Who remembers Y2K – that epic turn-of-the-millennium moment when all of the world’s computers crashed, power grids failed, and we had to live off of the five-gallon buckets of beans and rice stored in our closets?
Wait. . . disaster didn’t strike quite as everyone feared that year, did it?
The minor-scale disaster that I personally faced as a 16-year-old on New Year’s Eve 1999 when I accidentally drove away from the gas station with the nozzle still hanging out of my ‘51 Studebaker Bullet Nose sticks with me, though. Boy, was I embarrassed.
Somehow I survived Y2K and learned a few lessons along the way, as well.
For one, fuel nozzles are made to detach from their hoses in cases of inexperienced driver neglect (not inebriated, I promise!). It was horrifying, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
Two, over-preparedness always has two sides to it. The dark side, of course, is the fear motive. When we hoard or hide or hurt others in a mindset of self-protection, we aren’t living out of the boundless, sacrificial love of Christ. The ugliest forms of this at a societal level cause racial divides and wide socio-economic gaps, but on a personal level this likely looks more like snapping at my children when they’re interrupting my time — my precious, never-have-enough-of-it time.
The brighter side of over-preparedness, however, is generosity. It’s the neighbor saying, “Hey, we bought a bit too much flour because it was on sale. Care for a bag?” Or it could be the family who safeguards their sabbath time by working together the day prior to cook and clean so they can rest well together. Over-preparedness might mean that you use your time diligently to prepare for that project ahead of time so you can be fully present to enjoy it when it comes to completion. Again, whatever the motive, over-preparedness isn’t the end of the world, either.
Third – and this is the piece that frames my mindset the most these days – is the understanding that life has seasons, cycles, and processes. Centuries and millennia roll over, ticking on into the next. The earth spins through days, months, and agricultural seasons. Day to night to day, spring to summer to fall to winter to spring (or rainy season to cool season to smoky season to blessed rain, if you’re in Southeast Asia like me), our world rolls on. I’ve come to understand this as not only part of the created order, but also part of the seasons of the human soul.
In the past few years, I’ve witnessed my family move through the grief cycle in various ways and speeds as we’ve welcomed a son through adoption. As any adoptive family will tell you, it’s both beautiful and messy, and the sacrifices and trauma of it all need to be processed and grieved. It wasn’t realistic to expect our family to be in an outgoing season of fruitful, productive ministry early on in the adoption transition. We needed to hunker down, prune back, and let ourselves grow new roots together.
Now, two years post-adoption, we’re able to do and experience more as a family again. Our season has shifted. But had we not embraced a quieter winter-type season of dormancy and underground healing and growth initially, we likely wouldn’t be able to function productively now.
This idea of recognizing and embracing my season has transformed how I make decisions and, as a natural outcome of those decisions, how I live life. I find myself not only asking, “What will produce the best results?” but also, “Is this the right time for production, or do I need to store up and wait for a while?”
It feels like there’s maturity and wisdom in that perspective, and I’m claiming it as I move through my 40s. Seasons of new growth are exciting, but seasons of quietly solidifying that growth are necessary. Likewise, seasons of pulling back, navigating change, and waiting are often painful, but guess what? They’re not the end of the world.
The end of the world is in fact coming, and these mortality-bound seasons will one day end, but not until death is swallowed up in life, and the Lion’s roar carries us home. Until then, our aim is to live out of tender-hearted love and courageous compassion, knowing that the world’s end is safely out of our control.
“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
