There are many things in life I’ve thought I was ready for. As a kid, I thought I was ready to read. Or write. Or make friends. Swim. Ride a bike. Along the way, most kids realize that these things we watch other kids do so easily… come at a cost. Frustration at the struggle. Scraped knees. A nose full of water. Eventually we were ready, but not when we thought. Not in the way we thought.
Then I grew up and I was sure I was ready to get married. So I did.
And realized maybe I wasn’t. Not in the ways I truly needed to be, like selflessness. Like humility. Like all levels of maturity. I was in… and now I had to grow up within it. And years after I needed to be… I might finally be ready. On good days.
Then the pill made its way out of my bloodstream, my brain, and I thought I was ready to be a mother. Ready to tackle this task that so many others before me seemed to do with such grace. And we welcomed him into our home. Our lives. Our hearts. And he kept us up all night. All day. Screamed that maybe I wasn’t ready. But here we were, all in.
And seven years later… well, I’m still not ready. At least one of my four children daily reminds me that maybe I wasn’t cut out for this. At least not in the picture-book fantasy world of mothers. Or the mothers on the covers of magazines who are toned and smiling with their doting children on the knees. I was ready for that. Not this.
The thing about being ready is that it’s entirely reliant on our feeling about the whole thing. About our sense that we have it within us to complete whatever task is set before us.
That somehow we are capable of being what we need to be. That we can muster up within us some grand effort.
I won’t pretend to say that I was ready to see him go. To see him cross the finish line before us. To join a welcome-home party I wouldn’t be able to attend yet. There were moments… when his pain was excruciating and his wife and girls looked on, prayed on… that I was ready for his suffering to end. For his body to be healed in its full glorious restoration that only Heaven promises.
I was ready for his suffering to transform into eternal joy and peace and fellowship with his adoring Savior.
But I’m not ready for all the rest. For the hole that leaves us. For the daughters without their daddy. For his wife without her lover. For his mother without her son. For his family without his physical presence. Audible laughter. The runners without their coach. I’m not ready.
But here we are, in the thick of it. And tomorrow we celebrate him… hold our own welcome-home party on this side. We’ll laugh at his antics and tears will spill and songs of hope and peace we will sing. And none of us will feel ready but we will keep holding each other up as we walk forward.
Because really, the only way to actually be ready, is Christ.
Summed up in that one word. THE Word.
It’s not by our ability to muster up the gumption. It’s not an act of our self-determined will that we can be ready for the things that really call on us. It’s only through Christ that we have any strength (Philippians 4:13). It’s only by the riches of His glory in Christ that our every need is met (Philippians 4:19). It is only God’s peace that transcends understanding (Philippians 4:7). It is only by trusting Him, not my ability to feel ready, not my understanding of why bad things happen to good people… only submitting to the reality that we are not big enough, strong enough, sufficient enough to live this hard life… that we will have a straight path to walk (Proverbs 3:5-6).
I’m not ready. And I don’t have to be. My Sustainer is always ready.
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you (Isaiah 46.4).
He. Is. Ready.
