Questions without answers

“How can a baby be 5 years old?,” Oliver asks with the certainty of a 6-year-old who knows more than I give him credit for, but not enough to understand why I still call his nearly 5-year-old little sister my baby.

“It’s a good question,” I say, as I tousle his overgrown hair, making a mental note to cut his hair this week.

“Some questions are hard to answer.” I continued, welcoming the smile that crept onto my face.

“Like how is my six-year-old big enough to be asking his momma tough questions?”

He laughed and ran off to play as my heart both soared and ached.

“And how can a heart both soar and ache in the same beat?” I whispered to myself.

Another question I couldn’t answer.

The reality that my baby is turning five tomorrow fills me up to the rims of my lower eyelids with both unanswerable questions and tears.

It feels like I was just in the middle of figuring out sleep schedules, lugging around a diaper bag, and celebrating monthly age milestones.

But tomorrow Lydia will be five. Five YEARS old.

It wasn’t “just yesterday”, or even a year ago. It’s been long enough now that I can’t quite remember the details surrounding when she took her first steps. But how? How can it feel like I was just there, right smack in the middle of it all, and yet be so long ago I’ve forgotten the details?

And how can I be both enthralled with who my kids are at this age, today, and yet still long to see her milky smile as I was nursing her or bury my face in his newborn hair?

How can my children becoming more independent both elate me and also feel like a punch to the stomach?

Did I snuggle them enough? Did I play with them enough? Did I teach and discipline and protect them enough?

Ugh.

There is no end to my list of questions without answers-especially on the eve of my baby's fifth birthday.

The endless asking of unanswerable questions is exhausting. It keeps me stuck lamenting the past or projecting anxiously into the future.

I don’t have answers. (My apologies if you thought this would end with an answer key.)

The truth is, even if I had an answer, I couldn’t go back and change anything from yesterday. And I can’t fast forward to any time in the future.

But what I do have (and what you have), is today. This moment.

In lieu of answers, I’ll leave you with one final (hopefully helpful?) series of questions.

What if life isn’t meant to be “figured out”, but lived?

What if parenting isn’t a series of problems to be solved or a quest to find the answer, but rather an opportunity to live in this moment alongside those God has entrusted to us?

What if this moment with all of its unanswered questions and complexities doesn’t need to be resolved, just acknowledged?

My baby is turning five tomorrow, and I’m both overjoyed and sad.

And that's okay.