“Why am I homeschooling myself ?”

This was the hilarious question my daughter casually dropped on my husband while on the way to the laundry room carrying her basket of clothes. 

“Well Sweetie, we’re doing school at home until the Coronavirus gets better and the governor says we can all go back to our schools”, he said half with a laugh and half with a hidden sigh of frustration.

Once again, our daughter’s direct manner cut through all the rhetoric of the day and strait to the heart of the matter. She simply wanted to know why her daily routine had changed and basically how long that change would last. “Why” and “How long”. Two questions we often ask when something hard happens to us in life. To ask these questions is to be human. 

Why?

With the quarantine our family has watched our fair share of movies, and one of our daughter’s favorite movies is Disney’s Frozen 2. We’ve likely seen it over a dozen times by now. But the other day I found myself watching it yet again and laughing hysterically when it came to a scene with the lovable character Olaf in which he sings a song called “When I am Older”. After a few unfortunate events that happen to him and his friends he sings, “This will all make sense when I am older…’Cause when you’re older absolutely everything makes sense”. And I found myself laughing my head off, thinking of our present situation, and emphatically adding the word “NOT!” to the end of that sentence. I mean really just because you’re older doesn’t mean that everything suddenly will make sense, right?

We know about the law of cause and effect from the time we are little children. It’s innate. Something happens and we just instinctually know there must be a reason why it happened. So, when something happens that is hard in life or even seemingly impossible, we naturally want to know “why?”.  But what happens when we are unable to find out the answer to our why question? We have all experienced this at some point in our lives. Sometimes we just don’t get to have the answer to our question of why. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if you’re a child or an adult not absolutely everything will make sense in life. 

Often times this is because our heavenly father is lovingly protecting us. I remember reading in the book “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom, of a conversation Corrie once had with her father when she was young. She was on a trip with him and asked the “why” question about something that was a difficult subject. He answered that he was not going to tell her the answer to why at that time because she wasn’t old enough nor ready to know the answer. He said it would be like having her lift the heavy suitcase he had in his hand. It would be a burden too heavy for her to carry at the time and so he as her father would continue to carry it for her until she was one day able to. What a beautiful analogy. There are times in life when God, just like a loving father, protects us by taking on the burden of knowledge. When we know this truth, it can bring so much peace in the waiting and wondering. 

How Long?

If we can’t get the answer to our “why?” question many times the next thing we ask is “How long” it will last. Whatever we are going through, if it’s hard we just want to know how long we will have to endure it.

Dr David Jeremiah says, “God has one hand on the timer and one hand on the thermostat”. In other words when things are hard God knows just how long and how much we can handle, and He will bring all things to their completion in the right time. Applying this to our present circumstances, we don’t have to live in fear or frustration wondering how long this COVID craziness will last. Instead we can trust that God knows the timing and He will see us through. I’m so thankful for this. 

My daughter often has this sweet way of shining a light on the obvious. When she asked why she was homeschooling herself it caused both of us to check our own frustration level over not knowing the answers to the questions of “why” and “how long”. It brought my husband and I together in prayer over these questions as they pertained to the Coronavirus quarantine. And it reminded us, once again, that we have access to a very real peace that surpasses all understanding and which can guard our hearts and minds (Phil 4:7) if only we go to God and place our trust in Him for all that we cannot understand in this life. Especially the hard. 

How about you? Do you struggle with wanting to know “why” and “how long” at times?