Preparation Precedes Purpose

August 17, 2026

There are moments in life when we look backward and suddenly realize that what once seemed random was perhaps being woven into a story we could not yet see. I have experienced that kind of realization more than once, but none has been more profound than what happened to me in August of 2021.

Long before I understood what was coming, four songs had somehow found their way onto my phone. That may not sound particularly significant, except for one small detail: I had never used my phone as a music library. I have always had music. Lots of it. My home audio system and theater had served that purpose for years, and even my old PlayStation had become a digital repository for my collection of CDs. My phone was for communication, work, photographs, notes, and everything else a phone had become. Music simply wasn’t something I needed it for. Yet, sometime before that season of my life, four songs found their way onto my phone.

Only four.

I did not know why I saved them. I did not create a playlist. I did not consciously recognize some impending significance. I simply kept them there. One was CeCe Winans’ “Believe For It,” released in early 2021. Another was Dolly Parton and Zach Williams’ “There Was Jesus,” a song first released in 2019 that would later receive a Grammy. The third was The Afters’ “I Will Fear No More,” released in 2019. The fourth reached much farther back into my own history: “Praise the Lord” by The Imperials featuring Russ Taff, a song released in 1979 when I was sixteen years old. That last song had followed me for decades. I had heard it as a teenager, sung it through adulthood, and carried its message through seasons I could never have anticipated. Yet somehow, decades after it first entered my life, it would become part of something much more personal. At the time those four songs sat quietly on my phone, I had no idea that they were waiting for me. I certainly had no idea what they were waiting for.

Sometimes God prepares the provision long before He reveals the need.

That is one of those truths that is difficult to appreciate while you are living inside the story. Preparation rarely announces itself as preparation. It usually looks ordinary. It feels incidental. It may even seem meaningless. We tend to recognize preparation only after purpose has been revealed. Joseph probably did not understand the pit as preparation for the palace. Moses could not have known that forty years in the wilderness were forming the man who would eventually stand before Pharaoh. David did not know that lonely nights watching sheep were preparing him to face a giant. Perhaps we should not be surprised when some of the seemingly insignificant things God places in our lives today become strangely important tomorrow.

My story began unfolding in ways I could not understand long before August of 2021.

In early 2020, my wife, Kim, began experiencing what she described as an ominous sense of foreboding. She could not explain it. She simply felt that something was wrong. The feeling was persistent enough that she wondered whether the trauma of a serious automobile accident involving our college-age daughter had left her struggling with PTSD. Kim had been one of the first people to arrive at that accident scene, and understandably, the experience had left an impression upon her, but the uneasiness did not go away.

Then COVID-19 entered the world’s vocabulary.

Suddenly, the strange concern she had been carrying seemed to have a context. What she had experienced internally before the pandemic became recognizable externally after it arrived. She began researching everything she could about the virus, its complications, and the medical information emerging at the time. Some of what she encountered caused her to question prevailing assumptions and recommendations. Some of those conclusions remain matters of debate, and I would not pretend that my personal experience provides definitive answers to complex medical questions. However, something much more important was happening in our lives.

We were being prepared for a season we did not know was coming.

At the time, I was leading a Continuous Improvement project in Canada for a prominent North American commercial bakery. When travel restrictions brought the project to a halt, I eventually found myself leading the Canadian team remotely from the United States using Microsoft Teams, a platform that was still relatively new to many of us. I had no idea that this experience would matter later. I simply thought I was adapting to circumstances. Here’s what I’ve come to realize. Preparation often looks exactly like that. It looks like learning something because you need it today, only to discover years—or months—later that God was building something into you for tomorrow.

Then came another layer.

In March of 2021, I began dealing with significant health concerns. I was overweight and dealing with high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, fatty liver, and hypothyroidism. My physician referred me to a cardiologist, and a series of evaluations followed. I knew I needed to change. So I did. I changed my diet. I began exercising consistently. I became much more disciplined about what I ate and how much water I consumed. Over approximately five months, I lost forty-four pounds. My blood pressure and cholesterol improved substantially, and I felt as though I had begun reclaiming my health. Looking back, I now see another part of the preparation.

