I remember a night I was staying with my grandma at her old house at least a decade ago. It was a creaky, one-level narrow country house where the silence was more prominent without any beeping city traffic and hollers from big families squeezed together in suburban homes. The neighbor’s dog wasn’t barking and there was no hum of cars pulling into their drives after a late night causing a glow to flash across the window pane.
In my grandma’s living room I was the “lucky” youngster that had won the couch. I had never stayed there before and this environment was entirely new and foreign. Quickly, I noticed an antique clock hung on the faded wall behind me. Tick, tock, tick, tock.
The sound was domineering like an aggressive whack instead of a soothing ticking. I couldn’t sleep with the intrusive tick, tock, tick, tock.
Time made it known to me that it was passing by.
Unexpected, intimidating, and surprising. I’m sure Cinderella felt the same way when the hour struck midnight. She was blissfully unaware of time as she swooned over the prince and danced in circles in a swirling world of people and colors. Then the clock clanged and she was disoriented when reality hit. She set off sprinting to her pumpkin chariot before it turned back into a vegetable and her sparkly dress to peasant clothes. Time snuck up on her to the point she lost her slipper.
I haven’t lost my magical glass slipper to a handsome prince (unfortunate) but I feel the same way as my 12-year-old self at my Grandma’s house or like Cinderella when she realized her time was up.
Time has made it known to me that it is certainly passing by.
I board a plane this Friday to Atlanta, GA to attend training camp starting Sunday which is essentially orientation to better prepare us for the international mission field. It’s always scheduled for about a month before individuals leave for 11 months.
I’ve been asked often how I feel by friends and family. I never know what to reply with that expresses everything because I honestly am not even sure. That’s been absolutely terrifying and confusing for me. I’ve felt emotionless with random bursts of excitement instead of consistently anxious or wrecked with an overwhelming array of emotions like I expected.
Just like a vegetable turning into a horse-drawn chariot, it doesn’t seem real to me. The actual leaving part has been a topic discussed as if it is far-away in the distance or as though this all does not actually exist. It’s a feeling similar to when you wake up and you aren’t sure if something was a dream or a true memory. I cannot react to what doesn’t feel tangible right now.
It’s about to become tangible. I’ll meet my team, be introduced to the organization’s staff, surround myself completely with Jesus, learn about cultures, and probably be really sweaty and gross for a week and a half.
I don’t know what to expect. As I feel like I hit a time vortex causing the clock to jump forward a million miles, I’m grasping after God to keep me steady on seriously uncertain feet.
Time reminds us it is passing us by but the creator of the world reminds us that as believers, time is endless when you’re in bondage with Him as Savior. I feel and will more than likely continue to feel like life is out of my hands or my manipulation. If it was up to me, I’d stop time so I can reflect, rest, and let truths sink in as training camp comes into view and leaving for 11 months is waiting to pop out and surprise me in a handful of weeks.
I have to continue to learn our timeline is not His own blueprint of our lives. He may not dictate my life like I’m a puppet but He knows what is ahead and He knows how to prepare me for it if I let Him. Time is His. God is the beginning and the end. He has given us the chance to press against all of time’s edges with a full life. Not an exhausted or overwhelmingly busy life but a life lived for the One that truly matters above all else.
Writing this, it causes a sweet peace to settle because I’ve been straining to pin down time like a child cupping fireflies in their tiny hands to bottle it in a jar for safe-keeping but it’s a futile effort.
Press into life. As you start teaching kids again in the classroom, summer comes to a close, or as you stand in front of the mirror coloring the gray of your hair, press in. I don’t want to keep living life startled and reeling about how fast it is going but I want to dig into it with boldness instead of hesitation. I’m sure you do as well.
“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” – Isaiah 46:4
We may have no idea what’s coming in our lives but I know He is capable of sustaining us. There’s no place I’d rather be than following Him where He has lead me and nudged me to go. This is exactly where He wants me in this moment, preparing to leave across the states to training camp to be that one step closer to launching into the international mission field with Him still right behind me and before me.
I’ll see you on the other side of Georgia, friends. Hopefully I’ll have peaches in tow.
