As I approach a milestone birthday, I can see something I couldn’t see in earlier seasons of my life, and that realization settles me when my mind starts racing toward the future. When I think about what lies ahead – what life ahead may look like and what the next season may hold – I’m reminded that everything I treasure in my life today was once part of a future I couldn’t yet imagine. “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places” (Psalm 16:6). Looking back, I can almost hear the Lord saying, “See? I knew what I was doing. You just needed to unclench your jaw.”
This life I’m living now, this community that loves and supports me, this version of myself that He has been patiently shaping, and this closeness with Him that I now cling to were all once on the far side of a present I was simply trying to navigate. Some parts were pleasant, others were painful, and still others were deeply perplexing – the kind of perplexing where you look up and say, “Lord, if You’re taking suggestions, I have a few.” But in all of it, He was with me. And as only He could be, He was also waiting for me on the other side of it, like a Father who knows the trail well and isn’t rattled by the switchbacks that make His child nervous.
From where I stand today, that perspective helps me breathe a little deeper. It helps me relax a little more and ease my grip on the outcomes I try to manage – outcomes I’ve never actually been in charge of, despite my impressive attempts at project‑managing my universe. It reminds me that the future is uncertain to me but never unknown to Him. And it strengthens my trust that the same God who met me in the past and escorted me into the present will meet me in the future as well. Just as He always has.
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