hindsight

I started a new journal today (a paper one, that is). The last one lasted about 10 months. Amazing how much life can be lived in 10 months, how many questions can be answered! On the first page of my old journal, I wondered what the next season would look like. At the time I was wrestling with some big decisions about my life's calling and direction. I was consumed with trying to figure it all out. Now the questions that seemed so elusive and ponderous less than one year ago have each quietly been answered in the course of daily life. There was no flash of lightning, no sudden epiphany of knowledge or resolution. God simply wove His will into the fabric of my life through simple decisions and changes in circumstance, one day at a time.

The first page of my new journal looks much the same as the old one. Again I'm brimming with questions about our future. Where will we be when the last page is filled? Will our family have grown? Will our work have changed? Will our future be any clearer? But at this moment I'm realizing that perhaps the future is never clear, at least not in the ways we want it to be. Only looking back is the view unobstructed. Such a strange disease of the eyes we have, that we should have clear vision only over our shoulder and not up ahead. The purpose, I suppose, is to cause us to hold tightly to the hand of the only One who can see ahead. With Him at our side, any destination will do.