You stood in the kitchen this morning, dissident, questioning the whole system as you have been doing since the day nearly a decade ago that I told you to pick up your shoes and put them in the bucket. You picked them up, leveled your 14 month old gaze on me, and promptly threw them back on the floor. You’ve come a long way since that notorious hour and a half long Battle of the Shoes, and your relentlessly questioning nature has gained an edge of wisdom but it is still there. And I kind of hope it will always be.
So I flipped the grilled cheese sandwiches and thought about how hard it is to be between a child and a teenager, and how much maturity it takes to yield when you don’t want to. I thought about how a toddler needs kind and gentle authoritarianism but an almost eleven year old needs hope that will feed obedience past the days when a mom’s voice isn’t the loudest anymore. I thought about how I figured I would have the mom thing down by now but I still don’t have a clue what I’m doing.
“I know this isn’t what you want. I know it doesn’t seem fair. But it’s the season that you are in. This season won’t last forever. But if God really is good, and He really is wise, and He really is in control, then there must be something good that He wants you to learn right now. Maybe you could ask Him to show you what that is…”
Now you are at tennis practice and I am wondering why these words flow out of me when you are standing in the kitchen with exasperation on your face but they leave me when I am alone with my own thoughts.
I know this isn’t what you want.
I have spent the past half of my life coming to terms with the fact that life doesn’t cater to my wishes and dreams. I moved to New Orleans to pursue a calling and left in a hurricane. I entered the classroom as a teacher to change the world and left in tears. I married to become one and found out that it’s not automatic. I lost some friends too young, watched others leave a narrow path for a destructive one. I began to understand that my perfectionism will never satisfy. Thirty-one years I have been walking with the Lord and what frustrates me the most is how far I am from being like Christ.
But it’s the season that you are in, and it won’t last forever.
Ah, there’s the part that flies from my mind. To everything there is a season, and I don’t get to define the length or determine the conditions. Does God say, “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ”? Does He say, “Faithful is He who called you; He also will bring it to pass”? Does He say, “All things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose”? Why don’t I believe it? Cling to it through all the days when my sight is not catching up to faith? Like Abraham I get too impatient waiting for the promise.
But after so many vain attempts to change the seasons myself, to ignore them, to become bitter in the midst of them, or to crawl under a rock and hide from them, I wish I could constantly remember that it’s not the seasons but my perspective that needs to change the most.
If God really is good…
I lift up my eyes to the mountains; where does my help come from?
And He really is wise…
My help comes from the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth.
And He really is in control…
He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.
Then there must be something good that He wants you to learn right now.
I want you to know that God is for you; that He is Lord of all the seasons that we experience, and that we can’t define happiness apart from humble submission to Him. I want you to know the joy of trusting in His promises and walking in obedience. Of doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with our God. Of abiding in Him and He in you.
I want me to know it too.
