Tag: Eternity

I am 46

On December 22, 2022

This month I turned 46 and every third grader knows that 46 rounds up to 50. I am officially middle-aged.

I know I’m supposed to have wrinkles but I worry if I’m supposed to have this many wrinkles. I have an expressive face which makes the dentist think she’s torturing me but really I’m just being expressive, and all that expression means a lot of wrinkles. But I’ve discovered that if you just reduce the lighting in your bathroom, half the wrinkles go away. I should market this on Shark Tank.

When I was young, my Gram told me I had good eyes. We would sit in her downstairs family room with the rust-and-gold-patterned carpet and she would do her bead crafts. I would crawl around on the floor and pick up the beads she had dropped and she told me I had good eyes. But the other day I was trying to thread a needle and reluctantly got out my reading glasses because I couldn’t see the darn thing. Apparently, I don’t have good eyes anymore. A kid spotted me with the glasses on and told me they made me look like a grandma and now that kid is locked in his room.

Here I am, caught in a life that feels like it should be eternal but every moment is only a second long. I live with the passage of time every minute of every day and yet it still surprises me. Every Christmas I exclaim that I can’t believe it’s already Christmas and every time I see a baby, I am surprised by how fast that baby has grown. I greatly anticipate the upcoming vacation or party, and then suddenly it’s over. I yearned for the baby to be potty-trained and the child to make her own sandwiches and the teenager to graduate but then I get there and look back with wistfulness.

So here I am at 46 and determined to no longer be surprised by the passage of time. Instead I find myself frantically grasping as it slips through my fingers. Johnny is my last child to be in elementary school, so my children are no longer young. On his birthday, he wanted me to physically bring his cupcakes to school instead of sending them with him, so I majorly inconvenienced myself and did it just because it was the last time.

My children don’t need me to brush their teeth anymore, but they need me to drive them and that makes me miss the brushing-teeth years. One evening when Gil was sick, I made two trips to school, two trips to church, and two trips to the soccer fields. In one evening. Won’t it be nice when in a few years we have our evenings back? I asked Gil. Yet simultaneously my heart beat empty at the thought of empty spaces at the dinner table, empty bedrooms. No. It won’t be nice at all, actually. It sounds dreadful.

My years of influence over them are flitting away like dandelion fluff. I think about how Grace will be able to drive on her own soon, and how nice that will be, and then I think about how I won’t get to hear her chats on the way home, and I don’t think that will be nice at all, actually. I think I want the future but really I want it to stay here, right now, in this moment. But I never get that.

By age 46, you would think I would be used to this already, but it’s like there’s something in my soul that knows that one day the Joy will arrive and time will stop and it will go on forever and ever. Perhaps that’s because I am a soul who is trapped in a linear existence but was created for eternity. And one day I’ll get there.

This American High

By Amy Medina

On March 7, 2022

In Eternity, Fear, Living Like a Missionary

When I was a girl, my most prized possession was my sticker collection. Around age 10, Mom took me to a craft boutique, and I clearly remember the moment I laid my eyes on the most perfect sticker book ever: A photo album with a pink hand-sewn cover, hearts embroidered on top.

My Gram snuck stickers into birthday cards. I peeled every sticker off A+ quizzes. “Trading stickers” was my favorite friend activity, and I relished carefully placing each sticker in that perfect album, gazing upon their colorful, sublime wonder over and over again.

I lay in bed, worrying about fires and thieves and tidal waves, and knew confidently what item I would save first: that sticker book.

A couple of weeks ago, my parents dug out my boxes of childhood treasures from the depths of their garage and brought them to my house. Lo and behold, there was my sticker book.

I look disdainfully at the object of my childhood adoration and see it for what it really is: a book of sticky paper, now browning around the edges. Thirty-five years offer a great deal of perspective.

Last week journalist Mindy Belz tweeted, “Pentecostal leader in Moldova writes of daughter and her family vacating their apartment and moving in with him so Ukrainian refugees can live in her place.”

Would I be willing to do that?

Drinking From the Jug of Suffering: The Steadfast Faith of Sheshi Kaniki

By Amy Medina

On November 2, 2021

In Eternity, Life in Tanzania

Sheshi Kaniki loved to dance. Anyone visiting God’s Tribe Church in Tanzania witnessed this pastor engaging in delighted exultation, full-body worship. Always in the front row, next to his wife Trudie, Sheshi danced in praise — that same joy then radiating through his preaching.

