Learning Detours

Have you ever wanted A + B to equal C? You do one thing as well as another and then hope for a desired result. The problem is that A and B together do not get C and instead they result in Q or even Z….something you never expected.

Frustration can set in as you begin to ask yourself…what is even the point of this?

Welcome to the learning detour!

A learning detour is a prolonged route, a stalling of time, or “emotional filler” that occurs before the fulfilment of your greatest blessings. This is a critical learning time in which we are moving through very valuable lessons. If those lessons are learned then we will take these lessons on with us into the blessing phase in which our blessings will become that much greater because of what we learned during the “learning detour phase.”

Let me explain how this applies to the world of dating.

Dating And Learning Detours

Rarely do people ever just meet the love of their lives or their future life partners and that is the end of the story. Most people have “dating learning detours” in which they get out into the “dating world” and meeting multiple individuals.

Dating is in and of itself a “learning detour” phase because we learn one of the most valuable lessons…

We learn what we don’t want in order to get clear around what we do want!

If you met your life partner right away then you may not recognize how special they are unless you had gone on a learning detour first! You had to meet multiple individuals with diverse personalities in order to figure out who you were in the world of dating and understand what you wanted.

As a youth your dating criteria may have been…a Christian who is good looking and drives a nice car.

Now try and build a foundation of marriage on those three characteristics.

A Christian is wonderful but does not necessarily make for a compatible marriage. People who love God do not necessarily all get along.

Now if that Christian is good looking and drives a nice car, the car may be handy so that he/she can drive you around with your future kids but these qualities do not relate to deeper issues of character, morals, values, compatibility, and so on.

On a learning detour, you learn that good looks and flashy material items do not make a person. Now you can get clear about what you do want. If you didn’t have this learning detour then you would likely marry the first person who came around that was a Christian, good-looking, and had a car.

With learning detours we have to embrace the learning and trust that these lessons will take us to our next level of blessing. We can’t really appreciate our new life partner or other blessings unless we have necessary learning detours first.

A Season Of Learning

Embrace seasons of learning and learning detours. Some lessons are painful but if we capture the learning we can move forward on to blessings. Be grateful for learning what you don’t want so that you can get clear around what you do want in life. Then you can turn necessary learning detours into blessings as you come to terms with the fact that you will likely get what you need so that you can get clearer about what you want. If we just move towards what we want then we can’t stand in God’s greatest blessings because we settle for whatever or whoever comes our way which may not be part of His highest plans for our lives.

Instead, we need learning detours to steer the course of our greatest blessings.