The End

I said I would never drive a minivan. Never. I had one tiny child in my arms at the time. Who needed all of that space? And who wanted to look so uncool in a car like that? Not me. I was going to be the ultimate chill mom and not about to ruin my image with a car like that. I think it was the second boy who stole my cool factor and the third one who taught me there would never be a car big enough to hold all of the stuff required to go to the grocery store with three boys. And suddenly, I was marveling at the way all the seats folded down. Motherhood changes everything about you.

It’s been almost 14 years since we made that van purchase. Fourteen years of car seats buckled in and out, strollers folded in the back, bottles and sippy cups passed over my shoulder, and hours of The Wiggles singing about Fruit Salad through those speakers. That van brought babies home from the hospital, hauled soccer cleats, basketballs, baseball bats, wet tennis shoes, sandy beach clothes, towed bikes for hundreds of miles, and no matter what I did always smelled a little bit like feet. It could drive preschool carpool on autopilot, make it to the bus stop in five seconds flat in a pouring rainstorm and navigate its way out of a hundred wrong turns. But it could not automatically close its own sliding doors. “You have to slam them,” I think I said it a million and one times. The same boys who rode buckled in car seats in the back and threw popcorn at one another learned to drive in its driver’s seat. But they never wanted their friends to witness this.

As we prepared to sell the old jalopy yesterday, these gigantic men-children of mine pulled melted crayons from the back consoles, sat in the way back for the last time with their knees nearly touching their chins, and declared that they really did have some good memories of the old blue van.

And I cried. Life is so weird.

This is a strange season. Everything feels like its ending. And beginning. And I can’t get that verse from Ecclesiastes out of my head. For everything there is a season a time for every matter under heaven ... A time for a boy to graduate, a time for a mom to go back to school and start a full-time job, a time for a middle son to do all the grocery shopping, and for the youngest to learn to make his own lunch and lock up the house by himself.

And a time to no longer be the mom in the minivan.

But seriously. It’s not really about the car. The thing was falling apart.

I think it’s something about this time of year that always steals my breath. As May rolls in and I realize everything has gone by so fast. It makes me wish I could just stick some of these days in my pocket and hold them forever.

And it isn’t like we haven’t seen it coming. Right? I knew they wouldn’t stay little forever (many days I prayed they wouldn’t). I knew that car was in its last days. And I have known all year that high school graduation was upon us.

We all know that things are going end; that there will be a “last time” for everything. But there is something about the happening of it that spins us around and gives us eyes we did not have before.

So what do we do with an ending? How do we hold it loosely and walk into the next beginning? This month of May so often begs us to find the answers to these questions. It can break our hearts; the way it is all over. Yet, it gives us glimpses of what lies ahead; this newness that God stretches out right in front of our tear-filled eyes.

Because it seems God has a thing for beginnings and endings. Me, I am a fan of the middle. Life that knows how to behave. Predictability and a certainty that I can handle it all. By May, though, I have run all out. I come to this end of myself and look around wondering how I will ever handle what comes next.

But then God whispers this verse to my scattered heart, right in the middle of realizing I no longer have a car. “I am the Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End.” These precious words of God that the Apostle John records for us in Revelation, the very last book of the Bible.

Because he knew these days would come.

He knew where we would be standing when we would realize that it was over. The minivan years. The specific season of motherhood. The preschool playdates. The elementary school parties. The high school days. Even the days where all the babies cried at the table, no one slept,  the homework was endless and no one was nice. They, too, would end. And he knew how it would feel to stand right where we are. To wonder. To want it all back just for a moment; so we could slow it down, notice everything, and hold it all a little tighter. But he cannot give us that. So instead, he gives us so much more. He gives us himself. God. The Beginning. The Ending.

You see, that verse. It does not say, “I am in the beginnings and in the endings.” He said –  I AM the Beginning. I AM the Ending. (Revelation 21:6). I AM the one that started it all and the one who ends it all. And I AM with you until the ends of the earth. I AM. Those are the Hebrew letters that form the very name of God. Yahweh. Immanuel. God with us – in the beginning, and in the ending.

I hear him speak it like this: This ending that came so quickly and is turning you sideways – it has nothing on you because I AM right here. And this beginning that makes your knees shake and your heartbeat quicken –  I AM there too. I AM the God of all creation and I’ve got this. You are not standing here alone.

So maybe your May holds some endings, too. Maybe you’re rushing through it all and haven’t had to acknowledge them. Take a deep breath. Open your eyes and take it all in. This is the way it feels to stand in an ending moment of time. You have made it through a season. Look back for just a moment and marvel at far you have come. Be all there. Taste the tears. Hear the laughter.

But then turn. Turn your eyes upon this new beginning and survey the landscape. Step into the graduations, the car shopping, the college orientations, and the last days of school. Bring on the new places, the hard work, and the unknown territory. The Lord is already there. The beginning and the ending and all the middles that will follow. “The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27). Underneath these endings and these beginnings is the one that holds all things together. And He will never end.

Alleluia. Amen