Anxious eyes toward the future

 

Some people find hope in the future; others find fear. I do both, but when I'm discouraged about the present, my instinct is usually to turn to the future with fear. 

Often, my struggles feel bigger in the future than they do in the present. When I face them in the present, I know God is with me. But when I think of those current struggles in a future context, the difficult suddenly becomes the insurmountable. 

 

The present version of me takes all my fears and grows them exponentially into the future. If I’m struggling to hold on now, I’ll have no chance if the future comes and my circumstances don’t change. 

 

And odds are a lot of our circumstances will change by the time we get to our future. But God will also change us. 

 

That's my hope for the future. That one day I will be facing those future moments as my present reality and the same God will be working in my heart then as He is now. 

 

I’m coming up on my 27th birthday, and God taught me this lesson as I considered my relationship status and my desires. I am not married, but I want to be. I have no boyfriend, and though external factors are not the most accurate harbinger of events, not having any makes that desire for marriage feel far off. 

 

Somewhere along the way I alighted on the age 28 for marriage. I saw so many people get married at this age, and though it's completely arbitrary, the number wiggled into my brain and stuck there, finding justification. With my biological clock ticking in the background, it seemed to offer enough time to be a wife before becoming a mother. I could have a couple years with my husband without feeling that biological pressure hanging over our heads. So while I'd happily get married earlier than that, it'd be fine if I had to wait that long. 

Of course, a deadline isn't the best basis for contentment. Over the last few years when my love life felt like it wasn't going anywhere, God has brought me to contentment, peace, and even excitement over the present moment. But then the future would whisper in my ear: “Yeah, I’m okay now, but what if nothing has changed by the time I’m 28? I won’t be okay then.” I was consistently tempted to trade my present peace for future anxiety, letting an assumption of future discontentment bleed into my present and leaving God to talk me back down to the peace He’d asked me to receive. 

 

But as I’m about to turn 27, I feel that overwhelming peace. I want to get married, but I'm not in a rush to make it happen within a certain time-frame. I see all the ways God has protected me in the past by making me wait, and no matter what my plans for myself were, I can celebrate what God has blessed me with now and know that nothing is lacking. I can rejoice for where He has me today and not let future worries cloud my praise. His timing is good and His care is consistent. 

 

So instead of looking at 30 and making it the new mile marker for my disappointment, dissatisfaction, and hopelessness, I can look at what God has done. I can trust that my current self will not be transplanted into the future, but that with each year that goes by, God is growing me, leading me, and preparing me for that future and for the seasons it brings. I can see how He has continued to make me content in the present moment, and I can trust that when the next far-off milestone becomes my present, He will do the same. Whether or not my circumstances change, God is leading my heart, and I don’t need to fear the future because He will always be in it with me.