Everything Beautiful

"Yet God has made everything beautiful in it's own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end."

~ Ecclesiastes 3:11

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

~ Teddy Roosevelt

I'm not at the end of the journey. I don't know where I am on it but if I am a hiker on a mountain, I'm somewhere at an overlook taking a breather, looking back at what has happened and where God has brought me and my family thus far. I'm at a place of remembrance and thankfulness.

This time of year is bittersweet. I'm probably not alone in feeling it. Our Earth is waking up from a long Winter's nap, stretching and blooming and living . And it seems so wrong that grief should invade such a time as this. Or that life can bloom when life ends for some. It's unnatural. I've given up trying to make sense of it. All I know is that it was never suppose to be this way - this grief and strife and stress. But we are multifaceted, we humans, in both good and bad ways, and we impact the world around us in multifaceted ways. And sometimes things happen that we have no control over. It's just life, post Eden and all.

I remember, about 10 years ago, walking through a room at my church. It was sectioned out and each section was decorated in one of the four seasons. Each season represented a time in life. The point of the room was to walk from section to section, sitting in each one for a time and being sensitive to where God was in each season of your life. Its interesting, but you couldn't see ahead into the next section - the next season. Isn't that just like real life? We can anticipate, but we don't really know for certain what's going to happen next. I remember looking up and seeing part of Ecclesiastes 3:11 high on the wall which could be seen from each of the sections in the room:

"... everything beautiful in its own time..."

The following eight years or so were really hard. We navigated a dying business, new jobs, health issues, deep grief over life lost, and more ... and the everyday issues of that & what they bring about. I couldn't see ahead and sometimes hope eluded me. This is life. This is not only my story - it is the story of so many of us.

I've been reading over some of the things I wrote way back when, old blog posts and such. I've read about the earlier years in my motherhood and the anxiety-ridden time when I first started a job as a medical assistant (after 10 years of being a stay-at-home mom) in a dysfunctional (to say the least) office with an old school exacting doctor. He was good for me. I just didn't know it at the time. "...everything beautiful in it's own time..."

Mother's Day came and went this year and I spent most of the day in my pj's, not feeling very healthy but feeling pretty blessed to be given the gift of motherhood. I don't know about the rest of you moms out there, but for me, I have lived my motherhood years sometimes struggling with a huge sense of failure and guilt. It stems from my idealist personality and when I compare my efforts with the moms around me - and doesn't Facebook broaden our world? - I feel like I'm killing my kids with crappy meals, allowing them to spend too much time inside their rooms numbing their brains with phones and video games, not spending enough time together as a family, not pushing them enough, pushing them too much, not encouraging independence, not giving them enough boundaries... for everything that I am not doing, I'm doing too much. Parenthood seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. And I've made so many mistakes.

And then I sit with God. And he reminds me in the words of my first trainer as a medical assistant;

"you're doing it."

Stop listening to the lies. You are enough.

You're doing it.

I received an email from one of Noel's teacher's this morning. It was a good email. And Ethan goes for a drug test tomorrow - for a possible job position. I don't know where life will lead them. And God is telling me that my role in that is limited. It's between them and him. And he's got them.

I've now been working in a new medical office for the past couple of years and the environment is like night and day. But I would never have been prepared for this office if it wasn't for the first experience. I was thrown into the lions den at first, and am better for it. I am now able to take risks, to be more courageous and find the value of making mistakes - if it wasn't for that first experience with my old school doctor, I might never have stepped out to start this photography business.

I have navigated deep grief and it still reaches down into my soul from time to time. But the trenches that grief has hollowed out has made for streams in the wasteland. And I'm a better person for it. I know more times like these are ahead but I don't know when and I don't know how. And I'm sure I'll struggle through it. But I know Who has my hand. I know Who will lead me through.

So I ask you. What have you been through? How has that added to your story?

Can you say that hope from God is the belief that everything is beautiful in it's own time?