Timing

It's such human nature to insist that the timing was wrong. A missed job opportunity, a broken relationship... Even if "everything" was right, it was just the timing that was off. Especially with relationships. People, myself included, will say that the love is there, and everything seemingly lines up, but... We weren't ready for a relationship. We had unresolved issues. We needed to work on ourselves before we could work together.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But we'll insist that because of that, the timing is wrong. We'll think longingly, "If only we had met in the future..." (Or, sometimes, in the past.) But it's not true. The timing wasn't off. It was just God's timing, and not yours. We would have chosen it such that the relationship would work, such that we would get the job or the internship or the vacation. But God chooses the timing such that we grow. He chose the timing so we would realize maybe this career path isn't what we want to do after all. He chose the timing so we would realize all of the ways this relationship was broken, or maybe more specifically, all of the ways we are broken. He chose the timing not for our hopes and plans to fail, but for His to succeed.

We tell ourselves the timing is wrong because that implies that maybe sometime in the future, the timing will be right. But it always is right. "Sometime in the future" means different situations, different people, different perspectives. We're not the same now as we were before, and the timing never had anything to do with that. He just had different plans. We think of timing being wrong when relationships don't work out because we see it as a failure - somehow we weren't good enough, we didn't try hard enough. Why else would two people who love each other not be able to be together? But the truth is, God places people in our lives to help us grow, and to support us in that growth. And that's all a relationship ever is, ever will be, and ever should be. Growth in faith, and growth as an individual. And sometimes, even with all the love and support and wanting to make it work... Sometimes our partners in growth are temporary. Sometimes God places them in our lives just to show us what there is we need to work on, to expose the darkness in us. Sometimes the people we love aren't meant to stay with us forever, just point us in the right direction.

The timing is never wrong. It's God's plan. It's just hard sometimes.