Give it Time

“Give it Time.” These three words are delicately sketched below one of the most significant home decor items I have hanging in our house. One of my college friends, Avery, took her artistic skill several years ago and produced this trio of watercolor prints. They’ve traveled with us and donned three walls of three different homes and have currently anchored themselves into a corner of our living room. But they’ve anchored themselves even deeper, into my heart.

As you can see in the photo above, the transformational stages of a caterpillar to a butterfly are displayed in one painting. Above this one, a more detailed pair of butterfly wings expand as if giving a more complete picture of the end result produced in the waiting process.

There are more times than I can count that I’ve looked at these paintings and have been reminded of the good things God has for us to glean as we “give it time.”

Today two years of time have passed from what I now call MonaJean’s “resurrection day.” (I know, I know, she wasn’t actually dead, but the turnaround was significant.) After all signs pointed toward her decline, we welcomed a nearly sleepless night in the hospital with her and watched what happened as we gave her time.

What happened? She was alert and responsive, more than she had ever been. But despite this alertness, unbeknownst to us, her oxygen saturation dipped to the 30’s by the morning. By mid-morning after we expedited plans for her to come home, the level crept into the 50’s. And right before her NICU “graduation” photo, 95. A miracle. Only God.

In reading my caringbridge from this day last year, the one year anniversary, my jaw dropped when I realized what I was “marinating on” then and what my reading plan brought me to in Scripture this morning.

THEN: I was scheduled to teach on the resurrection of Lazarus in John chapter 11.

NOW: I read the resurrection of Tabitha in Acts chapter 9.

WOW. My planning had no hand in that. In fact, I’m one day “behind” in my reading plan. That frustrated me yesterday, but now as I’m putting it all together, I’m really declaring January 17th as “resurrection day!”

One year after another after another… a similar theme on the same day.

Taken to another dimension of gratitude, I’ve been reflecting on how my mind has been less and less consumed with “rewind and replay,” as we gave it time. The bitter pain of loss is being overshadowed more and more by the sweetness of her life again.

Though the difficult anniversary looms tomorrow, today I’m looking at that painting and thinking, yes, God, You have, good, transformational things in store as we give it time.