Just Wait. I'm Not Done Yet.

Last Sunday morning, I was helping my daughter get ready for a kids choir performance at church. We were in the bathroom and I was helping her dry her hair after her shower. I asked her to flip her hair over so that I could make sure the underside was completely dry. When she flipped her hair back, she looked in the mirror and frowned at her reflection.

I turned the dryer off. “What’s wrong, Honey?”

Her brow furrowed and she folded her arms. “My hair is so messy! Everyone will laugh at me.”

I tried not to laugh. “Well,” I said, “I’m not done yet.”

“But it’s all poofy and it looks funny. I don’t like it.”

“Sweetie, I know it looks kind of crazy right now, but it’s not finished yet. Just wait. It will be fine I promise.”

She only scowled at the mirror, unconvinced. “Watch and see,” I told her.

I went back to work, brushing, blow-drying, curling and hair-spraying. Slowly the scowl melted away.

“Now,” I said when I was done, “how does it look?”

A smile lit her face. “Good.”

“Does your mom know what she is doing?”

“Yeah,” she said reluctantly.

“Even when you can’t see how it’s going turn out?”

“Yeah,” she responded.

“Maybe next time you’ll trust me?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Go get your shoes on. It’s time to go.”

It wasn’t until God brought that conversation back to my mind the next morning that I realized the significance of it. How many times have I had that same conversation with Him?

“God, I’m following you and trusting you to guide me, but look! My life is a mess! What’s going on?”

I’m not done yet. Don’t worry.

“But God, I don’t understand! Don’t you see what’s happening? What kind of witness can I be for you when nothing is working out?”

I have it under control. Trust me.

“I know I should trust you, but…are you SURE you know what you are doing? I mean, this is a disaster! What are you doing to me?”

I’m taking care of it. Just be patient.
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OK, Beloved. Look now.

“Oh. Well, how did you do that? That’s amazing! I can’t believe it!”

So, does your Father know what he is doing after all?

“I guess so.”

Even when you don't understand what’s really going on?

“Yeah.” (sheepishly)

Will you trust me next time?

“I’ll try to remember.”

Of course, the time table we are on isn’t usually the 10 minutes it took me to fix my daughter’s hair. The amount of time we will have to wait to see how our Heavenly Father is working things for our good varies greatly from situation to situation. It can be months or years (or longer) before we get a glimpse of how God is weaving together the threads of our lives with the threads of others into a beautiful and intricate pattern. And, like in a tapestry, the individual threads are only aware of their own twists and turns and those around them in those moments when their paths happen to come into contact. From the inside, I can imagine that it would look like a huge mess. When viewed from above, though, the true design of all the intersecting threads can be seen. It’s so much bigger and so much more intricate than we can fathom. Much of it, though, won’t be understood until we truly view it the way it was intended to be seen. From the vantage point of eternity.

Be confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6

Sometimes . . .

Sometimes I think there must be a place where things go right and life is not so hard.
Sometimes I think there must be a time when everything isn’t falling apart.
Sometimes I think that if only I was smarter, more talented, stronger, more determined, then I wouldn’t always be struggling.

I’d like to know where that place is.
I’d like to know when that time will be.
I’d like to know how I can be whatever I should be so that things would go easier.

I’ve been learning that no matter how it looks, everyone has pain.
Everyone has struggles.
Everyone is just trying to do what has to be done to get by.
It just doesn’t seem that it should be that way.

Maybe I’ve just grown up watching too many movies that ended “Happily Ever After”.
Maybe I’ve seen too many tv shows where the problems are all solved by the end of the hour.
Maybe I have an unrealistic view of how life “should” be.

I wonder if people who lived in the old west felt that they were meant for more than what they were doing.
I wonder if people in medieval England thought that life wasn’t meant to be so hard.
I wonder if ancient Egyptians longed for a time when problems didn’t exist.

I think the pioneers must have looked at the vast night sky and wondered about their place in the universe.
I think the serfs must have watched the royalty and wished for that kind of life.
I think the slaves must have daydreamed of being an owner rather than the owned.

How strange that we all want purpose and value.
How strange that we also want everything to be easy.
How strange that no matter where we are in life, we want things to be different.

It makes me think that we must all be born designed to live in God-created Eden, but are thrust instead into a world designed by men. This place, with it’s sin, hierarchies, jobs, rules, and expectations is so different from what we were meant to live in that something within all of us knows that it just shouldn’t be this way. We just don’t know what to do to make it right. There’s no way to fix it, so we just do whatever we can to dull the pain of it. We try to block out the wrongness of it.

I think that’s why, as Christians, we long so much for Heaven. We know that finally things will be right when we get there. When being here becomes more than we feel that we can bear, we hold on to the hope that one day we won’t have to be here anymore. We can someday be where we were meant to be. We can be in the place with no more tears. We can be reunited with those we love who are no longer with us. We can be with the One who gave His life for us. We can be where we belong, because we certainly don’t belong here.