This week my daughter began reading a book about the beginning of World War II and Pearl Harbor. Before I go any further, stay with me one second while I tell you a few things. Reading is not her favorite thing to do. She would rather just watch the movie. Because that’s fun. And fast. I get that. And it’s not that she is a history buff either. She’s 8. We homeschool and this past year in her Classical Conversations class, she learned and memorized a history sentence about how World War II began. We memorize these sentences in song and we sing them over and over. And over. Each week we learn new fact, 24 in all. At her age, she isn’t required to explain or understand, just memorize the information. Now that you know that, we are moving on…
One day last week I was flipping through channels and the movie Pearl Harbor was on. I turned it on and began watching it right when Japan started attacking. The part where the cook courageously makes his way to the big guns on deck and takes down a plane. At some point, my daughter sits down and starts to ask questions. Why? Lots and lots of why’s.
The next day as we headed out to a playdate I sent her to the bookshelf to grab a book to read in the car. “Mom!” I heard her say. “We have a book called ‘The Story of the USS Arizona’!” “This is great,” I thought. This would have never caught her attention before. It’s an old book. It’s plain. Lots of words and minimal pictures. But with the information she had memorized and the discussion we had from the movie, she was excited to read it.
She read to me for the duration of the car ride and picked it back up when we headed home. As we got closer she marked her page and began thumbing through the book counting how many pages were left. When she got to the last page she looked at the picture and said, “USS Arizona Memorial? Mom, why would they put that ship in the middle of the ocean?” Don’t skip ahead,” I said. “It won’t make any sense.”
The end of the movie doesn’t end showing the memorial of the ship. It ends with a love story. Because movies are always a love story. You and I know that the memorial isn’t a ship. And she will too, once she reads the rest of the story. Every day since then she’s picked it back up where she left off, but she’s not quite finished with it. Yet. Though she now knows what the last page looks like and she knows what the picture looks like, she will only understand it by taking one page at a time.
Pause. What a great reminder to not skip ahead. Because it just won’t make sense if we do.
It’s not so much books that we need this reminder of, but in life. Not so much counting pages but counting days. We aren't tempted so much to look at the last picture in the book but maybe someone else’s picture. And asking a lot of why’s.
It can be so easy to get caught up in working ahead of God and miss out what’s right in front of us. What He has for us. The grace and the work He’s doing in us each day. On this page. I’ve been pondering this thought for days. And the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s the same truth that the Lord has been speaking to me continually over the past few years. It’s a story of grace. That I am part of. His story. And I am right where I need to be. No need to skip or count, just be right here with Him. An open book.
He is my Savior and author of my hope. I know the end of this life begins eternity with Him. And everything will make sense when I get there. No need to skip. He’s writing my story and I get to be a part of HisStory. Awesome.
"I’m an open book, I’m an empty page, write your story on my heart, come on and make your mark…"