You quickly realize what a bad scientist you are.

Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor

and power, for you created all things, and by your

will they existed and were created.

Revelation 4:11

––––––––

Dear Me,

You’re a young thing watching other people write their histories, a pint-sized scientist in a navy blue jumper with a tag-along dog. Your dependent variables? Your parents who you watch with immense curiosity and the type of love that borders on obsession.

What if they die? What if you cause it somehow?

That’s a lot of anxiety to entrust to a toy poodle.

The independent variables are ashamedly out of your control, and you quickly realize what a bad scientist you are. Things are thrown at your parents that have nothing to do with you. Stress from running their own business, past hurts and jealousies, family dynamics, and inner turmoil–things that are aggravatingly no match for a kindergartner.

There’s a short period where your father leaves, not on his own accord but of their accord together–a decision made again, without your consent.

It’s only a cooling-off period, but you quickly realize how out of control you are. You’d give your left arm to be the controlled variable.

And you’d give the right one to make him stay.

I ask you, what is the controlled variable then, little one? Because for a world that likes to pretend everything is chaos, we already know the lie in it. There’s a Grand Planner whose mind is more sound than the collective one we seek to maintain, a collective mind cracked out on caffeine and unmet expectations. Any scientist worth His salt would make us sit on the sidelines.

But the One who concocted a world edged in light and bursting forth with green we can only grow and not create, had us work in tandem with Him, not as a prerequisite but as an honest offering we don’t and never will deserve.

One day, your mind will open to all this, and so there’s no regretting a past God has so tenderly woven and dedicated to you. He’s given you two loving parents who wouldn’t know a bus they wouldn’t jump in front of for your sake and a deepened appreciation for all the under-workings of this life you’re just not privy to.

And instead of desiring that control with a tight chest and sweaty palms, you’ve given it back over to the only One who so rightly deserves it.

If only Fifi could see you now.

Talk soon,

Ericka