This isn’t How the Story is Supposed to Go

As summer turns to fall I notice it. There, at the end of my September calendar, a long-ago planned trip to Mexico. I had eagerly accepted my mom’s invitation to join her and my uncle on their annual adventure, visiting with friends south of the boarder.

I thought I had gotten used to the strange unpredictability of this time. But the loss of those memories-not-made hits me with a fresh sadness.

And school is not what we had hoped it would be this fall. Our college-aged daughter is missing another season of running competitively. Our high-school-aged daughter is missing her season of volleyball. Both are beginning the school year with coursework all online.

Our oldest girl? She’s still half a world away. Her return home delayed, a complication of the worldwide shutdown that caused a backlog in military transfers.

It’s been 18 long months since I’ve held my strong, beautiful girl.

I am sure you and your family have your own stories of how the unexpectedness of these days has tampered with your hopes and dreams for this part of the unnesting journey.

Sometimes I can’t help but feel that this isn’t how the story is supposed to go.

But then, I am reminded of the cross and Jesus as He hung, dying. Things must have looked so very bleak to all who had come to hope in Him. Surely His disciples must have felt similarly – that this wasn’t how the story was supposed to go.

And yet, despite the desolateness of those three days, we know that a powerful, impossible thing was happening in the unseen.

When darkness fell over the land.

When the earth shook and the rocks split.

When death overcame the long hoped-for Messiah.

God was actively accomplishing His will. His light was shining bright in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it.  

It seems that sometimes, sometimes victory begins with death – the death of long dreamed-of trips and long hoped-for college experiences. And this causes me to wonder:

What powerful, impossible thing is God accomplishing right now in the unseen?

What is He doing through this part of the story? I do not know.

But I do know that whatever it is, it is good – for He is good. And His is the sure and unshakable Kingdom where the death of the Savior can be worked out, in a wholly unfathomable way, for good – for my good, for your good, for the good of the world.

Lord, teach us to release our ideas of how we think the story should go. Give us eyes to see the new thing – the powerful, impossible thing you are doing in our lives, in the lives of our children and in this fallen world.

We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18