For this post, I went here to get a random word (which turned out to be “safety,” then made it the focus of the post.

I’d say that safety, or at least the feeling of safety, is something that nearly everyone craves at one time or another. 

As a little kid, if you have reasonably good parents, then you can feel confident in the fact that they’re going to take care of you and help you feel safe. You know that you can always find a loving arm and security just by running to one of your parents. That’s the idea anyway. Far too many children don’t have that kind of security in their lives, that’s for sure. I think that’s something as adults we certainly miss. 

I know I do. I long to have a parental figure that I can lean on and seek refuge in. It’s lonely being an adult and having to face any number of problems every day. Knowing that you’re the last line of defense against all the bills, laundry, dirty dishes, car repairs, skinned knees, emotional trauma, and everything else can be overwhelming. Where is my safety net?, I’ve regularly asked myself over the years. 

Once you become an adult and have to take care of yourself, your parents don’t play nearly as big a role as they once did. How often I’ve longed to be a kid again. Ironically, when I was a kid, I longed to be an adult so I could make my own decisions, come and go as I pleased, and do what I wanted to. 

How nice it would be to be 13 or so again – old enough to take care of yourself in many respects, yet young enough to still fit under your parents’ wings when hard times come knocking. Alas, life doesn’t work that way unfortunately. It would be nice if it did (or at least it seems like it would be nice).

I can console myself with the fact that God designed the human existence the way He did for a reason. I don’t know why things are the way they are. I don’t know why I can’t snap my fingers and be a teenager again. It seems like a good idea to me. 

However, I guess God thinks otherwise, since we can’t do that. I have to keep telling myself that He knows best so I don’t go crazy trying to figure out all the questions about life I have that really don’t have any answers. If He wanted me or anyone else to know these answers, we’d have them. All we can do is just keep forging ahead through life, trusting Him and trying to do our best each day. 

If we think too hard about some of these things, we’ll just end up frustrated and angry, a state I’ve found myself in all too many times. It’s not a good place to be, and it’s not how we should feel toward our Heavenly Father who only wants the best for us. His plan is the best, even though we may not always understand it, and our job is simply to go along with it. 

Still, though, that often doesn’t make things any easier when we’re in the thick of a personal crisis. We long for the safety and security that our 5-year-old selves had so many years ago. We want those big strong arms wrapped around us, comforting us and telling us everything will be OK. 

I haven’t figured out how to make that happen as an adult. All I can do is keep trusting in my Father, and remember that He is ultimately in control of everything.