What if Someday was today? Would I have everything I need for all it holds? Would you?

Which Someday are you waiting for?

Someday we won’t live paycheck to paycheck.

Someday I won’t be stupid-busy; then I’ll take care of myself.

Someday I’ll have more time and energy to serve God.

Someday the kids will rise and call me blessed. 😀

Today Is Someday

Nearly twenty years ago, I slipped into a chair at church for a mid-week class. At my feet, Baby Chelsea lay sleeping, tummy full, nestled in her carrier. I’d just dropped off Marissa and Sean, then nine and seven years old, at Awana Club. If all went well, I had a couple hours to focus on the teaching.

After class, several women chatted about a ministry opportunity. I yearned to be part of it, but, well . . . the demands of a young family and all. When I whined to the friend next to me, I chose the wrong person to commiserate. But, in Kathy, I had chosen the perfect person to lovingly bop me up the side of the head. Although she has a son, she also carries the daily sadness of losing a precious baby due to complications at birth. She never had a daughter.

Even against the bouncy walls of my faulty memory, her wisdom stuck.

“Someday you’ll be in that season,” she said. “Right now, God has you in a different season.” She nodded toward Chelsea, the old hurt clouding her eyes, penetrating me with the words she didn’t speak.

You have no idea how blessed you are. For God’s sake and mine, don’t miss it!

I was living a Someday of her dreams.

Today, by way of a miracle or seven, I’m back inside the little white country house (pictured above) where we lived before Chelsea’s illness escalated. As I tuck loose, graying hairs behind my ear and unpack yet more kitchen gadgets, it occurs to me, plain as my more-than-middle-aged face in the mirror: my Someday is now.

Those future events that once seemed distant and shrouded have come into sharp focus. And they’re staring me down.

Someday Chelsea will be healed, and “normal” life will resume. Check. Praise God!

Someday, like her siblings before her, she too will leave, and it’ll be just the two of us, Garth and I. Check, check.

Someday I’ll have more time for writing and other ministry opportunities. Yep.

Someday I’ll be forced to deal with that wretched storage shed. I’ll finally decide which things that once belonged to my mom and Garth’s to keep. And which of the kids’ art projects. . . One can’t provide lodging for three soaring towers of bloated Rubbermaid containers forever. Can she?

I move outside to the patio, reach into a box, inspect a Beanie Baby dragon. Oh, thank God, the mice didn’t contaminate this one; Sean loved his dragons. Overhead, rain clouds gather. I have a tarp at the ready and I’m racing the clock. Sean, now twenty-six and married, will be here for dinner and to claim, once and for all, any of this stuff he still prizes.

So I’m fast ditching the mice-infested and staging the things that survived: Hot Wheel cars, middle-school poetry, college textbooks. Stuff we’ve been storing for just such a day.

Faced with so much evidence, all stacked in one place and growing musty, I can’t miss the lesson. The things of lasting value aren’t contained here. Also, in the grand scheme of things, the time the five of us spent together was but one collective exhale on a cold window pane. Twenty-eight years of parenting, a puff of steam—its shining particles suspended for a while, then evaporating.

When Moses wrote, “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12), I don’t think he meant to crush our spirits under the marching boots of time.

One commentary renders the verse as a request for God to “enable his people to take to heart the lessons which the brevity of life should teach.”

Maybe someday isn’t a destiny; it’s a perspective. And the good, lasting stuff isn’t tucked inside storage tubs, but in the seemingly insignificant moments of life.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. . . . That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. –Ecclesiastes 3:10-14

Everything God does endures. Forever.

I see it now, a breathtaking paradox. As photographs and stuffed toys deteriorate, the work God has done in and through the people who once treasured them appreciates. Becoming beautiful in its time.

[bctt tweet=”As photographs and stuffed toys deteriorate, the work God has done in and through the people who once treasured them appreciates. Becoming beautiful in its time.” username=”KitTosello”]

Sean doesn’t take much—some favorite books, his N64 setup (Mario Kart, anyone?), and, at my urging, his dragons. He doesn’t need his old stuff; he’s too invested in the present: working, taking seminary classes, loving his wife, and discipling younger guys—those living in the Someday right behind him.

The rightness of it transforms my melancholy into peace.

And I recommit to living as fully and holy as possible, right where God has me now. In the wisdom of the Spirit, in light of the grace that redeemed me, and with an eye to my future inheritance.

Someday Today Garth and I will begin anew as a couple.

Someday Today I’ll prioritize my writing.

Someday Today I’ll even unbox and set the table with my mother-in-law’s funky vintage wine glasses.

Who can measure the value of a day? A year? A season? Somehow within it, the giver of life assigns lasting worth to all we are and all we do in response to him. In our brief cloud of vapor on the window of eternity, God draws a lasting heart that won’t dissipate, ever.

Consider this, dear friends: Eventually you and I will get to see and comprehend what his heart, pulsing in and through us, has accomplished.

Someday.

Hallelujah!

You can read Part 2, You Have Every Thing You Need, here. And if you enjoyed this article, please share!

Linking up today with #Coffee for Your Heart, #Refreshing Faith, #Purposeful Faith