Let your "What if..." become "What now..."

Can I just say... it really pains me when I get on facebook and see all the changes that are happening to those I love and to not even be able to be present for them. So many of my friends have gotten married and now I message them under new names without having had the pleasure of presence at their wedding or meeting their significant other. So many of my friends have had children and I watch them grow through their postings on facebook. All this observing from afar leaves me sulking with a pain of “what if this is just going to be what my life looks like?” “What if I am forever stuck on the other side of this computer as a means of connecting with others and this is my only way of knowing the lives of my friends?” “What if my photos on facebook never expand beyond just me and the places I have been?” “What if the only connections I make with people are the fleeting meetings and friendings of facebook?”

There is a dull pain that I know everyone has felt at one point or another. It is an aching pain that allows you to go about your day and pretend like it isn’t there. It is a pain carried on the person, haunting them not with what is, but with what might be. The more we open ourselves up to loving others the more we know this pain. The dull pain is self inflicted with all the “what if’s” of this world. “What if I never get into the school I want?” “What if I am alone all my life” “What if I am left alone long before I am ready to be alone” “What if the image of my life that I hold so close slips out from underneath me?” “What if they die?” “What if I die?” “What if that was my fault?” “What if I do?” What if I don’t” These questions are a way of tempering the soul from having to experience the full blow of the outcome of the question itself. In other words; I often feel like I cling to these questions as a way to guard myself from feeling the full pain. A dull pain always present eases me into what could potentially be a BIG HUGE PAIN! The truth is, it gets exhausting and it blocks my view from all those things in this world that do offer peace and pleasure. 

It is interesting to think that our biggest fears in this life are carried like bags. We keep the bags with us just in case our fears do come true. At least then we have the bags to pick up the pieces and move forward. The problem is that the bags bind up our hands and keep us from being able to grasp onto Christ.  I find myself asking too often “What if...” and not “What now?” My fear of the future keeps me from enjoying the present. Christ has taken the biggest pain, every problem, and offers the answer to every one of our questions of “What if?”. “What now” is that I am baptized. “What now” is Christ with me. “What now” is Christ always with me, even if the “What if” becomes a reality. Christ on the cross doesn’t save me from the potential of big huge pains in the future but he saves me from an eternity of dull pain. In other words, life is temporal and too short to worry about “What if.” Each day I need His grace to remember that today will be what it will be, and no matter what comes, so does Christ.

Matthew 6:31-34

³¹ “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.