were also days we wondered why He had allowed this story in the first place.
Both were real.
Sometimes we think mature faith means never wrestling with God.
But throughout Scripture, we see people bringing their deepest questions to Him.
God isn’t intimidated by our grief.
He’s not surprised by our fears.
He welcomes us to bring every question into His presence.

God Was Changing More Than Our Circumstances

As the months went on, we began to notice something unexpected.
God wasn’t simply preparing us for the road ahead.
He was changing us.
He was expanding our understanding of His goodness.
Before Darla, we probably would have looked at disability and immediately thought about what was missing.
Now we find ourselves seeing something completely different.
Every person bears the image of God.
Every life has immeasurable value.
Every person reflects His creativity in ways we may never fully understand.
We still don’t have answers to every question.
But we know this:
God’s goodness isn’t dependent on our understanding.

If You’re in the Waiting

Maybe your story looks nothing like ours.
Maybe you’re waiting on test results.
Maybe you’re caring for a loved one.
Maybe you’re praying for a child, a marriage, or a future that hasn’t unfolded the way you hoped.
Whatever your waiting looks like, we hope you’ll remember this:
God is just as present in the waiting as He is in the miracle.
You don’t have to have all the answers to take the next faithful step.
Sometimes being rooted simply means trusting Him one day at a time.
Our story with Darla was only beginning. There was still a birth, surgeries, months in the NICU, and countless moments where we would see God’s faithfulness in ways we never expected.
We share the rest of that journey in Part 2 of this story, but our prayer is that even today you’ll leave with this encouragement:
You may not be able to choose the storm you’re walking through.
But you can choose where your roots grow.
And when they’re planted deeply in Christ, you’ll discover that His presence is enough—even in the waiting.

If you’d like to hear the full story behind this season of our lives, along with the conversations and moments that shaped our faith, we’d love for you to listen to this episode of The Rooted Family Podcast.