Before I became a mother, I thought I was a fairly optimistic person. There’s something about adding extremely active children to your life, though, that can make you start to forecast worst-case scenarios out loud. But my younger son always has an answer to my concerns.
“Don’t cross your eyes,” I’ll say. “They might stay that way.”
“What if they don’t?” he says happily.
“Spit out your gum before you run around outside! You might choke.”
“What if I don’t?” he asks – genuinely curious.
“Ack! Why are you tackling your brother in the middle of the living room! Someone is going to get hurt!”
“Maybe we won’t,” he replies.
His cheerful, hopeful voice takes the wind out of my worrying sails – every single time.
As I’m mentally reaching for the keys to run an injured child to the emergency room, our little boy is sure that everything will be just fine – and even better than fine. I’m struck by his optimism. He reminds me that just as there’s a chance of something negative happening, there’s also a chance of something wonderful happening, too.
I think of that when I hear people talk about the uncertainty we’re facing right now. We have, perhaps, never lived in a time where we could be less sure what our future held. The details of what the future would hold have always been unknown to us, but we at least thought we knew what would happen as we filled calendars with events, planned summer vacations, and spoke casually about the next week at school.
Some nights I wake up and can’t fall back to sleep as my mind fills with question after question. What if one of us gets sick? What if we lose our jobs? What if someone we love gets sick? Will there ever be better treatments or vaccines? What if life never gets back to normal again?
At moments like that, I have to remind myself that so much is outside my control. I think of my son whose approach would push me to ask myself, “What if it is all going to be OK?” Because it just might be.
Uncertainty can be scary. But just because the future is unclear doesn’t mean that what lies ahead is terrible. The future might be more wonderful than we could ever imagine. It may contain beautiful possibilities and joys we have yet to experience. And, as people of faith, we are called to trust in something bigger than human worries and fears.
We are called to believe in God and his love for us. We know that he didn’t put us on earth for anything but a good purpose. We know that suffering and loss will be part of our time here, but we also know that God loves us, that he is with us on this journey, and that he has a job he wants each of us to fulfill on this earth. And we know that when we’ve completed that job – hopefully many years from now – we will join him in heaven.
As I ask God question after question about the future, I can almost hear him answering the way our son does, urging me to trust, reminding me to believe, encouraging me to rest in him and in his promise that he will make all things good.
“Never ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged,” St. John Paul II told us. “Be not afraid.”
Even with so much that is unknown, may you find your faith carries you into each day with optimism, may your hope in the future grow as you walk with Christ, and may you feel yourself surrounded with God’s restoring love.
And may we trust that God has solutions to these challenges that we simply cannot see.
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