I simply did not yet understand what I was being prepared for.

As my health improved, my blood pressure eventually became too low while I remained on medication prescribed earlier in my treatment. My wife and I had already questioned whether the medication should be adjusted because of my weight loss and improved readings, but at the time we were advised to continue it. Then late July arrived. I became increasingly fatigued and short of breath. My condition deteriorated rapidly. On the morning of August 4, 2021, I experienced another near-fainting episode. Kim insisted that I see a doctor. I reluctantly agreed. I drove to the appointment, although the medical staff eventually refused to let me drive away because of how unstable my condition appeared. My oxygen saturation was dangerously low, my breathing was shallow, and my blood pressure was severely depressed. The COVID test came back positive. I was sent immediately to the emergency room. Within hours, I was admitted to the seventh floor of Jackson General Hospital, where the COVID patients were being treated.

No visitors.

No family upstairs.

No familiar faces.

Just a hospital bed, machines, nurses, physicians, oxygen, and an uncertain future. I was placed on extremely high-flow supplemental oxygen because my body was struggling to oxygenate itself. I was told later that I had been dangerously close to requiring intensive care and mechanical ventilation. There are parts of those next several days that I simply do not remember. However, I remember enough.

And I remember what happened in the darkness.

During those days, I spent much of my waking time listening to an audiobook my son had encouraged me to read, Napoleon Hill’s Outwitting the Devil. The book explores the idea of drifting through life without purpose and describes fear as one of the forces capable of keeping a person from living intentionally. Whatever one may think of Hill’s broader philosophy, one idea struck me deeply during that hospital stay: the danger of becoming a drifter. A drifter has no clear purpose. A drifter continually chooses the path of least resistance. A drifter allows fear, indecision, distraction, and circumstance to determine direction. The alternative is a person who knows what matters, makes decisions, accepts responsibility, learns from failure, serves others, and lives with intentionality. As I listened, I found myself recording thoughts and insights into the Notes application on my phone. That same phone. The same phone that contained only four songs. I began filling it with ideas.

Truths.

Questions.

Reflections.

The things I was hearing.

The things I was remembering.

The things I sensed God was saying to me.

My phone had unexpectedly become a repository for something much deeper than music. It had become a repository for formation. And then, sometime around 2:30 on the morning of Saturday, August 8, something happened that I will never forget.

I woke up alone in my hospital room, or so I thought.

The room was dark except for the quiet glow of medical equipment. Machines beeped rhythmically around me. Oxygen was rushing through the nasal cannula. The hospital had become strangely familiar in the way that frightening places sometimes do when you have been there long enough.

I remember being aware of my weakness.

I remember being aware of my vulnerability.

And then a thought came to me. It was not complicated. It was something I had heard my father say throughout my childhood: “If you can’t pray your way out of it, praise your way out of it.” I had heard those words before. Many times. But suddenly they were no longer merely words. They were personal. I reached for my phone. Four songs. Only four. I opened CeCe Winans’ “Believe For It.” I began to praise.

I cried.

I sang.

I prayed.

I believed.

I sang those four songs as loudly as my frail lungs could manage. I had no concern about whether anyone outside my room could hear me. I was not trying to impress anyone. I was not performing. I was desperate. There is a difference. For nearly forty-five minutes, that hospital room became something other than a hospital room. It became a sanctuary and an encounter with The Almighty. I don’t know how to explain it scientifically, medically, or psychologically. I can only tell you what it felt like.

I felt the presence of God.

I felt as though I was being reminded that my life did not ultimately rest in the hands of machines, physicians, medication, statistics, or circumstances. My life belonged to God. Eventually, exhausted from crying and singing, I collapsed back into the elevated hospital bed. I shook. I wept. And I remember thinking that I had experienced something sacred. I did not know what was happening medically at that exact moment. I cannot prove that the songs caused anything physiological to change. Consequently, I know what happened inside me. Something changed.

