Behind the Puddle

I would like to know what happens next. I don’t mean only behind the puddle. I mean in general. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request. A little advance notice would be helpful.

I would like to know which plans will work, which things I am worrying about unnecessarily, and which things I should actually be worrying about. I would also like to know who will still be part of my life years from now, what will change, what will stay, where I will be, and who I will become. If life would provide a reasonably detailed preview, I feel like I could prepare much more effectively. Life has once again declined my request.

The puddle isn’t offering any answers either. September is moving toward autumn without giving me a schedule. I don’t know exactly when the leaves will change or which morning will be the first one that feels undeniably like fall. I don’t know which wildlife visitors will stay, which will leave, or who might arrive that I’ve never seen before. I just know change is coming.

Maybe trust begins there. It doesn’t begin with knowing. It begins with moving forward without knowing. I think I used to confuse trust with confidence. If I trusted something, I thought I should believe everything would be okay. But life has taught me enough to know that “okay” is a complicated promise.

Sometimes, things don’t work out the way we hoped, the answer is no, people disappoint us, plans fail, or something happens that we would give anything to undo. So when someone says, “Trust that everything happens for a reason,” or “Trust that it will all work out,” part of me struggles with that. I struggle because I don’t know that.

What I do know is that I have lived through uncertainty before. I have stood in places where I couldn’t see what came next, made decisions without guarantees, and survived changes I didn’t choose. I have learned things I couldn’t have learned beforehand, been surprised by joy I didn’t know was coming, and found people, places, and pieces of myself I couldn’t have planned for.

Maybe that is what I can trust. I don’t have to trust that life will always cooperate. I can trust that I don’t have to know the entire future to live the next day.

Nature doesn’t require a guarantee before moving into another season. The trees don’t wait for reassurance that spring will eventually return before letting autumn happen. The geese don’t ask me whether they should leave, while the birds adjust and the water changes. Life responds to what is here.

Perhaps trust is less about predicting what comes next and more about believing we can meet it when it arrives. I can pay attention, ask for help, change direction, and rest. I can make another decision when I know more than I know today. I don’t need tomorrow’s information to make every one of today’s choices. There is something comforting about that.

I still want answers. I’m probably always going to want answers. But maybe I don’t need all of them before I move. Behind the puddle, autumn is coming one day at a time. That is exactly how I will arrive there too.