If You Could Only See
“With Jesus, even in our darkest moments the best remains and the very best is yet to be.” ~Corrie Ten Boom
How often do you find yourself right where you want to be? Where life has slipped into that pinnacle groove you imagined as a kid. The success, the house, the family, the freedom, the ultimate fulfillment. Are you there? Is that even a real place?
I can say with conviction that I wouldn’t trade my rocky road for someone else’s easy street, and yet … the more times I lap the sun, the more I understand the spyglass mentality of living for tomorrow. And the next day. Let’s be honest, todays are hard. The progress seems so miniscule. The leap from adolescence to the real world happens in a blink. The steps in that in-between all geared toward preparation. Years of planning and anticipating that unattainable ideal. And then you become a full-fledged adult. You made it! Victory lap! And after a few glorious strides, the responsibilities swarm like locusts. You press on with a stitch in your side, picking bugs from your teeth. You’re young. You can hack it.
The highs are had. You check big, everyday-glorious dreams off the list. First job. Marriage. House. Babies. It’s a whirlwind of beautiful chaos. Life is full. You grasp every slippery moment with clenched fists before it slides through your fingers to collect dust in the archives of yesterdays. Each stage of child-rearing scrolls by with its own specific joys and challenges. Each phase of career and life-choices yoked with their own anxieties and anticipations. We plan for the future, unwilling to acknowledge that it’s here.
What we planned for is now, and somehow it doesn’t look much like we’d envisioned it. Or maybe it looks right on paper, but it’s hard to see the big picture when you’re standing too close to the ever-swirling brush strokes of minutes and hours, real-life lows and disappointments.
Did you ever imagine it would be this hard? Is it all you dreamed it would be?
“If you could only see …”
The days speed ahead, and once again I’m in the valley. It’s there, stripped of all distractions and fevered busyness, that I hear these words whisper through my bones, warring against my grief, my doubts, my frustrations. The gentleness of the admonition resonates in my ears, tumbling down to my chest, stirring my frustrated faith in this endless valley. All of my “why me’s” spill into the void.
“If you could only see …”
Nope, these words aren’t received through earbuds from the obscure, though credibly excellent, 90’s rock band Tonic. If you’ve heard it before, that song is likely now playing in your head now, too, in a fantastic flashback of questionable fashion choices and a decade of bad hair days. You’re welcome!
No, this is that still, small voice poking at my stubbornness. If I could only see … what? Why can’t I see? Why won’t you show me? Why am I still here? What are you trying to teach me? Could you be protecting me? From what? What is it you want me to accomplish in this barren place before moving on to what you’ve prepared? I’m ready. I’m tired of it here.
Time spent in the valleys of life is as inevitable as winter. They are places of great struggle. Hurt upon hurt. Confusion. Perceived abandonment. Restlessness. Anger. Weariness.
It’s only in hindsight that we can see the true purpose of the valley. Cultivation. Growth. Not the leaps and bounds that show the uphill climb to those gloriously warm mountaintops of triumph. But places of sowing. Hearing. Preparing for the journey. The testing of strength required to reach the next summit. Yes, with the lens of maturity and time, it is easier to see those seasons in the pit through the eyes of a loving parent equipping a child for the road ahead. Easier, though not easy. Are you in the valley? Do you know why? Have you asked?
With Christmas in the rearview, I’m reminded of the trials we are called to walk through to the promise. The aches and growing pains that come before delivery. Time and again God illustrates this through his word. Joseph. Daniel. Jesus himself in the wilderness. Mary carrying the hope of the world. Obviously not precisely in that order.
Having carried a miracle baby in my womb (though admittedly traditionally conceived) I know that yearning, the fearful and exquisite expectation burgeoning within. But think of the beginning of that calling to motherhood. It doesn’t look like much at first, though it often feels like an army of angry soldiers march up your esophagus to airdrop to the commode each morning. The evidence of what is to come takes a while to be visible to the eye. And it reminds me that our eyes fail us. What we see from our limited scope, colored by our perceptions, our expectations, even just our field of view, fails to show us the full picture.
What if we don’t need to see? Like Adam and Eve’s eyes being opened to sin, shattering their Eden, clothing them in shame and fear. What if that Holy Spirit whisper was a call to trust? Isn’t faith the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen? Seen faith isn’t faith at all. We consider ourselves enlightened, yet we never seem to learn. What if we simply needed to put down the spyglass, close our eyes, and lean into our guide? He knows the ruts in the valley. He knows the way out. In fact, if we believe that he is our provision like we claim, that we know that he is literally the only one who needs to see (vision) the road ahead before (pro) we get there.
Is he your provision? Is he truly mine? I might be a little slow on the uptake, as it has taken me over thirty years of being quite literally legally blind without contacts to see this clearly. But alas, at least I know my resolution from now on. I finally see. My sights need only be fixed on the one leading me.
, author of The Girl Next Door series, writes romantic suspense with honesty and humor, sweetness and spice, and gritty reality covered by grace. When she’s not juggling three towheaded tots, homeschooling, ballet classes, baseball practice, fencing tournaments, piano lessons, and a bottomless cup of coffee, she’s entertaining a head full of swoony story ideas inspired by her own hero. Her Sports Medicine degree is wasted patching up daily boo boos, but whatever is left usually becomes fodder for fluttering hearts, blood and guts, and scars that lead to happily ever after. Connect with Amy on Facebook or check out When Fall Fades, book one in The Girl Next Door series named a “USA Today HEA Must Read Romance!”
Photograph © Priscella Du Preez, used with permission