And that would not be the last time.

Over the following days, I experienced two additional moments of spiritual intensity, each connected in some way to those same four songs. Looking back, I cannot escape the strange timing of it. Those songs had been placed on my phone months earlier. I had not needed them then, but I needed them now.

Preparation had preceded purpose.

What I thought was simply a collection of four songs had become a soundtrack for a battle I had not yet known I would fight.

Then came another moment that would forever change the way I understood that hospital stay. My nurse was named Amity. She had been assigned to the COVID wing, caring for patients who were isolated from their families and surrounded by uncertainty. Like so many healthcare workers during that season, she was carrying the weight of circumstances few people outside those hospital walls could fully comprehend. As my condition began improving, I became curious about the hospital itself. I asked her how many floors were being used for COVID patients.

Three.

Sixth, seventh, and eighth.

Then I asked how many beds were on those floors.

Thirty-nine on the sixth.

Thirty-nine on the seventh.

Thirty-eight on the eighth.

All full.

I asked her another question. “Are many people leaving here alive?” She lowered her head. Her answer was difficult to hear. Then she looked at me and said something I will never forget.

“You are our star patient.”

I asked what she meant. She told me that my condition had taken a remarkable turn. My vital signs had begun improving, and she believed I was going to make it. Then I asked her when she first noticed the change. She told me it had been around the early morning of August 8.

The same morning I had awakened and begun singing.

I told her what had happened. I told her about the songs. I told her about the sense of God’s presence. And then something unexpected happened. Amity began telling me her story. She had experienced tremendous difficulty in her own marriage and family life. She spoke about a broken relationship and the challenges surrounding her remarriage and her husband’s children. She told me about feeling rejected and disrespected. As I shared with her some of my own journey, particularly the story of rebuilding trust with my son, I watched tears begin to roll down her face. Then she said something that has remained with me ever since. “Your story has given me hope that maybe there is hope for us.” I told her that there was. Because I believe God is the God of restoration. Then she looked at me and said something that reframed the entire experience for me.

“Rob, I now know that you aren’t only in this hospital because you needed us. I think I was in this hospital because I needed you.”

I will never forget those words. I had entered that hospital thinking I was the one who needed saving. But perhaps God had been preparing me to serve someone else while I was being carried through my own suffering. That is when the meaning of preparation began to deepen for me. Maybe preparation is not always about preparing us for what we will accomplish. Maybe sometimes God prepares us for who we will encounter. Maybe the valley is not merely where God develops us. Maybe it is where He positions us. Maybe the wounds we thought disqualified us become the very places through which we are eventually able to comfort someone else. Maybe the years we thought were wasted were actually becoming vocabulary for a conversation we would someday need to have. Maybe the things we thought God had forgotten were simply things He was still preparing to use. I think about those four songs now and I cannot help but wonder.

Why those four?

Why then?

Why did a song from my teenage years find its way onto my phone forty-two years after I first heard it? Why did songs released in 2019 and 2021 become the soundtrack of a hospital room in August of 2021? Why did I have exactly what I needed when I didn’t yet know I needed it? I cannot answer all of those questions. And perhaps I am not supposed to.

Faith does not require us to understand the entire pattern before trusting the One who is weaving it.

What I do know is this:

Preparation often happens in obscurity.

Purpose often arrives in hindsight.

God can be doing something in us long before He reveals what He intends to do through us.

We are often tempted to evaluate our lives according to what is happening right now. We look at the unanswered prayer, the difficult season, the career disappointment, the broken relationship, the health crisis, the financial strain, the wilderness, and we wonder what any of it could possibly have to do with God’s purpose. But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Perhaps the better question is not, “Why is this happening to me?” Perhaps it is, “What is God forming in me that I will one day need for someone else?” That question changes the way we see suffering. It does not make suffering good. It does not minimize pain. It does not pretend tragedy is something we should enjoy.

But it allows us to believe that tragedy does not have to be wasted.

