What If the Problem Isn’t What You Think?

For about three weeks, I had been dealing with pain in the right side of my back. I couldn’t remember doing anything in particular to hurt it, but as the days went by, instead of getting better, it kept getting worse.

I told my husband and those around me, “I’ve done something to my back.” And I really believed that.

For weeks, I treated it like a back problem. I tried the things you’d normally try when your back is hurting, expecting that eventually something would help. Nothing did.

Come to find out, I didn’t have a back problem at all. I had a kidney infection.

I never would have guessed it at first. I haven’t had a kidney infection in decades, and I’m still not even sure how I ended up with one.

But what really struck me afterward was how completely convinced I had been that I knew what was wrong. My back hurt, so obviously I had done something to hurt my back. Except I hadn’t.

And because I had already decided what the problem was, everything I did to try to make it better was based on an assumption that wasn’t true.

Isn’t that something we can do in other areas of life too? We look at what’s happening around us and draw a conclusion.

This is why that happened. This is what needs to change. This is the problem. If I could just fix this one thing, everything would be okay.

And sometimes we may be absolutely convinced we have it figured out. But we’re making our diagnosis based only on what we can see. God sees so much more.

There’s a verse in Proverbs that says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” —Proverbs 3:5

I’ve read that verse countless times, but this little episode with my back gave me a very practical picture of what “lean not on your own understanding” can look like.

My understanding said, back problem. The truth was something entirely different. I wonder how often I do the same thing spiritually.

Maybe instead of only praying, “Lord, please fix this,” I also need to pray, “Lord, help me see this the way You see it. Show me if there’s something I’m missing.”

There are going to be times when we simply don’t have enough information to understand what God is doing—or even what the real problem is.

And maybe that’s the point. We were never meant to have all the answers. We were meant to trust the One who does.

August 14, 2026, Morning Brew