A Life Update

It’s been a minute.

I haven’t blogged in a while and thought it was time for an update. Life has been a whirlwind of change in our house and it’s taken some time for me to adjust to the new normal. A year ago, I changed jobs and started working full time for my alma mater. My work this past year has involved a decent amount of travel all over the country which has been fun, but also an adjustment for my family. About the same time, we sold our house, moved into a rental, and before long, started building a house in Tennessee where we will move later this year. They say moving and starting a new job are two of the most stressful things in life. No kidding!

Meanwhile, our youngest is about to graduate from high school and I’m processing what it means to launch him out into the world. It’s one of those happy-sad moments of life. This school year so far has been filled with all the “lasts.” Last birthday at home. Last football game. Last homecoming dance. I’ve seen the empty nest season of life on the horizon for a while now but all of a sudden, it’s nearly here. I admit I have some trepidation and uncertainty about it and remain prayerful for the Lord’s comfort and wisdom as I walk through it.

Despite my work schedule, I’ve managed to continue speaking at women’s ministry retreats. Last year I spoke in California, Virginia, New Jersey and lots of places in between. Next year will be ten years since my first book released on the Psalms of Lament and I’m so grateful that I continue to teach on the topic at retreats and other speaking engagements. I also continue to speak about the fear of the Lord, union with Christ and one another (biblical friendship), and parenting.

The past year I’ve participated in a few different group writing projects, including a devotional for teens and two study Bibles. I look forward to sharing about them when they are released later this year/early next year. I also continue to edit and manage the PCA’s women’s ministry blog, enCourage. I love connecting with writers and mentoring them through the writing process. This month, I’m hosting an event for writers at the PCA’s annual women’s ministry conference. It’s an event I’ve hosted each year for almost a decade!

It’s not lost on me that many of the things I’ve written about over the years (and speak about!) are things that I am working through right now and will so for a while. Change. Transition. Uncertainty. Loss. Community. As I let go of one season of life and step into another—in another state!—I know the Lord is with me and trust Him to provide all that I need for all that He calls me to. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3).

That’s my life update. What is God doing in your life these days?

Photo by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash

Looking to Eternity

I once overheard someone comment about midlife saying, “There is nothing more to look forward to.”

When you are young, it seems like life is an open highway stretched out before you. All the big events of life await: graduating high school, going to college, getting your first job. Then you may aspire to get married, have children, and grow in your career. At some point, the road of life narrows. It seems like you’ve accomplished many of the goals and big milestones of life.

Now what?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Perhaps because I just finished up eleven years of homeschooling and launched my oldest off to college. As my husband and I helped my son move into his college dorm, we couldn’t believe it’s been thirty years since our own college move-in day. When we walked across the campus, memories seemed to pop out from every hallway and building. We marveled at the passage of time. In a few years, we’ll launch our youngest son. What’s next after that? Is it true that there’s nothing more to look forward to?

Sinclair Ferguson, in his book, Devoted to God, comments that for the non-Christian “the future seems long and the past short. Slowly that perspective changes. Eventually the past seems to have been all too short. And now the future seems short too.”[1] We see this in our culture. The young think they have all the time in the world. Until they don’t. Then they live life looking backwards, remembering their glory days, and clinging tightly to the remaining time they have left.

But for the Christian, time is lived differently. Ferguson says that the Christian “lives from the future into the past.” [2] We live in light of eternity, in light of our future glory. Everything is viewed through the lens of what God is doing in the present to prepare us for our future with him forever. Whatever challenges and trials we face today are the material God uses to transform us into the image of his Son. And each day brings us only closer to the day when we will be like him—to when we will see him face to face.

This means that there is more to look forward to, not less! For those of us who have met many of life’s milestones, there is an eternity ahead for us. A brand new highway awaits, one on which we’ve never travelled. And it’s a highway that never ends, it goes on forever. This is hard to imagine. We are bound by time, by the seconds, minutes, and hours that tick by every day. But there is a glorious future ahead. For the Christian, we look forward to the day when we are shed of sin once for all. We look forward to resurrected bodies in the New Heavens and New Earth. We look forward to worshipping our King on the throne, surrounded by believers of all time. We look forward to glory, perfection, unity, and joy unimaginable.

