Why It’s a Waste of Time Trying to Figure Out Your Life

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I’m not sure who decides what the ‘major milestones’ for babies and toddlers are, but the lack of inclusion of this one is pretty shocking to me. Certainly not as monumental as first words or steps, but it’s totally underrated, in my opinion. 

We flipped the car seats.

(I know, rear-facing is safer, but when your kids are tilting at 45-degree angles around every turn, you kinda get the hint that maybe they’ve maxed out the weight limits).

The twins are getting heavier by the day,  and being able to lead them to the car to jump in and climb up themselves is nothing short of glorious. Miles easier than trying to maneuver and heave a 40 lb. man-baby up-and-over-and-into a rear-facing car seat.

A Whole New Perspective

I was tentative about their reactions – could’ve gone either way- but they loved it.  So excited to see more than just the usual miles of Long Island traffic that they were used to seeing. They were pointing out monster trucks (pick-up trucks), school buses, red lights, green lights…they were even giggling.  {What kind of alternate universe had we stumbled into?!?}

So, my son Michael, who typically narrates every and all activities of the day, began pointing out things as he usually does:

“So fun, Marshalls! So fun, Walmart! So fun, Kohls! So fun, Target!” (Either he’s especially perceptive, or I’m just a really shallow mom.)

“Waterfalls!” (Sprinklers).

“No more baby dragons!” (Trees with no leaves = branches that look like dragons.  I had explained that baby dragons go away once the leaves return).

Then, he said something that puzzled me. Every once in awhile, he would say, “W! Green W!”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Mikey – where’s the green W? Is it in the street?“

“Noooooo……”

“Is it in the trees?”

“No, Mommy.”

“Is it a street sign?”

“No, Mommy!”

“Mikey, where’s the green W?”

“In Mommy’s Jeep!”

I scanned my Jeep, trying to find what he’s seeing.

And then I saw it.

The “green W.”

He explained what he was seeing with the understanding he had. Sharp kid, that one.

Flipping the seats launched us to a whole new level of grown-up toddler. We three were just a hipster trio, shooting the breeze and going for a drive just for the fun of it.  The only thing missing was the lattes.

I had to give up the front-seat-snack-factor by flipping the seat, but I gained oh-so-much more.

Including a life perspective overhaul.

Waterfalls, Baby Dragons, Green Ws and Bad Spanish

All this got me thinking about how the boys have grown in their ability to express themselves and understand the world around them.  They have a limited frame of reference, a certain number of words they know – and they stuff everything they want to say and everything they understand into the box of their own personal context.  Hence, waterfalls, baby dragons and green Ws.

It reminded me of when I was on a missions trips to Nicaragua.  At that point, I was a long time out of high school Spanish and remembered only a handful of words. Everything I wanted to communicate had to fall into the smattering of my mediocre Spanish.  I couldn’t properly express myself because I didn’t have the depth of vocabulary or knowledge to do so.

So, when a sweet girl from the orphanage gave me a handmade necklace, all I could say was, “Me gusto mucho! Muchas gracias!” instead of “Oh my goodness! I cannot even believe you made this for me! I feel so much love in this – I will never forget you! Thank you so, SO much!”

See the difference? The reality of my feelings was so much bigger, but I had to squoosh it into entirely inadequate communication because of my lack of understanding and language to express it.

So Much More than Just Baby Dragons

OK, where am I going with all this? What does flipping car seats, baby dragons, green Ws and bad Spanish have to do with trying to figure out your life?

Let me try to tie it together: our frame of reference for what God is doing in our lives is totally small, totally inadequate to express or fully understand what’s really going on.  I see something happening in my life, and I’m calling it ‘baby dragons’ (which are kinda scary looking) because that’s what it looks like to me, in my limited understanding and interpretation of what I’m seeing. 

But really, it’s something more complex and beautiful and intricate – something akin to the process of seasons and leaves falling and a tree lying dormant and somehow knowing when to come back to life six months later.

To me, it’s just a baby dragon, but there is so much more going on. I just don’t have the understanding or frame of reference to comprehend it or verbally express it with the right words.

