Maybe it's the instant gratification, stay occupied with movies and video games, constant barrage of information, texts, posts, tweets..... or maybe it has always been this way. Maybe since Adam and Eve men (okay, more women than men) have thought they knew what was coming, what to expect, how life was going to be. The "Happily Ever After" fairy tale diet doesn't help. The Photoshop, makeup covering, perfect way to take selfies environment feeds it, too. Somewhere along the way most of us have come to think that we know what the future will look like, how it will be, what it will hold. Yes, we make choices in life that have certain consequences, but there are so many things we can't "expect" (aka "control"!).
Recently I was blessed with a "reunion" of some very special Godly women who helped me through some tough times in life. We shared young life - 14 month pregnancies (well, they felt that long!), sleepless nights with teething babies, potty training accidents and successes, how to teach math to very strong-willed right-brained children, when to participate and when to pull out of sports leagues, co-ops, play groups and churches, how to love on husbands who were sometimes very unlovable and how to forgive ourselves for sometimes being very unlovable wives, too. Now, as our children approach their thirties and many in the group are grandmothers, we were all a bit shocked to realize that almost nothing went as we "expected". We were not where we thought we would be at this point in life.
Broken relationships; strained or broken marriages (ours and/or our children's); prodigal children; grandchildren born out of wedlock; sexually, emotionally and physically diseased or dying children were not what we "expected" when we committed our lives, our energy, our love to have a God-fearing home. And yet, there it was. And in the center of the realization that nothing, practically nothing, we had planned and worked for had turned out as we had envisioned, there was such a sweetness and amazement that it was OK anyway. For we shared - and still share even when we go years without being together in person - the hope, the unity, the peace, the love, the joy that only Christ can give to any of our hearts in this broken world. And oh, the amazing joys and victories and blessings that we had never dreamed had come about, too. For the sweetest and most beautiful eternal flowers are those unexpected blossoms pushing through this world's broken despair. So thank you, Lord Jesus, that things are not what we expected. And thank you for sweet and dear friends to help remind us that it is all about Your Eternal purpose.
