In a bit of a “middle” place on a couple things in life right now. Trying to get L&L’s preschool situation sorted out for the fall. Still working on this proposal that is close but just not quite there yet. Moments of discouragement and then resolve and then fatigue and then doubt and then desire are all tangled and threaded together. Because it’s never perfectly clean, is it? Never perfectly clear.

And that’s when I thought about that part in Ecclesiastes 3 where it says:

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Here’s what I take that to mean . . . It makes sense that these middle moments of life baffle me because I am not God and I can’t see the end from here. I can’t figure it out totally. I can’t force it to fit. I can’t make it happen.

So what can I do, I think. I can trust.

But, sometimes, I’m not totally sure what I’m trusting in. Am I trusting that God will work it all out? Am I trusting that everything will be fine? Well, you and I both know it doesn’t always work out and things aren’t always fine.

Am I trusting that something beautiful will arrive even if I don’t recognize it as beauty on first glance? Yes, I think that’s one thing I’m trusting. Am I trusting that God will be near me even if it all goes to hell? Yes, I think that’s one thing I’m trusting. Am I trusting that God loves me deeply NO MATTER WHAT? Yes, I’m trying to trust that. Am I trusting that he sees me, that I am never invisible to him? Yes, I’m trusting that, too.

So, then, here in this middle place, I acknowledge that I do not see the end from the beginning. The resolution is not currently apparent to me. And I can’t manipulate, manufacture, or contrive a resolution. And I do not know how beauty is going to arrive.

Perhaps you feel this very same way today. You are stuck in a middle . . . not totally at the beginning of something, but definitely not sure how it’s all going to resolve either. And there’s a long stretch of open road ahead of you. And it can feel baffling. Tiring.

Let’s hold this hope for each other: that the beauty will arrive. And that we will treat ourselves with grace while we wait for the beauty. And that we will let God sit with us – right here in this place — in the meantime.

Loving you, Leeana