We lose someone or something we love. We foreclose on our house. We are waiting forever for an answer to prayer.  To make ourselves feel better, we come up with a reason, a bottom line, an answer as to what God’s doing and allowing (or not doing and allowing).  It’s like trying stuff the complexity of God’s ways and wisdom into my limited, broken Spanish, and we sum it up it with “Me gusto mucho! Gracias!”– or more likely – “No me gusto mucho! No gracias!”

In trying to figure out what’s going on in our lives, we’re trying to fit the God whose ways and thoughts are light years above our ways and thoughts (Isaiah 55:8) into our tiny, narrow understanding.  And He just doesn’t fit. 

Trying to communicate fluent, native, Master’s level Spanish-speaking with poor quality, middle-school Spanish with horrible American accents.

Trying to simplify the physics of how a compass knows when we’re traveling west into green Ws.

Trying to reduce the complexity of the science behind the seasons into baby dragons.

Saying “So-Long” to Safe

It’s in our nature to want to understand. To want to know what’s going on (at least for the nosy women in my Italian family). Somehow, we feel safer if we could just figure things out, even if there’s nothing we can do about it.

But it gets tricky when we think we know what God’s up to or why He allows or doesn’t allow certain things to happen.  We might get close – like, in fact, a waterfall isn’t too dissimilar from a sprinkler. But to think we have it totally figured out – “Oh! THIS is why God is doing that!” – sets up for a fall when we realize that, no, that’s not what God was up to.

Ask my family – I’ve been wrong somany times in my life, when I thought I knew what God was doing.

That’s part of the wonder and adventure and mystery and trust in following God.  We don’t ever really know for sure what He’s up to. And that leaves us unsettled.  We want to know all of the ‘Oh! This is why!’s – in our marriages, in our kids’ lives, in our churches, in ourselves, in our jobs, in our futures … we’d feel better if we could just know.

We’d feel safer.  If we could just figure it out.

“He Isn’t Safe. But He’s Good.”

But, if you remember in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, when Aslan is “on the move,” the children want to know if he’s safe.  In one of the most memorable lines in the whole series (or in any book ever, I think), Mr. Beaver sums up for the children all they need to really know:

“Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

We want to feel safe. We want our marriages to feel safe. We want our kids to feel safe.  And feeling like we know the whole story somehow convinces us to feel safe.

But safety is such a relative thing – compared to God’s perspective.  A lot of what God’s doing may not feel ‘safe’ to us. It feels dangerous. It feels risky. It may even feel hurtful.

But the reality is, that from God’s perspective, we are always safe. We are never not safe. Even if it looks like baby dragons to us.

We expend a ton of energy trying to figure out our lives, and we just don’t have the vocabulary or context to rightfully express what God’s doing.  We don’t have the language, so we flub it up by bringing it down to middle school Spanish. We don’t have the understanding, so we just call it baby dragons.

And here’s the truth of it: we honestly don’t have to figure it all out (well, because we can’t) but also because we just don’t have the broad, perfect, eternal perspective to take in every angle of every situation and every ripple effect from said situation and interpret its meaning and purpose correctly. We just don’t have that level of understanding or context:

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.” (Romans 11:33)

Right?

We just have to know one single truth, and everything in our lives and experience will align in its place underneath:

He is good.

And He’s the King.

You don’t need to understand what He’s doing. We barely have the understanding and language of toddlers when it comes to God’s ways and thoughts. We just need to know He’s good. And He’s King. And He is the one who’s on the move in our lives.

Just Enjoy the Drive

So whatever it is that’s He’s doing – it’s exactly what is perfectly right and good from His broad, expansive, accurate perspective of reality.

Stop trying to figure out what He’s up to. Stop trying to interpret your life experiences. We don’t have the framework and context and knowledge and language to understand it. We may have glimpses, but only then, we may or may not get it right.

You might realize what He was up to someday in retrospect. You might. Then again…

And someday, at the very end of the drive, we’ll get it. We’ll understand. Or at least Jesus will explain it thick-headed people like me.

Til then, just rest in that He’s good. And He’s the King. Rest in knowing He’s both in your life.

Our seats are ‘flipped forward’ now that we’re in Christ – we see a lot more, and that’s awesome. Narrate if you want. Take it all in. Make your simplified conclusions if you must. But don’t waste your energy trying to figure it all out – you’ll be so preoccupied that you’ll miss out on the spectacular drive you’re on.

Just enjoy the drive.  You know Who’s driving.

Thoughts? I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment so we can chat!