The Beautiful Mistake of Building a House on a Bridge
Learning to Release What Once Helped Heal Us
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. John 15:1-2
It was a gorgeous, sunny day on top of a Tennessee mountain. The sun was scorching hot, but we had a large landscape project in front of us and could not be deterred. My son and I stood in the front yard as we strategized and laid out a plan for what plants we would remove or prune and the blooming flowers that would take their place.
As the work began, I handed my son the large shears and asked him to begin to prune back several bushes we would leave in place. He chopped each stray branch with expertise but stopped several times to survey his work and then proceeded to produce a well-manicured shrub. The shrub in its original form was scraggly and not well formed. It needed pruning. Without it, its beauty could not shine, and it would not bear fruit.
The same is true when we go under the careful hand of our Heavenly Father, the gardener. Sometimes pruning is the process of making room for more. It is His way of helping us do things that we would never do on our own. In His Hesed (loving kindness) He doesn’t leave us in that state but is making provision for something new. We recognize that provisional seasons are not final destinations. And sometimes God’s provisions become so precious that we unconsciously mistake them for destinations when they were actually bridges. Instead, sometimes God removes or reshapes things we genuinely love because they have fulfilled their purpose in their current form. Pruning is often God’s way of moving us from one season to another, from one bridge to the next destination He has prepared.
The branch wasn’t the problem. The gardener wasn’t punishing the shrub. Growth required change. And transformation almost always feels like loss before it feels like gain. What we hope emerges is a growing willingness to trust God with outcomes we cannot control.
If you have endured much trauma in your life, loss can feel like an enemy. But what if some losses are invitations? Not all loss is good. Not all loss is redemptive. But some losses create space for gifts that could not fit into the old arrangement. You don’t have to rush past the sadness. You don’t have to convince yourself to be happy about the transition.
When I look across the years of my life, I see God repeatedly taking something I thought was a destination and revealing it to be a bridge. For example, I thought my marriage was supposed to be the destination. It became a bridge. Being a pastor’s wife was supposed to be the destination. It became a bridge. My role as a wife was supposed to be the destination. It became a bridge.
The purpose of a bridge is not to stay on it. The purpose of a bridge is to carry you somewhere. A bridge is not a failure because you cross it. In fact, it succeeds precisely because it gets you where you need to go. And the beautiful part is that God wants us to enjoy the crossing.
I clung to the bridges and didn’t want to leave, fearing that I would be dishonoring what it gave me. But I challenged myself with a deeper truth that the bridge is honored when I continue the journey.
God provides a bridge during a difficult season, and because we’re finally safe, finally healing, finally comfortable, we start decorating it. We hang curtains. We put flowers on the table. We build a porch. We begin calling it home. Meanwhile, God is gently saying: “I’m so glad this bridge carried you. But it’s still a bridge.” And that’s not punishment. It’s invitation.
Most Christians can accept losing things that are unhealthy. That’s easy theology. What’s harder is understanding why God sometimes reshapes relationships, roles, identities, and seasons that were genuinely good.
The friendship that wasn’t toxic. The comfort that wasn’t sinful. The ally role that wasn’t unhealthy. The ally role was a gift for a particular season. It carried me through grief, uncertainty, and healing. But gifts can become idols when we insist they remain forever in the exact form in which we received them. It was simply not the final destination. And that is a much more mature and nuanced understanding of restoration. Because restoration isn’t always God giving us back what we lost.
Sometimes restoration is God giving us something we never would have chosen because we were still clinging to something we loved. The gardener isn’t clearing weeds. The gardener is creating space for future growth. That’s a very different thing.
The hardest seasons of faith are not when God asks us to release what is hurting us. The hardest seasons are when He asks us to hold loosely what has healed us.
