There is a new little family in our backyard.
I have been watching them from the back porch, alerted to each feeding by the insistent chirping that begins the moment the mom appears.
Tiny beaks stretched wide, bodies barely feathered, hungry and completely dependent, they each vie for the morsels the caretakers present.
The parents fly back and forth, again and again throughout the day, dutifully delivering the sustenance the babies crave.
It leaves me positively giddy.
This past Monday, we were out on the course for JCF’s fourth annual golf tournament. We delighted in the kind of day that feels like a gift, seemingly straight out of central casting.
Blue sky, magnificent weather, laughter, competition, and sweet memories all converged, gracing each person who showed up with open hands and full hearts to honor a life well lived. A life still remembered by those who refuse to forget.
I chronicled it all for safe keeping.
And now, I am back in bed.
Again.
A month ago, I got sick in a way that laid me low.
My body simply stopped cooperating.
Hours and hours of sleep, with little to no strength to move from one room to another.
Then my voice began to go. Weak, trembly, wholly unfamiliar. It was perplexing, as even my own words felt out of reach.
The doctor said it was a viral illness that had settled in my vocal cords.
I finally got better. My voice came back.
And now, COVID with a bit of Strep sprinkled in for fun.
Day two, and I am back in my bedroom, once again sequestered, with symptoms that feel all too familiar. My body, perpetually immunosuppressed, seems to be in full-scale rebellion.
It should not surprise me anymore how life works. Grief and loss are stern teachers, but I have learned, along the way, that the beautiful and the hard do not take turns.
They often arrive together.
Concurrently, not consecutively.
My life continues to demonstrate this truth, along with the paradoxes that abound:
A backyard full of new life.
A day full of remembrance and joy, paired with a body that will not cooperate.
A voice that disappears and returns and disappears again.
This is the strange, sacred mix of it all.
It is why we should take great care not to gloss over the topography of lives marked by peaks and valleys.
To rush past either is to miss what they are forming in us.
The heights teach us to receive.
The depths teach us to depend.
And somewhere in the meeting of the two, our souls are shaped, stretched, and steadied in ways comfort alone can never accomplish.
These growth-producing seasons are not arbitrary. Neither are they without benefit.
We will eventually look back and marvel at God’s ability to transform the very things we once tried to avoid.
This life is not all there is. It just isn’t.
My Austin and his friends have heard me say it countless times over the years, but it bears repeating, because even though it is true, it is still easy to forget.
Scripture tells us that God has set eternity in our hearts.
There are echoes within us of what awaits, so we live with an eternal mindset, understanding, as our Jimmy often said, “There is so much more going on than what we can see.”
Indeed.
One day, we will see Jesus face to face, and when we do, we will be so glad we chose Him. We will finally know what we once only dared to believe. That nothing was wasted. That all of it mattered. That our trust in Him was never, not for a moment, misplaced.
So we resolve in the uncertainty and in the unfolding:
to trust the One who goes before us,
to walk the road whose way we do not know and whose end we cannot see,
and to never stray from the side of the One who is faithful to order our steps.
In peaks and valleys, in despair and delight, in sorrow and in safety, in the hopeful and the heartbreaking, we who have walked long with our Savior come to recognize that even when all evidence pointed to the contrary, we were never outside His care.
His gaze rests unceasingly on His own.
His eyes are never off us.
What affects us does not have to afflict us, because there is a deeper anchoring available to all who long to be held.
When we open ourselves to God, we are met by the One whose guardianship is unwavering, whose presence is promised, and whose care is both constant and kind.
The day is coming when every wound will be fully redeemed and every pain finally made whole. What we experience now in part will one day be complete.
Present suffering will give way to future glory that does not fade, fracture, or fail.
Until then, in the in-between, we choose and we surrender, in ways both great and small, to the only One who truly fills us.
So, whatever this day (or this life) holds, whether it brings beauty or burden or some unexpected mingling of the two, may we receive it with open hands.
May we pay attention to what is being formed within us.
And may we find our rest in the One who holds us through the rest.