My four year old niece is just beginning to grapple with the concept of time. When told by her parents that she will be going over to grandma and Auntie Fawn’s house tomorrow, the wheels in her little brain start spinning as she tries to figure out what tomorrow is. “One more sleep?” she asks, as the equation that tomorrow=the next day clicks into place. She smiles about this. One sleep is understandable, perhaps even two or three more sleeps until the weekend makes sense now, and is more easily awaited.
But, when her parents say they’re going on a vacation this summer, this little girl can’t quite figure out how to process this information. It’s too many sleeps for her to count on her fingers, too many more sleeps than her forming brain can process at this point. So some days, she is as excited about this trip as if it’s tomorrow, other days she completely forgets about it, and yet on others she is horribly frustrated with the waiting. Summer can feel to her four year old self like a lifetime away.
Even though I’m almost forty and can calculate exactly how many more sleeps I have until the next thing on my calendar, I can understand her perspective. It’s even worse when the answer to my questions of when things will happen is “someday, probably a long time from now” or “I don’t know” or perhaps “quite possibly never.”
- When will I get married? Quite possibly never.
- When will I finally be content? Someday, probably a long time from now.
- When will I overcome this fear? I don’t know.
- When will I stop struggling with this? I don’t know.
- When will I be financially stable? Quite possibly never.
- When will I stop feeling this way? Someday, probably a long time from now.
- When will I stop yearning for things I can’t have? Someday, probably a long time from now.
- When will I understand why? Someday, probably a long time from now, or perhaps, quite possibly, never.
And, like a toddler, my mind fights these concepts of time. It wants something it can measure, can grasp, can rely upon. It wants to know exactly how many more sleeps until these things happen.
As a lifelong fan of science fiction, the idea of time travel always appealed to me. If only I could wrinkle time by tessering, hop into the flying DeLorean or TARDIS, set the controls for the future, and jump ahead. If only someone could come back and tell me when. But, as all great sci-fi fans know, this often doesn’t end well. No, it is better to now know your own future, but to live it out by stepping one foot in front of the other, like everyone else.
2 Corinthians 5:7 reminds us that, as Christians, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” Hebrews 11:1 goes on to describe faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” My sister and her husband can see what they have planned for the summer; to them it is not so far away, they are booking flights and making arrangements. And my niece is learning to trust them – so even though she cannot see that far ahead, she has faith in them that this will happen and be amazing.
How much more so can my God, my Father, see everything he has planned for me? I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes, what he’s orchestrating for me, what arrangements are being made. But, like my niece can trust in her parents because she knows they love her as they always say they do, and they’ve reliably proven this to her throughout her four years of life thus far, I can trust my God because I know he loves me as he says he does in his Scripture, and I can look back on a lifetime of evidence to this fact.
So I’m trying to make my peace with time. Trying to let it unravel without knowing what lies ahead. Trying to both wisely plan for the future while also letting it slip through my fingers with a loose grip. Trying to be okay with questions that may never be answered, at least not in this lifetime.
There are still moments when, like my niece, I can feel my face scrunching up in disdain when no one can tell me exactly how many sleeps it will take before something I want to happen occurs. There are still moments when I wish I could throw a tantrum, beat my fists against the ground, kick and flail a bit when I realize the answer isn’t the one I wanted. But like my sister and her husband, who love their little girl even when she’s imperfect, I know God is there with me in the midst of my disappointment and fear, just waiting for me to turn to him with faith for my future. And today, that is enough.