No doubt, the passage of time on this earth is fast. It seems like yesterday our future was wide open and we couldn’t wait to see what awaited. As the years and decades pass, it’s tempting to view life as though the best has already come. But the best is still to come! Christian, your eternity awaits.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16-18).

[1] Ferguson, Sinclair Devoted to God p. 219

[2] p. 219.

Photo by Felipe Giacometti on Unsplash

My Awkward Dance with Time

Time and I have always performed a kind of awkward dance together.

Too often, I try to lead. I try to push time forward—some call it future-tripping. When I was a teen, I couldn’t wait to leave home and attend college. When I was in college, I looked forward to getting married. When my kids were little, I thought “I can’t wait until he can sleep through the night…stop needing diapers…clean up after himself…”

Since I hit forty a few years ago—okay, five years ago—I’ve wanted time to slow down. Pause. Stop altogether. But instead, it seems to be on a downhill slide. Everything they say that happens to your body after you turn forty is true. My skin has turned treasonous. I pull muscles for no apparent reason. I have both a space heater and an additional air conditioner next to my side of the bed. Sometimes I use them both at the same time. You can laugh; my doctor did.

And I keep hearing that old Steve Miller Band song, “Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future...”

When my kids were young, older women would tell me to treasure that time with them, because before I knew it, they would be grown. Even now, as I grumble about my life as a chauffeur and look forward to my oldest getting his license, older moms tell me how they long to return to the days of driving their children from place to place. The saying is true, “the days are long, the years short.”

Midlife is a strange season and one I find difficult to adjust to. I’m smack dab in the middle of life. It’s as though I stand on a timeline, where all the years to one side of me are that of my youth and everything ahead of me is that of aging. All the decades leading up to where I now stand were focused on achieving and gaining. Acquiring. Adding. When I look forward, life seems more about losing. Children take flight. Houses get smaller. Work becomes less, health elusive.

But at the same time, I feel more comfortable with who I am than I ever did in my youth. I have a sweet and tender relationship with the Lord that developed through time and experience. While in my younger days, I had a head knowledge of God’s love and faithfulness, I’ve since seen him work in countless ways and now know with certainty it is true. The prayer life I now have, I wouldn’t trade it for the one I had in my 20’s. The trust and dependency I’ve learned through trial and hardship is one I wish my younger self knew—rather than trusting in myself, plans, and systems to make life work.

Moses also knew how fast time flies, how our life is but a breath. He wrote in Psalm 90: “For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away” (vv. 9-10). John Calvin commented: “men foolishly glory in their excellence, since, whether they will or no, they are constrained to look to the time to come. And as soon as they open their eyes, they see that they are dragged and carried forward to death with rapid haste, and that their excellence is every moment vanishing away.” I can relate to that “rapid haste” Calvin refers to. Though I know time moves forward in the exact same rate, moment after moment, day after day, it somehow feels faster these days. My kids seem to grow an inch a week. More and more they stretch their wings. They now find themselves where I once was: looking forward to greater freedom and life on their own.

Moses then prayed, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (v.12). It is wisdom to consider the brevity of life. It is wisdom to pause and look backward to realize all you have learned and then forward to see the finish line closer than it was before. But in so doing, not to panic and fear the death that is to come; rather, to focus the days we have left on living for God’s glory. For those who are in Christ know there is more to come in eternity where time will no longer be of consequence.

In my dance with time, I’ve learned that I can’t lead; it’s not my place to do so. Rather, I must follow the steps marked out for me. I must move forward, keeping along with time’s set rhythm. If I pay attention to his steps, I see he’s really not going any faster than before. And if I cast aside the distractions that cause me to stumble and focus instead on my call to live for God’s glory, I realize: I’ve got all the time I need.