Preparing For The Unpreparable

The word prepare means “to make someone ready or able to do or deal with something.”  I don’t know about you, but I like to prepare.  I am a planner.  I like to feel prepared and ready to deal with whatever is coming my way.  I always loved it when there was a packing list provided for things like college, camp, and mission trips.  And I’m not going to lie, I always went above and beyond the packing list provided because my philosophy was, you can never be too prepared!  Right?  Because I am such a planner, it has made the season of life we are preparing for even more challenging and stretching for me.  What season is that you might ask?  Parenthood.  We are in the midst of preparing for the arrival of our first child!

The first few months after we found out we were pregnant felt very surreal.  There was a lot of talking and dreaming about what this next stage of life would bring.  It took a while for reality to completely set in.  Once we hit about 20 weeks (20 weeks marks the halfway point for those of you who may not know the significance of the number!) it started to get very, very real.  It started to set in that in just five short months or less we will have a little human in our home that we are responsible for.  It’s our responsibility to keep them alive, to teach them, to raise them, to meet their every need.  I started to feel very overwhelmed and daunted by this fact.  How on earth would I ever be prepared for this?!  I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of things I realized I didn’t know.  Things I needed to learn before our little girl arrives!  How much do I feed her?  How often do I feed her?  How do I buckle her in the car seat?  (It’s more complicated than it looks!)  How long should she sleep?  How do I put her to sleep?  All these questions and so many more started flooding my thoughts.  How do I care for this sweet baby girl that God has blessed us with?

I spent about two weeks in this overwhelmed state, trying to research all I could to prepare myself for the newness that is headed our way, until one Sunday morning in church we sang the song “Nothing I Hold Onto” by Will Reagan.  The lyrics hit me hard.

I lean not on my own understanding

My life is in the hands of The Maker of heaven

I give it all to You, God

Trusting that You’ll make something beautiful out of me

I will climb this mountain

With my hands wide open

There’s nothing I hold onto

I realized that I have been leaning on my understanding and knowledge.  The common thought repeating itself in my head was that I am not prepared.  And not only am I not prepared, but I don’t know HOW to prepare.  I don’t know about you, but this is a very helpless feeling!  I don’t know how to learn the things I need to learn, to know all the things that I will need to know.  But it quickly hit me, I will never be able to know everything there is to know about parenthood and raising a child!  Now, I am sure all of you parents out there would agree with this and would have been able to just tell me this if I had asked!

Over the last few weeks, I have been reminded of Proverbs 3:5-6 which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.”  Over the years I have come to learn that this does not mean that if I follow the Lord my path will always be perfect or easy, but what it does mean is that the Lord will guide me through the things that life brings.  That He will make a way through the different experiences I encounter.  I have learned that preparing for things isn’t bad!  However, I have also learned that there must be balance.  Balance between preparing and trusting God and His understanding.  I can prepare and plan to a point and when I hit that point, I have to trust that the Lord knows what He’s doing and that He will guide my path through the unknown.

 So, as we prepare for this new season of parenthood, I am reminded of my need to trust in the Lord with all my heart.  That my understanding and knowledge is finite and minimal at best, but that HIS understanding is infinite and complete.  I am reminded that if I lean on Him and trust Him with all my heart, that He will guide my steps and prepare me for what lies ahead.  In all my research and attempts to learn all the things I need to know I have learned one thing for sure: I know nothing!  And ya know what?  I have learned that that’s okay.  I don’t need to, and never will, know it all.  I have been reminded that His ways are higher than mine and that His understanding is far vaster than mine ever will be!