And How Have You Spent Your Summer So Far?

With the back to school sales already hitting the big box stores, it’s fair to wonder where the summer went, and with it, all of the lofty aspirations dreamt up in the dusk of springtime. All of the projects to be completed, the vacations to be savored, the sunshine longed for when the air was violently frigid. How often our plans become gestational judgments.

My summer has been wholly absorbed with preparations for baby #2’s coming arrival this late summer. I just finished painting the nursery, but the new floor needs to be installed next weekend. Oh, and the trim has to go on too. Then it’s putting the crib back together, sorting through baby clothes, buying new furniture to replace the ones we’re stealing from kid #1 for the baby’s room, reorganizing kid #1’s room, decorating the nursery, all the while working, parenting, trying to fit in trips for work and to see family, and now getting ready for the transition back to school.

What started as, “Oh, we have plenty of time,” has slowly descended into a look of stunned fear as the to-do list has gotten longer, the pile higher, and the burdens heavier. As kid #1 was rattling off thing after thing we need to do in her weekly FaceTime with my parents, out of the corner of my eye I could see Hannah descend into a mild panic attack.

It was always going to be this way. There’s nothing like a baby to dispel the illusion you are in control. I remember learning that lesson the first time around and having daily reminders. The impending birth just adds fuel to the fire.

But that doesn’t stop me from trying to make order out of the chaos. To-do lists a mile long. Detailed calendars defining when this and that are going to happen. Dark circles under the eyes from late nights painting, sorting, and prepping. I’m tired and I’m not even the pregnant one!

I suppose this is just what happens when you try and act like the God of your life. When you cover all the bases, control every little thing, leave nothing to chance. You grind, you struggle, you strive — all with the hope that you’ve left no stone unturned, no “i” not dotted or “t” crossed, no surprise lurking around the next corner. You try and do it all … but there are only so many hours in a day, so precious little ability to do all that what you want to accomplish. As Oliver Burkeman writes in his book, Four Thousand Weeks, 

The obsessive planner, essentially, is demanding certain reassurances from the future — but the future isn’t the sort of thing that can ever provide the reassurance he craves, for the obvious reason that it’s still in the future … Really, no matter how far ahead you plan, you never get to relax in the certainty that everything’s going to go the way you’d like.

No amount of effort can prevent time from slipping out of one’s grasp. Whether its a due date looming or some other deadline on the horizon — getting that promotion, being a good grandparent, finishing the stack of books on your bedside table, perfecting your Renaissance Fair costume, raising the blue ribbon heifer, or whatever — life has a way of turning into a rat race whether we want it to or not.

Maybe we gird up our loins and charge back into the battle of it, but at some point, the heavy burden of trying to perform is going to become unbearable.  It’s not that we bump up against our limit so much as run headlong into a wall.

I suppose that’s why Jesus’ promise at the end of Matthew 11 is so well beloved. “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.” 

Relief from carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. Rest no 3-day weekend can even dream to provide. Gentleness and humility the world certainly doesn’t have time for. 

His yoke we are to put on is simply the yoke of faith. Believe he does these things for you. Trust that God is God and we are not. Accept the grace and mercy of the One who delivers us when we feel as dead as doornail (Rom 7:24-25) And even then, he helps us with faith too (c.f. 1 Cor. 12:3). I can’t say I’m ready for baby #2, but I can trust that because of Christ, I don’t have to worry. The burden of having everything ready and being perfect has been taken from my shoulders. And yours too, even if your summer has been less than the holiday you hoped for.