Lara Lais

The Plot Twist of Providence

How God Turns Pain Into Positioning

There have been seasons in my life where the pain felt so deep I honestly didn’t know how I would recover.

Moments that changed the direction of my life overnight. People I trusted who ended up hurting me in ways I never expected. Situations that left me wounded, confused, and wondering how something so wrong could be allowed to happen.

For a long time I carried those wounds. Some I tried to outrun. Others I tried to bury.

But every time life knocked me down, I always ended up in the same place.

Running to Jesus.

There were nights when the only thing I knew how to do was pray and cry. I would bury my face in His chest and just stay there until the storm inside of me quieted down. I didn’t always understand what God was doing, but somehow I learned to trust Him anyway.

I would even thank Him through the pain because somewhere along the way I learned something powerful: deep faith begins to remove fear. When you truly believe God is sovereign, you begin to trust that even the chapters you would never choose are still part of His story.

Life has a strange way of bringing certain moments full circle. Sometimes you unexpectedly find yourself face to face with someone who once played a painful role in your story. Years earlier, that encounter might have stirred anger or bitterness.

But healing does something remarkable to the heart.

Where heartache once lived, there is peace. Instead of bitterness, there is compassion. You realize God didn’t just carry you through the pain. He transformed you along the way.

That realization always brings me back to Joseph.

Joseph’s life looked like a tragedy for a long time. His own brothers betrayed him, threw him into a pit, and sold him into slavery. He was taken far from home, falsely accused, and imprisoned. If anyone had reason to become bitter, it was Joseph.

But Joseph eventually lived long enough to see what God had been doing behind the scenes. When he finally stood face to face with the brothers who had betrayed him, he didn’t respond with anger. He responded with understanding.

He told them:

“God sent me ahead of you to preserve life.”
— Genesis 45:5

And later he said:

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done.”
— Genesis 50:20

Joseph understood something most of us only recognize years later. God was writing a story no one standing in the pit could have predicted.

What once looked like betrayal was actually positioning.

Sometimes the most painful turns in our lives are the very things God uses to move us exactly where we need to be. What feels like devastation in the moment may later reveal itself as preparation.

And when you finally see that, something shifts in your heart.

You stop clinging to the wounds of the past.

You start trusting the Author of the story.

Even when the plot doesn’t make sense yet.

Because if God could turn Joseph’s pit into a palace, then surely He can take the broken chapters of our lives and weave them into something beautiful too.