If I Had Known...

I saw it on the cover of a book the other day, and it was simply this: "If I had known..." The author penning their own reflections on the things they understand now that they wish they did back then.  A book title that  suddenly made me  find myself asking the same thing as event after event rolled past my mind in incessant parade, causing me to wonder the obvious... 

What if I had known? 

What if I had known that I would stand at the graveside of friends, their voices still echoing in my memory, and say a goodbye felt far too soon? 

What if I had known that the whir and beep of monitors would forever create their own kind of haunting and the mere sight of hospitals would one day become a fear monster to overcome and would take all the courage in the world just to enter them again when necessary? 

What if I had known that I would have to live with the presence of post-trauma and the symptoms it brings with it, learning a new world of regulating anxiety and depression and practicing self-brain care in ways I never expected? 

What if I had known that I would be asked to let go of so much and so many that I cared dearly for? 

What if I had known that I would walk so many times through the valley of the death's shadow and be forced to face the deepest darkness I'd ever seen? 

What if I'd known I'd be the recipient of all those words of shame and blame, eating away at my confidence and causing me to question everything I'd ever done or believed? 

What if I'd known you could survive the war but end up fighting your own battles afterwards? 

What if I had known? 

And what if we all knew what lay ahead on our journeys? For as much as we often demand and explanation and an answer for what life brings, if we really knew the why's and the reasons, would we actually wish we hadn't known? 

Truthfully, would we actually run the other way and try to hide from the reality of it all? 

If we're so prone to run from the pain anyway, would it really make that much difference in how we respond if we had fair warning? 

Maybe this is God's way of protecting and forcing us to confront what we most want to escape...

I sit back and contemplate this further... 

If life really was about trying to know it all and see it all ahead of time, what need would there be for trust? Oh yes, you'd be aware of everything and prepared on some level for anything but what about faith? That one powerful thing you need the most... how would there be a place for it if the divine gift of foresight was ours? 

Go back to the Garden and you see it all clearer: our first parents were promised that the forbidden fruit would open their eyes so they would be like God - able to know and see and understand everything - and where did that ultimately get them? Judgement. Because none of is God and none of us can be God and none of us is meant to see and know and do what only He can. 

So what if we knew? Would that really change anything? Would that, in the end, actually change us? Perhaps God knows it's in the not knowing that growth and trust really take place. That, by allowing us to come up against problems we cannot solve, things we cannot fix, pain we cannot remove, people we cannot change, we are brought face to face with our humanity and inability to control or affect anything or anyone. Perhaps He knows that it's better we don't know because then we'll begin to believe and rely on the fact that He already knows and that can be our final source of peace amidst all the uncertainty. 

Steps lead into depths and places begging for light as the known way evolves into a way you haven't traveled and your only hope is Hope Himself, right in the very broken space you least expected to find Him and all He says to you is, "Follow me. Come along the disciple-way and learn what it means to walk in The Way and all your selfish ways will give way to a life-abundant way if only you'll learn from Me." 

The script flips and now I'm asking a different "what if I had known..." 

What if I had known I would learn so much in the times of waiting? 

What if I had known that I could grow stronger by admitting that I'm weak? 

What if I had known life could end so good even when it has dealt you a painful hand? 

What if I had known so much good could from simply letting go and saying yes? 

And what if I had known that, in the end, the life I wanted most lay on the other side of the things I liked the least? 

Maybe it would upend our worlds in the most radical way if we started to be okay with not having all the answers. Not understanding all the why's. Not seeing all the reasons. Not asking for an explanation every single time God does something we don't enjoy. Just maybe real knowing is found in having to accept what you don't know so that God can show you what you most need to know and you can leave all the rest up to Him who knows it all.