the best is yet to come

Bookshelves were empty, packed in boxes when I took this photo. Many cups of coffee had been consumed in preparation for an upcoming move, the last of many over a relatively short period of time. Always with a move, there is looking back, and looking forward. This was no exception.

The phrase was spoken in a sermon I heard over Easter weekend and it's been echoing in my mind in the days since... the best is yet to come. We see through a glass darkly when it comes to many aspects of the future. And sometimes, when that is the case, our current steps feel cloudy as well. Especially in motherhood sometimes, it is difficult to see how what we are doing day-to-day matters. Especially on the days when we take more backwards steps than forward ones, it seems. And especially, if we're honest, during certain times of the month.

Any undefined role, such as homemaking, can result in this feeling where you are not entirely certain what you should be doing, not confident it is taking the group anywhere, and not sure how to defend your compensation to those who might ask. As a stay-at-home mom, I, of course, don't receive compensation, but I still feel a need to "earn my keep". Not because of anything anyone is telling me. Just out of a personal desire to be doing what I am doing well. But when your job description is always evolving based on the needs and resources available, it can be difficult to impossible to measure success. And the lack of clear success can result in overall discouragement and weariness of leaning into projects, especially if there hasn’t been affirmation for your work in the past or clear guidance going forward. I consider myself to be a strong self-starter, able to push through adversity, and very optimistic, and yet both as a mother, and years ago as a missionary, I still struggle sometimes and have struggled in the past to identify how my day-to-day was connecting with overall Gospel vision. (This usually comes as a surprise to people who have never been missionaries, who assume that the “missionary” title solves the purpose problem, but I would argue that it almost increases the problem – because now I’m receiving a stipend, and how can I ever be sure that what I am doing merits that stipend?) When the measures of success are so highly relational and so long-term, it is difficult in the short-term to know if you are doing the right things. And this applies to both missionary service and motherhood.

As I have grown in Christian maturity as well as wrestled through a number of things as a parent, God has helped me to slow down and most days I can more easily draw the lines between my day-to-day and God’s vision for the world than I used to be able to. But it takes a lot of intentional and unrelenting telling of the truth to myself, as well as to stay saturated in Scriptures to be able to meet God for guidance on each next step to take. Some seasons I have time for that. Some seasons I don’t. In the seasons that I don’t, I need shorter, more manageable bites of truth to keep forefront. For me, some of those that have emerged over time have been:

Subdue the chaos (in the world). This is accomplished by simply picking up our house, or wiping off the kitchen table, or consistently feeding our family supper at the same time every night, bringing order in a loving way to a world that is so out of order. Subduing the earth is a biblical command, and that is how it manifests itself in my life right now.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (Genesis 1:28)

Act out of faith, not fear. We are ineffective when we parent in fear.

We serve a REDEEMER God. Even the mistakes we make, the things that we do wrong, the inefficiencies, the missed opportunities - God is able to redeem those for His glory. Current culture completely ignores this and raises the stakes on absolutely everything. If it is all up to us, we have to do it perfectly… or else. But we often forget that it’s not all up to us. When we approach anything with humility and faith, God is able to use and multiply and redeem what we do. It will not always feel like it is working in the moment. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t.

His heart beats, He will never die again

I know that death no longer has dominion over Him

So my heart beats with the rhythm of the saints

As I look for the seeds the King has sown

To burst up from their graves (Andrew Peterson)

Because His heart beats and He has defeated death, we can look forward with hope. We look for the seeds that have already been sown, and we look for them expectantly. And we trust, not in ourselves, but in the process of God in us to bring fruit also out of places where we are currently not seeing it. We continue to walk forward in faith.

My Bible study book today asked me to put II Corinthians 5:6-7 into my own words. Here it is in ESV:

"So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight."

And in my own words, I wrote simply, "The best is yet to come". We can act in the present full of faith and with hope for the future because what is now, is not what will always be. The best is yet to come.