I received lots of response to my last column about how God works in our lives, so I have decided to continue the discussion.

Here is some of what I gleaned from the letters I received.

When we look back we are often able to see wisdom and order in the way things have worked out.

We should pray not for what we want, but to find out God's will in our lives and to bring our will in line with His.

It is often when we lean to our own understanding that we run into problems or roadblocks. This week I had a photographer headed to our vacation house to do a video for advertising purposes. Although she had spoken with my husband, Thom, earlier, and he had given her advice about which route to take across the island, she informed him that she had a GPS system in her car and that it had mapped out the quickest route.

He informed her that the navigation system didn't take into consideration the winding roads or the traffic backup at certain times of day and assured her that the route he suggested would be better. She ignored his advice and relied on the technology and got caught in traffic.

As she approached the house, she called me from a few miles away for more specific directions to the house. I told her she needed to ignore the house numbers and keep coming to the bottom of the road, as the numbering system on this road does not follow the usual pattern — another break with logic she seemed to have a hard time making.

Don't Write Your Plans in Stone

When my first husband died, I was living in Utah . I recognized that one of the things I did to cope was to organize things. One aspect of my life was out of control, so I was going to control what I could control.

Along with organizing my files and alphabetizing my spices, I made a twenty-year plan. My son was only a year old, and my plan took me through until he returned home from his mission. (He had a plan, too, which he made when he was about ten, which was to put me in a nursing home when he returned home from his mission and take over the house.)

I gave myself a couple of years to sort things out and to grieve. When Scott was three, I was ready to make a fresh start. I bought a new house, assuming the seventeen years left on the mortgage. I timed it so that the Social Security payments I received for my son and my mortgage would run out within a short period of time from one another. I hoped I would remarry, and the house had room for growth should that happen, but I made the plan assuming I had to rely only on myself.

I mapped out when I would finish my degree, starting classes when my son entered preschool. I worked about five years of the plan before my life deviated from it. I got remarried and moved to Florida . Even though things did not work out as I had hoped, I have never been able to convince myself that God's hand wasn't in that move, but nine years later and facing single life again, I was not sure I was ready to trust anybody but myself.

Lean Not unto Your Own Understanding

I have found that many times I have floundered when I ignored heavenly guidance and relied on my own intellect and instincts. About a decade ago, I began having feelings that I should prepare for a move from Florida . My divorce had been preceded by financial difficulties. I was doing my best to recover, emotionally and financially. I was very proud of the fact that I had managed since then to put $7,000 into a retirement account.

I resisted when I began to have feelings that I was supposed to take some of that money and make the necessary repairs on my house and get it ready to market. Although this prompting came to me many times, I balked because it flew in the face of all logic.

In the meantime, my grandmother died. In order to save money, I had to drive to Orlando , about three hours away from my home, to catch my flight to her funeral. At the time, I had a borrowed vehicle at my house, left behind by a friend who had been in Florida on business and who was going to return. All day long as I got ready to head to Orlando , I kept feeling like I should take his truck to Orlando rather than my car.

I talked back to the voices in my head, telling them that I didn't want to drive my friend's vehicle that far. I remember that last prompting that came very strongly as I pulled out of the driveway. “Pull back in and take the truck.” At that point I said to myself, “I would have to stop for gas and I've already filled up the car.”

About two hours later, I blew a tire on my car going 75 miles an hour on the Florida turnpike. I managed to control the car and got it stopped. I called my road service and told them I was on the turnpike somewhere south of Orlando across from a herd of cows. Then I started to cry. I was certain I was going to miss my plane and my grandmother's funeral.

As I sat there crying and wondering why I hadn't listened to the promptings I'd had all day, it came again. “Take the money out of your savings and fix up the house and get ready to sell it.” It still didn't make sense to me to take a tax bite and leave myself without any fallback money, but I quietly said, “Okay, I'm ready to listen now. I'll do it, but where am I going?”

While I was in Utah for the funeral, I decided that if I was going to fix up the house in Florida and sell it, I ought to have a plan. I decided it would make sense for me to move back to Utah to be closer to family and friends. While visiting with a friend in the ward in Salt Lake that I had moved from, she mentioned that her mother-in-law had recently passed away and that she was going to be fixing up the house next door that they owned and looking for a new tenant.

A light went on. “I'm supposed to move back into this ward.” It made perfect sense to me. I heard the “click” of things falling into place. It gave me a sense of comfort, of not feeling I was working without a net. I told her I might be interested in renting the house and we promised to keep in touch.

By the time I went to my grandfather's funeral a few months later, I had become acquainted with a widowed college professor with five children in Hawaii and I told my friend that my plans to move to Utah might not come to pass the way I had planned. The rest, as they say, is history. I had made plans to move west, but I ended up moving a little further west than I had anticipated. As I looked back I saw this not so much as a misinterpretation on my part of what I was supposed to do but as evidence that God knows me.

I picture a conversation between my guardian angel and the Almighty.

“It took a blowout on the turnpike to get her attention, but she's listening now and is getting ready to move. She wants to know where she is going.”

“ Hawaii , but you can't tell her that. She hasn't even met Thom yet.”

“What should we tell her then? You know how she likes to have a plan.”

“Okay, let's let her think she's headed back to Utah while everything else unfolds. That will comfort her enough that she'll be open to the possibilities when they present themselves.”

Thom's philosophy is that if we plan things too rigidly, we don't allow God to lead us to where He needs us to be. I think of my husband sometimes as the anti-planner. He loves to take open-ended vacations, and frustrates me at times when I can't pin him down to things.

I also know that he often manages to somehow be where he is needed when he is needed. Before I met him, I found myself sitting in a car on the side of the road across from some cows, telling God I was willing to listen, and I ended up where I was needed when I was needed. Funny how that happens sometimes.

Now and then Thom and I talk about leaving Hawaii . We aren't sure where we will go. I mapped out where all our children and our parents live and noted that Boise , Idaho , is equidistant from everyone. Thom doesn't work like that. He says it will become clear.

God doesn't work like Mapquest where the whole trip is laid out before you. He just gives us the next step or two on the road. Turn left. Go three miles. There may be roadblocks, detours and bad weather, but there will also be breathtaking scenery we might have otherwise missed. That's where faith comes in, that if we listen and obey and partner with God, the destination, ultimately, will be the right place.