I love to know what is next … how the movie or book ends, what is planned for tomorrow, where our next vacation will be, what renovation we will do next on our home. I am into certainty. I plan our meals for a couple of weeks in advance, I countdown to 
holidays, I scour home stores for ideas to duplicate in our home (I rarely have any time to actually do them), and I sometimes read the last page of the novel before starting it (although I always find it is pointless, because it never seems to tell me anything anyway).
Life, though, is not full of certainty, but uncertainty.
There are hiccups to plans, there are changes in schedules, there are twists in the road, and there are surprises around every corner. The only thing I am truly certain of is that nothing in life is for certain.
I learned this a few years back, on our anniversary. As the days grew closer, our daughters were talking up ‘the gift’ hubby had gotten for me. There is nothing worse for adding pressure, than your kids excitedly telling you that you will love what their dad got for you! I mean, this meant that how I responded could disappoint not only hubby, but our kids too.
I knew that I had to plan my response. And so I went into constant rehearsals … in the van, in my backyard, in the kitchen, in the mirror … everywhere I went for a week I was practicing my response. By our anniversary I was a well-oiled machine (with a rumbly in my tumbly, from the anxiety).
When ‘it’ arrived at the house, I was sequestered to our daughters room, until ‘it’ and our family were all in place. Then I was beckoned to the living room, where they were all excitedly awaiting (and I was hoping I would faint before I got there, and had to act out my response). And there ‘it’ was … I was shocked, I was excited, I was unable to act … I was naturally thrilled! Hubby had taken an old chair that I had paid a dollar for at a junkyard (over twenty years ago), to be refinished and reupholstered. It was beautifully redeemed, and I loved it.
Now that is the kind of uncertainty I can handle!
I was recently in church singing along, and an example of certainty hit me in the face, and caused tears to flow from my eyes.
“No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.”
As I read and sang those words … no power of hell, no scheme of man … that means nothing on earth, or beyond the earth … nothing, can ever separate me from Christ. There is nothing that any man or woman can do to me, there is no demonic pressure that can sever the tie that exists between my redeemer and me. There is nothing that even I can do to break that tie.
This is certainty! And this is what I hold on to till He returns, or calls me home.
after leaving our home one of our children would cry from from the backseats, “are we there yet?”
Do you ever feel like you are hanging on by a thread? Or maybe you live with, or know someone else who seems to be just barely surviving … but rather precariously. They are desperate, they are exhausted, they are hopeless.
I having been trying (as a person who struggles with the lack of a gift of patience) to learn to appreciate process, rather than just wish that the struggle were over. This has not been an easy thing for me to learn. And, with every step forward, I slide backwards even farther.
My thinking is that we usually can only appreciate the process of struggle AFTER it is over (oh, hindsight, how I love thee). So, what I am really trying to do, by appreciating the process, is seeking the benefit of hindsight in the midst of the process 😉 … But, I am also hoping that by appreciating the process … the struggle might get over sooner! I do realize that my theory is not only confusing, but it is also very flawed, and very … wrong.
itsawonderfilledlife 