She’s been our family’s chief of staff since she could make sounds on purpose. In the know on who needed to be where when, she was always ready to help remind her mother of what needed to happen next – every moment of every day. Uncommonly interested in calendars, her little calculator of a brain found order in numbered boxes on a wall. Even though she couldn’t read, she picked up on patterns, and text written in the day’s box cued her in that something was scheduled that day.
She was about a week shy of turning four when I shared with her and her older brother that their dad and I would no longer be married. It was at the peak of her calendar obsession and they both had been processing, reeling, and living through that adjustment just about as you’d expect. We had some good days and we had some really rough days, but we were surviving.
In the weeks that followed the delivery of news no parent wants to give, her fixation on the schedule for each day intensified. She needed all the details for every day. And for each weekend. And for each coming week and month ahead. The questions were non-stop as she sought to define what was happening next.
This sweet soul’s family had shattered and she was clinging to certainty. In her own precious way, she was grasping for what she could understand and rely on.
So, in a decision rendering the calendar essentially useless to anyone taller than the little people in my house, one morning we moved it down on the kitchen wall to her preschool eye level. At a time when I’m sure she was feeling things she didn’t understand and couldn’t put words to, this precious girl found solace in literally seeing what was happening for – and maybe to – our family each day.
Preschoolers aren’t the only ones who crave predictability. Especially in times of crisis. We all can relate to the feeling of things coming undone and desperately reaching out for something to stop the spinning.
Letting go of the need for predictability and insight into what happens next is one of the hardest parts of walking the most challenging paths in life. When everything comes unglued, what do we cling to as a tether?
You know who else lived a really hard, confusing season? David. Against all odds, he had early success and was shown favor. But as life moved along, David suddenly was a threat to the king and he spent about a decade running for his life. Living in caves and largely alone, David must have felt that he’d misunderstood God’s calling for his life. The feeling of the rug being pulled out from under him and no longer being able to rely on anything certain must have been overwhelming at times.
But in Psalm 27, David cries out to God in a way that only a person who has walked the hardest of seasons can. With confidence of God’s goodness when life is spiraling.
“One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.”
Psalm 27:4-5
David set his determination on seeking to dwell in the house of the Lord. And in that dwelling with God, he knew he’d find the stability his human heart and body must have craved. The image of being hidden under God’s shelter, concealed in his tent wrecks me. Because in the hardest of seasons, being wrapped up under something safe is what I desperately sought.
We’ve got a God who loves us so much, he’ll invite us – messed up, stubborn, prideful – not only into his presence, but into his house offering safety, predictability, stability, and certainty. A Father who is the ultimate tether for his children when life is coming unwound.
Let that be what we grasp after when as this world is characteristically uncertain and people disappoint us. Let us seek after the Lord all the days of this life.
