Perhaps the following thoughts will be familiar:
- I want what I can’t have.
- I wish things to be different than they currently are.
- A couple of changes could change everything.
- I can do it better—myself.
- I see a way out of it and I see a way in deeper.
- I stress. I talk about it. I struggle with it. I strategize more ways out of it, and then I repeat it all again.
- Something has to change. And yet, nothing does.
Maybe this tension is a perfect place? Not because we love being there, but because it’s the beginning of the end of our striving? Maybe this is when we realize that it’s not about us? That ultimately, we’re just part of a greater story that takes time to be written and revealed and at the point of these questions, we don’t know the full story yet.
If you believe, as I do, that more is happening behind our backs than in front of our faces, then the point of which we ask these questions and demand the insight is no different than fast-forwarding to the end of a book to resolve the tension in the middle. You could certainly do that, but then you’d miss out on the rest of the story. Yet, in life, we expend a lot of energy trying to resolve the tension in the middle.
So far, the only thing that I’ve learned in the tension of the already, but the not yet is that nothing I do gets me to the end of the book faster. I only get frustrated because my plans are not working. It’s a no-win strategy and game.
But there’s hope. Check out this play:
“No chance at all if you think you can pull it off yourself. Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it.” – Matthew 19:26
