When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within me and around me.

Henri Nouwen

This is a strange time. The world is in transition. Society is in transition. My neighbourhood is in transition. My family is in transition. The church is in transition.

I am in transition.

No, I am not changing my gender, although aging changes the way people relate to us older folk. It’s as if we are neutered by grey hair and wrinkles. No longer considered “marketable,” there is an unexpected freedom in not having to find my value in the ability to attract a mate to potentially procreate with when I already have one who has stuck with me going on 53 years, and having children at this point in life is, literally, inconceivable. Yet, the pressure to look young and attractive is incessant. (What a baffling game that is.)

I am, however, still changing. As the apostle Paul wrote, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:10-14 NIV)

I woke from a time pressure/anxiety dream far too early this morning. In the dream I was poking around my house, procrastinating as usual. When a moving truck pulled up in the driveway, I suddenly remembered this was the day we were supposed to move out of the old family house into something more suitable for our stage of life. I had done nothing in the way of downsizing or packing or arranging for movers. The woman, who had her young children in tow, stepped out of the truck. She was so excited to move into her new house that had become a burden for me.

In the dream, I lied to her. I told her our truck broke down, so we couldn’t move out on time. She said, “Well, we’ll just have to get you another truck.” She left me with no excuses not to keep to our agreement.

I woke, feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by the prospect of everything I needed to do in the process of change. I realized exhaustion is not about packing up housewares; it’s about cooperating with the Lord to move into increasing holiness, greater acts of love, and deeper relationship with Him. I’m dilly dallying.

I felt like the dream was saying, “Get a move on!” As I prayed, I also remembered that even in transition and all of the upheaval and sorting and tossing things I no longer need, and carefully packing and preserving others to take with me, I can let go of anxiety and find joy in this moment of uncertainty and change. I can still rest in the certainty of God’s faithfulness. There is a place of quiet rest in the current view of this season that is the alternating too warm/too cold/too warm/too cold unusual climate of change. Life, even at seventy years old, is lived in a place of disrupting process and increasing trust.

He’s not finished with me yet.

I don’t know what the the future holds, but I know Who holds the future, and I know the One who loves me enough to keep investing in me by poking and prodding me to get a move on. There is more. He still holds me in a divine embrace. He’s got this.

His voice is calling, “Get up! Get a move on! We’ve got things to do today.” Can you hear it too?