I have come to believe that one of the great mysteries of God is His ability to take what was never intended for our good and somehow redeem it for good. The hospital was never something I would have chosen. COVID was never something I would have requested. The uncertainty was never something I wanted. The weakness was never something I considered a gift. Yet somewhere in the middle of that suffering, God met me. He did not merely meet me to get me out. He met me to form me. He met me to remind me who I was. He met me to deepen my trust. He met me to teach me that my life could still become an instrument of encouragement even when I was lying helpless in a hospital bed. Consequently, He allowed me to encounter Amity. That encounter matters to me because it illustrates something I now believe deeply.

We rarely know how God is using our lives while we are living them.

We may think we are simply surviving a difficult season when God is quietly preparing us to speak life into someone else. We may think we are merely learning how to endure when God is teaching us how to empathize. We may think we are losing something when God is loosening our grip on something that could never fulfill us. We may think we are being delayed when God is developing something that cannot be rushed.

Preparation begins long before purpose is revealed.

The seed spends a long time underground before anyone sees the tree. The roots develop in darkness before the branches reach toward the light. The valley grows things the mountaintop cannot. And sometimes God does His deepest work in places where nobody is applauding. Perhaps that is why I think differently now about those four songs. They were not merely songs. They were seeds. They had been planted in me at different points in my life, and I did not understand their significance until I desperately needed what they carried. One reminded me to believe when circumstances told me not to. One reminded me that God’s presence is not limited to the places where life is going well. One reminded me that fear does not have to become the author of my story. And one had been teaching me to praise since I was sixteen years old.

Decades of preparation.

One week of purpose.

And somewhere between the two, God connected the dots.

I cannot tell you exactly what God was doing in every circumstance that led me to that hospital room. I cannot explain every medical detail or claim certainty about every conclusion I drew during those frightening days. But I can tell you what I experienced. I experienced grace. I experienced presence. I experienced restoration. I experienced the kindness of a nurse named Amity. I experienced the power of encouragement. I experienced the strange and beautiful realization that my suffering could become a platform from which I could serve someone else. And perhaps that is the part of the story I most want to remember. I did not leave that hospital merely grateful to be alive. I left with a deeper conviction that being alive carries responsibility.

We are not simply preserved. We are positioned. We are not merely rescued from something. We are often rescued for something. The question is whether we will recognize what God has been forming in us before the moment arrives when someone else needs it. The years matter. The disappointments matter. The lessons matter. The scars matter. The songs matter. The conversations matter. Even the seemingly insignificant things matter. Because preparation often hides inside ordinary moments.

Purpose often arrives wearing the clothes of circumstances we never would have chosen.

I think back now to that hospital bed and the four songs sitting quietly on my phone. I had no idea what they were preparing me for, but God did. Perhaps that is the invitation for all of us. Do not despise the preparation simply because you cannot yet see the purpose. Do not assume that silence means inactivity. Do not mistake delay for abandonment. Do not believe that the season you are walking through has to make sense before it can have meaning. There may be something God is forming in you right now that you will not understand until years from now. There may be a person you have not yet met who will one day need the very encouragement your present pain is teaching you to give. There may be a song you are hearing today that will become the anthem you need tomorrow. There may be a lesson you think you are learning for yourself that God intends to use through you.

Preparation begins long before purpose is revealed.

Sometimes, when we finally arrive at the place where purpose becomes visible, we look backward and discover that God had been preparing us all along. He was there in the song. He was there in the struggle. He was there in the silence. He was there in the hospital room. He was there in the tears of a nurse named Amity. And He was there long before I ever knew I would need Him.

Perhaps He is doing the same thing in your life right now. Perhaps the story is still being written. Perhaps the preparation is already underway. And perhaps one day, when you finally understand why you walked through what you walked through, you will look back with tears in your eyes and realize that what felt like interruption was actually preparation. God was not wasting the story.

He was preparing you for the moment when your story would become part of someone else’s healing.

-Rob Carroll