It won’t always be like this.
That’s a phrase I keep hearing myself say to the our staff. When they look at me with the deer in headlights look or the exhausted look of learning too much too fast. It’s a phrase I need to hear myself say as well. We won’t always have to wrack our brains to create procedures, and policies, and forms. We won’t always have to kill ourselves to meet every training requirement in a 60 day time period. We won’t always have to figure out schedules and routines and then re-figure out everything when it doesn’t work. Soon we will settle into a pattern, roles will be worked out, and responsibilities will become routine tasks. The stress of everything new will become good motivation to get it down pat.
I think the phrase “it won’t always be like this” is something we all need to hear from time to time. We can settle into seasons of high stress, dissatisfied relationships, frustrating situations, never ending task lists and it can feel like gray sludge in our minds and grabbing at our ankles to slow our progress. Our environments and situations can feel like they will always be how they are currently.
You can imagine how a young woman who has never experienced life outside of stressful relationships or inconsistent environments could feel like she will never see the light of day. Or imagine being a young woman who frightened beyond recognition with the realization how how stressful raising a child by herself can be and not being able to see past today. What if you were a young woman and there was no hope of a better tomorrow on the horizon?
We’ve all endured seasons of hardship. But we’ve also been able to experience God’s provision and faithfulness during those trials. It will be our responsibility to share that hope of a better tomorrow with young women facing an unplanned pregnancy. It will our joy to share hope and a promise of eternal life full of peace. We can walk with these young women through many seasons to come. But the ones worth waiting for through the tough seasons are in anticipation of the birth of their child, proudly watching them walk across the stage for their high school diploma, celebrating them opening their first paycheck, or praising God as they eventually walk down the aisle towards their happily ever after.
It is this vision that we are pressing towards. We know the pressure won’t always be like this but we are anxious to get started on the next season of The Sparrow’s Nest. The season where we finally get to do what God has called us to.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:7-9
