wisdom from woodstock

Livia is the youngest child, and really has everything her heart could possibly desire - the Christmas list was short, and her siblings have already received all the gift suggestions I could come up with in years past. After more time than I probably should have allotted for searching for things for her, I finally landed on a Charlie Brown Christmas Polly Pocket. My own siblings rolled their eyes at what I'm permitting for the youngest but we'll just wait and see how things are when they reach that point in their own families.

Anyway, Livia got a Charlie Brown Christmas Polly Pocket for Christmas from her cousin, and it was a bit of a splurge. As expected, the higher the price, the tinier the pieces, but it seemed even more disproportionate than normal... the pieces were even tinier than you'd expect and you know how things are on Christmas with wrapping paper and chaos... and in spite of all my best efforts, Woodstock was missing within several hours of the gift being opened. He looked like a cheese crumb, honestly, so we gave the search and rescue efforts our very best but still left my parents house the next day with Woodstock missing and the toy devalued by probably 95% - sort of like driving a new vehicle off the lot but we would have no idea, actually, because we've never done that.

I had prayed for Woodstock to turn up but know that prayers like that sometimes get answered and sometimes don't. In the several days since then, my attention had turned to other things, and my prayer list had grown more lengthy and desperate than a yellow piece of plastic - mercifully, I had actually forgotten about it.

So when Grant texted a video today of Livia claiming she found Woodstock inside the Polly Pocket (this, also, is no surprise to any parent reading this), it both delighted and humbled me.

Delighted, because out of all of the problems in my head today, that was not one of them, but it was something resolved! Something found! A closed loop! Praise be.

Humbled, because I realized God had still been at work even when my mind had drifted on, even in things that I had marked down as apparently insignificant, and even in the presence of much, much bigger things He could be working on.

I texted Grant back: "Woodstock is a good reminder that even when I had moved on to bigger and more stressful troubles, God is still coming behind and slowly solving my problems in the order in which they appeared."

He goes before us and He comes behind us - from one year to the next and in all the moments in between.

You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me."

Psalm 139:5

"For you shall not go out in haste,

and you shall not go in flight,

for the Lord will go before you,

and the God of Israel will be your rear guard."

Isaiah 52:12