After a brain cancer diagnosis in May 2020, Sheshi soon lost the strength to dance. Despite this devastation, his story of personal sacrifice and submission to God’s sovereignty in suffering has challenged the church in Tanzania — and beyond.

Sheshi was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, but his father’s job as a professor provided him an international life. He was one of those kids who gave his parents a run for their money, pushing boundaries, the life of any party.

Reflections on Losing My Mother-in-Law

By Amy Medina

On September 22, 2021

In Eternity

On the evening my mother-in-law died, I drove to pick up Josiah from soccer practice, thinking about how there is no good way to tell a grandson that his grandmother is gone.

The moon rose, a perfect crescent hung low in the clear sky. Under the expanse of the night, the boundary between earth and heaven felt blurry. She was Here, and then she was There, a moment later.

Eternity is not so far away as we think it is. It is right there, one breath away, as simple as pulling back a curtain.

The shock of losing a parent is kind of like the shock of aging. (Hey now, how can I possibly be turning 45? Only old people are 45.) You know it’s coming, but still, it takes you aback when it actually happens. Not everyone loses a child in their lifetime, but everyone will lose their parents. It’s “normal,” but that doesn’t make it any less astonishing.

A parent is a fixed mark in life. Lose one, and the earth shifts under you. Life gets divided into two segments: Before Mom, and After Mom.

Surprised by Eternity

By Amy Medina

On May 19, 2019

In Eternity

There’s that scene in Elf when Buddy is testing out Jack-in-the-Boxes. Every single time it pops up, and every single time he gets scared. He’s got a huge pile of toys, and yet he’s surprised every time. We laugh at him, but we’re like that too.

Every moment of every day, time passes. Things change. The cells in our bodies, our children’s bodies, are aging every second that goes by. Yet a birthday comes, and we are shocked at how old they’ve become. At how old we’ve become. That it’s Christmas again. That it’s summer again. That they are leaving for college. That we are getting gray hair. That our children are getting gray hair.

I’m 42. How can I possibly be 42? How can that much time have gone by? Yet I’ll think the same thing when I’m 52, and 62. The passage of time never stops, and yet I’m always shocked.

We have five weeks left until the end of the school year. How can that be possible? Yet what’s weirder is that I think that every single year. Just like Buddy the Elf. I never cease to be surprised.

I wonder why? You would think that after all this time, I would be used to it by now. I’m always striving towards something, either for something to be over (let’s get those report cards finished; let’s get to the day when all my kids can brush their own teeth; let’s get the car fixed once and for all) or for something to happen (I’m counting the days until I see my family, I can’t wait to go on that trip, I can’t wait for Christmas to come).

The tasks always get finished. The things I wait for always come. And then life moves on. But there’s always more tasks. And looking back on things that were greatly anticipated can become a let down. The perfect moments come, but then they never last.

It’s like we are wired for permanency. In the back of our minds is this notion that if we keep striving towards that or running towards this or focusing really hard on that goal, that we will get there. There is always perfect, or at least better. And then we’ll stay there. Forever.

Yet it’s not Forever. Whatever it is might last two seconds, and then the earth turns on its axis and another day passes. We continue our journey around the sun and the seasons change. Again and again and again.

In None Like Him, Jen Wilkin writes, “Those grasping for the comfort of certainty are blithely reminded that the only certainty is change itself.”

I keep thinking about that: The only certainty is change itself. In a world that seems to be falling apart around us, that truth helps me let go of so much frenzied striving for perfection. It also gives me hope that whatever seems unchangeable can always be redeemed.

Yet that inborn sense that we are headed towards something, that there’s a purpose that all of us are aspiring for, that there’s an overarching story that has a last page with a happily ever after–that feeling is so strong that there’s got to be Truth to it. If all of us feel that pull towards permanency, certainty, stability, eternity, then isn’t it probable that it does actually exist–behind the veil, through the wardrobe, on the other side?

Could it be that God has put eternity into man’s heart? That we are consistently surprised by the passage of time because we were created for eternity?

Jen Wilkin writes, “Every circumstance you encounter will change except the circumstance of your forgiveness. Every possession you own will pass away except the pearl of your salvation. Every relationship you enter into will waver except your adoption by your heavenly father.”

There’s a strange comfort in the acceptance of change in this wrecked world. It allows me to loosen my hold on things that point me towards regret or despair. It helps me not to idolize those beautiful, perfect moments that always slip through my fingers. Instead, may they be tastes of eternity, reminders of what’s coming. May they increase my craving for the God who will never change, and who has created me for Eternity. Encountering it might be a different kind of surprise: Oh, this is what I was made for!