This week’s blog is an excerpt from How Long, O Lord, How Long? Devotions for the Unemployed and Those Who Love Them, By author Dale Kreienkamp.

TAKE TIME TO READ Psalm 37. What a great psalm it is! Take special note of verse 4:

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart! Psalm 37:4

This is a favorite phrase of my wife’s and she has used it for years. Sometimes I don’t think I really believed it, but after what I’ve been through, I know it is true. How easy it is to forget that God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows what is deep down inside of us—our desires, our hopes, and our fears. Most of these we don’t express to even our closest friends or family.

I have experienced more emotional pain on this journey than I have in a long time. During this painful process, God granted some special desires that he knew were in my heart. Your deep desires will be different than mine, I’m sure. I’ve always wanted to be more at peace, a peace that accepts God being in control, not me. I struggled to break away from “doing it on my own.” I’m a “Type A” personality, one who is constantly driving to achieve and be successful. And try as I might, I couldn’t achieve that peace. Yet through the experience, I was granted a peace I had never experienced before. For some reason, I wasn’t worried about what was going to happen. You can say it was because I had a decent severance pay package, but money doesn’t solve our problems and I knew it wouldn’t bring me peace. I had prayed for God to release me from my struggle and in taking my job away, I was released.

I also wanted to be closer to my wife, children, and friends. I knew I needed more time with them but could never seem to fit it into the schedule. Boy did God ever give me time! The question was would I use it the right way. Finally, I had some personal activities I wanted to enjoy, golf being toward the top. With time available, my wife and I were able to visit one of my oldest friends and mentors on Hilton Head Island to watch the PGA tour’s Heritage Classic. Later in the fall, I took a temporary project working in the Pocono Mountains. The tough part was being away from my family; the good part was doing things I would not normally get a chance to do. I slept in the car to get an early tee time to play the Black Course at Bethpage State Park (it’s a tradition to do this), the site of the 2002 and 2009 US Opens. I broke 80 for the first time at Shawnee on the Delaware, home of the 1938 PGA Championship. Finally, my family visited at Thanksgiving and we all saw the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Our Heavenly Father knows us better than we know ourselves. We forget that God is a father first, and don’t fathers want the best for their children? You just might be surprised to discover the many ways he grants exactly what we need.