Ultimate Realities

Natalie took this picture while visiting Wales (Worms Head) with my dear friends Rick and Mary Miller. I love it: so rugged, so treacherous, yet so peaceful and beautiful. I feel like it goes with my post.


Most of the time ultimate realities aren’t really on my mind. What I think about is getting the right amount of sugar in my coffee and making sure I put the clothes in the dryer and getting more fiber in our diet and downloading anti-virus software. In short, my mind is on all the things I can handle, affect, create, control.

And because life happens in space and time and I have a family, friends, a church, a job, a house, and now the Olympics, there is enough on any day to keep me preoccupied, living life as if this is all there is, as if life will always be like this.

Because I’m blessed to have responsibilities, refuge, and recourse; because at this moment almost all fronts are quiet, I can and do spend most of my moments on basically steady ground, concerning myself with ordinary, domestic, comfortable things.

But today is different. Today I’m thinking about ultimate realities; the thoughts you have when you watch from the car as your child walks into school on that first day, when your teenager is driving on the interstate in a thunderstorm, when you leave her in a dorm room in another city, when she gets on a plane for Europe.

Time is so strange. While I was holding each baby, fascinated with the swirls of down on their skin, enjoying that good solid feel of their weight in my arms, I had all the time in the world. I had no idea that within moments that baby would be whisked out of my arms, replaced by a toddler with out-stretched arms saying, “Hold you, Mommy, hold you,” who in turn was replaced by a child who wanted to play the violin, and then by a teenager needing braces, each one seemingly swept up and away, alive only in pictures and memories.

And so today the one who once had golden curls and fell asleep while riding “horsey” on her daddy’s back, boarded a plane, backpack, laptop in tow, passport in hand, to travel and then study in France for a semester.

What are the ultimate realities? They grow up. They leave. We don’t go with them. We can’t “make it all better” anymore, and we can’t control the world they step out into. Luggage gets lost, friends disappoint, men leer, money runs out, cancer cells multiply, planes crash. Everyone sins.

As I took a walk and prayed for my Natalie, I prayed for a safe trip. I prayed things would go well, that she would be calm, that she could sleep. I prayed for all the things we ask for but know we can’t always expect. This truth is hard to face: that there are and will be many things in life that don’t go the way we want. Many prayers will be unanswered.

And so I was reduced to the only prayer I know will be answered in the way I ask. And the one prayer I would choose above all others if forced to choose only one.

“Lord Jesus, be with her. Amen.”

Postscript: She made it fine and is making me very happy by posting lots of pictures and writing on her blog, Natalie Bernardini.