Letting Go of Controlling Time

If you are like me you are a person with a plan. You have a list of things you want to accomplish and a time line in which you want to accomplish them. However life rarely cooperates with our timelines. Things seem to happen when they want to or more likely when they need to. Sometimes things come earlier than we had expected and sometimes our plans take much longer to accomplish than we would like. I met my husband at the tender age of 19. We began to date seriously at age 20 and soon both realized that we were dating the person we were going to spend the rest of our lives with. I won’t pretend that we were not both afraid of finding our life partner so early.  Were we  ready for this kind of commitment? Were we ready to be with one person until death do us part? But looking back on it now I would never trade spending my twenties with my wonderful husband. We had the great privilege of growing up together.  And in many ways of raising each other. That is a very precious gift that I will always cherish. On the other hand when we began to try to conceive a child the process took much longer than we expected. We tried and tried doing everything we could to make a child come into our lives sooner rather than later. But the amount of control we had over the process was laughable. We had two children when the time was full and the children were ready to come into our lives. That’s the funny thing about time. There is people time and then there is God’s time. Our time we pretend that we can control. We have some inkling that God’s time is way beyond our reach and even understanding, but we don’t like to admit or think about this. We are currently in the process of selling. This is nothing so life changing as finding your life partner or having a child. But it is still a serious process all the same. I found myself getting impatient this week (one month in) for the house to sell. I have scheduled the first double mortgage payment, that dreaded moment where we will pay both on our new house on our old house in the same month. Now in my time that would never happen, but in God’s time I accept that this may be a reality. Our house will sell when it sells and most probably will sell when it needs to sell. Until then the best that I can do is not try to control what happens when. Instead I hope to settle into God’s Rhythm of the flow of my life. Waiting on the fullness of time is not the easiest thing to do as a human being, but it is a necessary part of our spiritual formation. We must understand that we are ultimately not in control. Instead one much higher than us holds the hands of time. Is there something in your life that you’re anxious to have happened? Or that has happened sooner than you expected and now you’re worried you’re unprepared for it? If so try and take a deep breath. Relax into God’s perfect timing for your life knowing that for everything there is a season.]]>