This Is Us

I watched the premier of the new TV show This Is Us this week.  It was AMAZING.  It is so rare to find a nice, feel good drama, and I thought the ending was mind blowing.  Honestly.  I didn’t see it coming.  And *spoiler alert* I’m about to tell you how it ended, so if you haven’t seen the show, go watch it before reading this.  Seriously.

So the show is about four people all turning 36 on the same day.  One man is about to become a father to triplets, one man is an actor, one woman is trying to lose a lot of weight, and one man is a successful married father of two searching for his birth father.  A lot of really awesome things happen throughout the show that I won’t spoil, but at the very end of the episode, you find out that the first man who is having triplets is actually the father to the other three people.  He loses one of his babies during his birth and adopts his third child the same day at the hospital.

Milo Ventimiglia (any team Jess fans out there??) plays the father in the TV series, and I watched an interview with him this morning.  He was talking about how intriguing the timeline of the show is – apparently jumping back and forth from 1980 to 2016 would be a standard format throughout the season.  He said, “It is also really interesting, the idea about the expanse of time.  I think we very much think ‘Our children are in the future, our parents are the past.’ We kind of think of things forward and backward. But when you spin time sideways….. I’m looking at all the little yous, at all the babies, [and] I’m thinking about all of you guys [pointing to the grown actors playing his children].”

His quote just completely struck a cord with me.  Obviously, the character doesn’t have a window to the future, but Milo – as an actor outside the TV show, with more full knowledge of the entire plot line – CAN see the future of the little babies.  He knows what the writers are planning for those children, so when he plays his part as their father, he can play it knowing what the future will look like for that kid.

I watched his interview while feeding Abigail, and I had to wonder how much richer my experience as her mom would be if I knew the struggles and triumphs she would face as an adult.  What if I already knew the woman she would be at 36?  How might my heart be even more tender towards her now?

And then it occurred to me that this show and Milo’s quote, gives us a window into how God sees time.  I’ve always heard that God created time, so he lives outside of it.  He can’t be bound by his own creation. Instead, God sees it all together – knowing who we will be at each stage of our life and kind of seeing it all together.

As a parent myself, this concept is insane to me.  It means that God knows the struggles we are having today, but he sees us way past those struggles at the same time.  He sees me on my worst days, but at the same time, he is seeing me on my best days.  Given such a full picture of who we are to him, it is no wonder that the Bible tells us God loves us immensely more than our own parents.  He loves my children immensely more than I do.  Of course he does – he knows us so much more completely.

And if I want to love my babies in a fashion at all similar to how God loves them, I think I have to see them, as best I can, as the people they WILL become WHILE they are becoming those people.  In other words, I know Daniel has such a loving heart towards other people.  It is my absolute favorite quality in him – how much he loves others and how genuinely interested he is in them.  So to love him well, I should parent him with the man he will become in mind.  And for Daniel, I think that means reminding him and myself that God created him with such a unique gift to love people well.  So when he plays rough with his sister or when he intentionally dumps sand on his buddy’s head, I can remind both of us that his actions don’t reflect who he is.  He is kind, he is compassionate, he is someone who loves others well.  This is the boy he is and the youth he is and the old man he is.  And as much as we can, we want his actions to line up with who he is.  So, when he does show such kindness, when his sweet heart comes through in his words and actions, I have another opportunity to remind him, “Yes!  Way to go!  This is who you are!”

Andy and I have been talking lately about praying scripture for our children, but we have not wanted to randomly pick scriptures we like for them.  We want to be led by God to pick the right scripture for our individual child – to pray the right prayer.  It is easier with Daniel because he is older and his personality is already coming through, but we have had several conversations about how we want to look for what God is already doing and building in their lives and pray in accordance with his will for these babies.  And I think that as we pray for our kids and as we try to shape the people they become, it is so important to continue to do this.  To seek a God who has a view outside of time.  To ask him help us to view our kids through a similar lens so that when we look at the little babies we can be thinking about the beautiful men and women they will one day become.