When 30 Became 6: Finding God in the Details

There are weeks when life feels like everything arrives at once.

This has been one of those weeks for me.

School started again, and I was excited. I really was. But then I logged in and saw what was waiting for me.

Thirty assignments.

Thirty.

And that was just school.

I still had a business to run, clients who needed me, emails to answer, a team to lead, church responsibilities, scripture study, relationships, and all the normal pieces of life that don’t suddenly stop because you decided to go back to school.

I remember looking at everything in front of me and thinking, How am I going to do this?

Not in a dramatic, “I quit” sort of way.

More like ... that quiet overwhelm that starts settling into your body when you realize there are simply more things to do than there seem to be hours to do them.

And this is where I started noticing God in the details.

On Sunday, I asked for a priesthood blessing.

I needed strength. I needed help organizing everything that was suddenly sitting in front of me. And perhaps more than anything, I needed to know I could actually do this.

There was something said in that blessing that caught my attention.

I was blessed that I would be strengthened and organized in my schoolwork, as long as I gave my studies the same kind of attention I give to studying the scriptures.

That stayed with me.

Because I know how I approach scripture study.

I make time for it. I protect that time. I pray before I begin. I ask Heavenly Father to increase my knowledge and wisdom. I try to be present instead of rushing through it just so I can say I did it.

And suddenly I felt like the Lord was teaching me something.

Do that here too.

Give this your attention.

Be intentional.

Trust Me with it.

And then something happened that still makes me smile.

Within hours, those thirty assignments showing in front of me dropped to six.

Six.

There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the course loaded that way initially.

Maybe things updated.

Maybe assignments were reorganized.

And I’m okay with that explanation.

But I also know what that moment felt like to me.

It felt like mercy.

It felt like God saying, I see you.

and then yesterday, I found myself overwhelmed again.

This time it wasn’t because there were thirty assignments staring back at me. It was everything else.

Work. Clients. School. Deadlines. Things that needed answers. Things I needed to remember.

I sat down to work on an assignment, and I could not concentrate.

I would read something and realize I hadn’t taken any of it in. My mind kept jumping somewhere else. I was physically sitting there, but mentally I was everywhere.

And then I had this thought.

You pray before you study your scriptures.

I always ask Heavenly Father to increase my knowledge and wisdom before I read.

So why wouldn’t I ask Him for that same help here?

It seems so obvious now.

But I hadn’t.

So I stopped what I was doing.

And I prayed.

It wasn’t a long prayer. There weren’t perfect words. I just told Heavenly Father where I was and what I needed.

I needed the overwhelm to settle.

I needed help concentrating.

I needed the capacity to take in what I was trying to learn.

And within minutes, something changed.

Not my schedule.

Not my workload.

Me.

The tension began to release. My mind quieted. I could sit there without constantly thinking about the next thing.

I could read.

I could understand.

I could actually learn.

And I got work done.

I think sometimes I’m looking for God to change the circumstance when He is quietly offering to increase my capacity inside of it.

I want the schedule cleared.

He gives me focus.

I want fewer responsibilities.

He gives me strength.

I want the entire path laid out.

And sometimes He just gives me enough light for the assignment sitting in front of me.

This week, He did both.

There were fewer assignments than I originally thought, yes. But there was also something deeper happening.

He was teaching me to invite Him into this part of my life too.

Not just scripture study.

Not just church.

Not just the big decisions or the heartbreaking moments when I desperately need heaven.

School.

Work.

A Tuesday afternoon when my brain will not cooperate.

An assignment I can’t seem to focus on.

The very ordinary details of an ordinary day.

Maybe those things matter to Him because I matter to Him.

And perhaps that is what I want to remember most from this week.

God is in the details.

Sometimes His answer is thirty becoming six.

Sometimes His answer is a priesthood blessing with one sentence you know you need to pay attention to.

And sometimes His answer is simply the quiet that comes after you close your eyes at your desk and whisper, Heavenly Father, I need help.

Nothing outside of you has changed yet.

But somehow, inside of you, there is room to breathe again.

If you are carrying too much right now, maybe you don’t need another person telling you how to organize it all.

Maybe you just need to know you are seen.

Your overwhelmed mind is seen.

Your impossible schedule is seen.

The things you are trying so hard to hold together are seen.

And maybe God is already in the details of your life too.

Perhaps the invitation isn’t to try harder to find Him.

Maybe it’s simply to start noticing.