We spend a lot of our life waiting.
Waiting to achieve some thing that we expect to be life-altering.
We wait to be married. We wait to have kids. We wait to have the perfect job, the forever home, the rock-solid community.
We wait for the baby to sleep through the night, for this challenging season to pass, or for the scale to finally hit that magic number.
Consciously or unconsciously, we anticipate some sort of blissful permanence once that magical milestone has been reached. And I don’t want to burst your bubble, but it’s almost never permanent.
That baby will hit a sleep regression. The carefree honeymoon phase of the marriage yields to real life. You’ll be ecstatic when you land the perfect job, but then a supervisor changes or the culture shifts and you can no longer picture yourself there forever. A hard season comes to an end, only to be followed by a new one. You’ve built the perfect community, but then your BFF moves across the country. You finally feel financially comfortable, only to have a new wrench thrown into your family budget.
And I know what you’re thinking. But I promise you I’m not a hard-core pessimist nor do I think you should walk around waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Neither do I believe you shouldn’t have goals or look forward to important milestones.
But what I do believe is that we need to consciously refrain from assigning permanence to whatever state we’re hoping to achieve. Instead, we should hold our milestones loosely. We should celebrate them with joy, maintain a heart of gratitude while we walk through the seasons we’ve been waiting for, and even grieve if they come to an end.
But we can’t hold everything so tightly that our world tilts on its axis when the permanence we mistakenly assumed turns out to be an illusion.
Or worse, an idol.
I’ve always wanted permanence for my kids. Because stability and predictability are, generally, good things. But all idols are made of gold – meaning they start out simply as GOOD THINGS, but then get elevated too high. And I’ve learned over the years that the second I assign permanence to something, I’ve turned it into an idol. And God finds ways to remind me that permanence is never guaranteed.
Case in point: I was convinced we needed to find our “forever home” before my firstborn started first grade so that he’d never have to change schools. I actually said (multiple times to multiple people), “I want him to know exactly which elementary, middle, and high school he’ll go to.” And you can probably guess what happened next. No sooner did we move and he start his new school than the boundaries got reviewed and we were high on the list of being reassigned. I was devastated.
Fast forward a few years after that, and the high school boundaries came under review. I was anxious about it, but not quite so despondent.
Then seven years ago I quit my traditional 8-5 job and embraced the flexible work-from-home freelance life. I said I’d “NEVER” return to a “real” job. But, wouldn’t you know, one landed in my lap that I couldn’t pass up. I cried before accepting the offer, but then forged ahead.
And now our century-old church is at risk of losing its building, but you know what? It doesn’t sting quite like I’d expect it to. Somehow I’m peacefully content to do what I can through Christ-honoring advocacy while holding the building loosely and entrusting the entire situation to a God whose plans are much greater than our earthly ones.
Because, after reflecting on it, I don’t think it’s permanence I want. It’s familiarity. It’s predictability. It’s avoidance of the unknown.
Or, to choose another word, it’s control.
In the faith community we know we’re supposed to relinquish control. It may be hard, but we understand that real faith means entrusting our lives to a trustworthy God. But, in our endless pattern of human defiance, we manage to package up control in ways that are not quite so recognizable.
Noble, even.
Like “permanence.”
Assigning permanence to seasons, objects, feelings or people feeds into our illusion of control. And, beyond that, it robs us of joy during the waiting and taints the memory after the season has passed. It even prevents us from making bold, courageous, exciting, and rewarding choices that would upset the permanence we hold so dear.
It can even affect our obedience.
So don’t stop anticipating, planning, and working. But do stop elevating the end result to a permanent and final destination. After all, the only thing that’s permanent is change, and the only thing that doesn’t change is our God.
PIN THIS!
Read more of Kristina’s contributions to AllMomDoes here.
