“It Gets Better!”

When Walter first learned to walk, I was convinced I'd never sit down again.

Overnight, my sweet, immobile little baby became a tiny tornado with absolutely no regard for his own safety. Every cabinet was a new adventure. Every "no" seemed to go in one ear and out the other. Redirecting him to something safer might have bought us thirty seconds if we were lucky.

By the end of most days I was exhausted enough to wonder if I was doing any of it right.

If you’ve ever gone through anything even remotely difficult - like a new season of motherhood, starting a new job, losing a job, etc. - you’ve probably heard someone tell you:

“It gets better!”

Nine times out of ten, it does. Truly.

But it depends on the way that you look at it.

Sometimes the way things get better isn't the way you'd hoped they would. Sometimes it's just deliverance from the season of struggle in a way that’s God’s plan and not your own.

But when you’re in those seasons, that phrase is the last thing that you want to hear. People typically mean well, but it's so hard to see the sunny side up when you’re in the deepest dark.

I’d call my mom for support and reassurance because I felt like I was losing my mind. I had no clue what to do - he was too young to understand what he was doing, and too young to understand me repeatedly telling him not to do what he was doing.

He didn’t know what I was talking about, and I felt like I had no idea what I was talking about either.

My husband and I felt so utterly unequipped to deal with these issues, as most new parents do. Unfortunately, you can only learn by the guidance of others, and trial and error. There will be lots of error.

It’s important to note that this was not the first or the last time that we felt that way.

Before that, we were utterly overwhelmed when we tried to go out and run errands or go to dinner and Walter was only a few months old. He would get into this habit of not wanting to sleep while we were out doing anything. He had the worst fear of missing out that I'd ever seen or heard of in a child so small. After a while, he’d end up cranky, inconsolable, and so upset.

Within a few minutes of this, we’d reach the same conclusion - completely out of ideas on how to remedy the situation we were in, and just give up and go home. Throwing in the towel during these moments seemed like all we could do.

I’d seek advice, and my mom would always give me tips about things she used to do to soothe my sister and I, and of course, reassure me that ‘things will get better’. I tried everything, and still felt like nothing was working.

Unfortunately, some seasons can’t really be “fixed” in the ways that we hope for; instead, they require you to simply do the best that you can, and that’s what we did.

We had a wonderful support system that we could lean on when we needed to take a break, and when Walter probably needed a break from us, too.

All of this is just to say that things do get better. They do. They just don’t always look how you wanted them to.

Truth is, we got through the season of inconsolable tears and into a season of business and destruction. Deliverance isn’t always pretty, but it does happen.

During the days of sobbing in restaurants, we wished and hoped for the days that he could walk and have some autonomy; figuring that he’d enjoy being out more if he was able to have fun, too.

We were so wrong. Because with that autonomy came the additional issue of not wanting to sit still. Now that he could do things by himself, he wanted to do everything.

Going through all of that, I found myself feeling nostalgic about the things that I just couldn’t wait for him to grow out of. Every season holds its own set of difficulties, and more often than not, you’ll miss those difficulties once you move onto new ones.

We spend so much of life waiting for the next season because we imagine the next season is where peace lives.

But every season has something to grieve and something to celebrate. Something you’ll miss once it's gone.

There’s an art in being able to find peace exactly where you are. We spend so much of life believing peace is just around the corner, when all along God has been offering it to us right here. His peace doesn't come and go with our circumstances the way ours does. It's always there.

Babies who won't sleep become toddlers who climb everything. Toddlers become children with scraped knees and big feelings. One challenge quietly hands the baton to another.

Maybe "it gets better" was never meant to promise us an easier life.

Maybe it was always meant to remind us that no matter what waits in the next season, God gets there first.

Thankfully, the peace He promises isn’t seasonal.

Until next week,

— E. Byers, author of The Grassy Laine