I know I just got done saying that I tend toward stoicism. But when it comes to new challenges that seem too big for me, I can do drama queen. Now, the Bible says that there’s a time for every purpose, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t mean either of these extremes. I think there’s a time to mourn, to voice fear, to seek sympathy and help. And there’s also a time to be done with all that.
There’s a time to ask audaciously for relief. And there’s a time to accept that this is life. (“Why yes, you have to go to the dentist.” Or “No, you didn’t win the spelling bee.” Or “The baby is crying in the middle of the night and — oh right, I’m the mom.”)
Know that nagging feeling that maybe this is the time to stop panicking and grow up, already? Well, it caught up with me this week.
In The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life, Hannah Whitall Smith painted a picture of our will and our emotions as a mother and her cranky children. Perhaps you’ve seen how overwrought an overtired toddler can become. He is not at all hesitant about venting his emotions, no, but until he has a nap, they’ll go right on escalating. So his hand is taken by a great big daddy hand (or he’s picked up in gentle mama arms) and next thing he knows, he’s tucked into bed. An hour or two later, his emotional equilibrium has returned.
Perhaps it’s not so simple for us grownups. But we do have enough experience to realize that when our own feelings are only escalating, then something needs to change.
Amy Carmichael writes challenging words, words that show my need for more maturity.
If I make much of anything appointed [for me to do], magnify it secretly to myself or insidiously to others; if I let them think it “hard”… then I know nothing of Calvary love.
If I myself dominate myself, if my thoughts revolve round myself, if I am so occupied with myself I rarely have “a heart at leisure from itself,” then I know nothing of Calvary love.
Hard words, perhaps, but healing. Because oh! What a relief to see Jesus bigger than any task He asks of me. And what a relief to vacation from thoughts about myself.
Now, it’s one thing to realize I need to grow up in yet another way. Better still when I begin to want to. But how in the world do I do it?
Accept the fact that there may be no understanding words from earthly friends, or even my heavenly Father. Like the toddler who is swept off to his bed, I may feel deserted by the very Parent who carries me safely where I most need to go.
I can panic. I do have that option. I can wrestle, complain, demand.
I can (untruthfully) deny that I have emotions.
I can fixate on myself at the expense of others.
But unlike the toddler, I know the long history of my Father’s faithfulness. Unlike the stoic, I know He hears, remembers, sees, and knows His children’s pain. Unlike skimpy-hearted me, He truly knows and freely gives out Calvary love, because of the joy it will set before us all.
And so I rest. I come to the end of my talking (for now). And I find my joy in an unexpected place: making someone (and Someone!) else joyful.
That, I suppose, is growing up.
Elisabeth Adams 