The Location Pin I Check at 2 A.M.
The Location Pin I Check at 2 A.M.
My daughter turned twenty-two this spring and moved three states away for a job I am proud of her for taking, and somewhere in the packing and the goodbye hugs I installed an app on my phone that lets me see a small blue dot moving across a map whenever she drives somewhere at night. I told myself it was for safety, and some of that was true. But if I am honest, most nights I do not check that dot because I am worried about a specific danger. I check it because checking it is the only thing that makes the not knowing feel bearable for a few seconds, and then it stops working and I check again.
I have spent most of my life believing control was something I could win if I just paid close enough attention. I ran my whole world that way for years, tracking everything and everyone except the one thing that was actually spinning out of control, which was me. I lost the right to know where my daughter was for a long stretch of her childhood because I was too far into my own addiction to ask. Now that I have her trust back, some wounded part of me is trying to make up for those years by knowing everything, as if enough information could have kept either of us safe back then, or could keep her safe now.
Scripture does not scold me for wanting to protect the people I love. It does something more useful. It keeps pointing out how much of what I am gripping was never actually mine to hold. Solomon wrote it plainly, the way he wrote most hard truths. "There are many plans in a man's heart, Nevertheless the Lord's counsel—that will stand" (Proverbs 19:21, NKJV). I can plan her route, I can imagine every version of what could go wrong on it, and none of that planning is what actually determines whether she arrives home safely tonight. His counsel stands regardless of how carefully I have mapped out my worry.
Jesus asked a question that lands differently on a father checking a location app than it must have landed on people worried about their next meal. "Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?" (Matthew 6:27, NKJV). I cannot add a single mile of safety to her drive by refreshing that dot. The worry does not travel with her and protect her. It only travels with me and wears me down, which means every hour I spend checking is an hour spent paying a cost with no return on it at all.
Job said something to God after losing more than I have ever had to fear losing, and it still steadies me every time I read it. "I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You" (Job 42:2, NKJV). I do not have that kind of reach. I cannot do everything for her. I cannot even do everything for myself most days. But the God who can do everything is the one actually holding the roads she drives on, whether or not I have a signal on my phone to prove it.
Paul told Timothy something I needed long before I ever had a daughter to worry about. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7, NKJV). A sound mind is exactly what checking that app at two in the morning is not giving me. Fear was never issued to me by God as equipment for loving her well. It is something I picked up on my own and have been carrying like it belongs to me.
This is where human reasoning simply cannot close the gap, no matter how many times I talk myself through the statistics of how safe her drive actually is. Reasoning can manage a fact. It cannot manufacture peace, because peace was never a fact to begin with. It is a Person. Jesus told His disciples the night before He left them, "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NKJV). He did not promise the tribulation would skip my daughter's exit ramp. He promised He had already overcome whatever waited on it, and that His peace does not require the danger to be zero before it will sit down with me.
David found the same posture from underneath real threats, not imagined ones, and he did not arrive at it by figuring anything out. "My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him" (Psalm 62:5, NKJV), he wrote, and then went further. "Trust in Him at all times, you people; Pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us" (Psalm 62:8, NKJV). Pouring out my heart is a different motion than checking a screen. One hands the fear to Someone who can actually carry it. The other just keeps the fear in my own hands, rehearsed and heavier every time I pick it back up.
Paul closes the loop in a way I am still learning to trust with my whole chest instead of just my head. "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28, NKJV). That verse does not promise she will never have a flat tire or a bad night. It promises that nothing on that map, seen or unseen, falls outside a purpose He is already working, with or without my watching it happen.
I still have the app on my phone. I am not going to pretend I deleted it while writing this, because that would not be honest. But last night I felt the old urge to check it at midnight, and instead I sat with it for a minute and prayed for her by name before I ever touched the screen, and something in my chest loosened that had nothing to do with where the blue dot actually was. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which road your loved one is on right now. He has a plan for them that your watching was never able to secure in the first place, and He will never leave either of you to travel it alone.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 19:21; Matthew 6:27; Job 42:2; 2 Timothy 1:7; John 16:33; Psalm 62:5; Psalm 62:8; Romans 8:28.
My daughter turned twenty-two this spring and moved three states away for a job I am proud of her for taking, and somewhere in the packing and the goodbye hugs I installed an app on my phone that lets me see a small blue dot moving across a map whenever she drives somewhere at night. I told myself it was for safety, and some of that was true. But if I am honest, most nights I do not check that dot because I am worried about a specific danger. I check it because checking it is the only thing that makes the not knowing feel bearable for a few seconds, and then it stops working and I check again.
I have spent most of my life believing control was something I could win if I just paid close enough attention. I ran my whole world that way for years, tracking everything and everyone except the one thing that was actually spinning out of control, which was me. I lost the right to know where my daughter was for a long stretch of her childhood because I was too far into my own addiction to ask. Now that I have her trust back, some wounded part of me is trying to make up for those years by knowing everything, as if enough information could have kept either of us safe back then, or could keep her safe now.
Scripture does not scold me for wanting to protect the people I love. It does something more useful. It keeps pointing out how much of what I am gripping was never actually mine to hold. Solomon wrote it plainly, the way he wrote most hard truths. "There are many plans in a man's heart, Nevertheless the Lord's counsel—that will stand" (Proverbs 19:21, NKJV). I can plan her route, I can imagine every version of what could go wrong on it, and none of that planning is what actually determines whether she arrives home safely tonight. His counsel stands regardless of how carefully I have mapped out my worry.
Jesus asked a question that lands differently on a father checking a location app than it must have landed on people worried about their next meal. "Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?" (Matthew 6:27, NKJV). I cannot add a single mile of safety to her drive by refreshing that dot. The worry does not travel with her and protect her. It only travels with me and wears me down, which means every hour I spend checking is an hour spent paying a cost with no return on it at all.
Job said something to God after losing more than I have ever had to fear losing, and it still steadies me every time I read it. "I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You" (Job 42:2, NKJV). I do not have that kind of reach. I cannot do everything for her. I cannot even do everything for myself most days. But the God who can do everything is the one actually holding the roads she drives on, whether or not I have a signal on my phone to prove it.
Paul told Timothy something I needed long before I ever had a daughter to worry about. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7, NKJV). A sound mind is exactly what checking that app at two in the morning is not giving me. Fear was never issued to me by God as equipment for loving her well. It is something I picked up on my own and have been carrying like it belongs to me.
This is where human reasoning simply cannot close the gap, no matter how many times I talk myself through the statistics of how safe her drive actually is. Reasoning can manage a fact. It cannot manufacture peace, because peace was never a fact to begin with. It is a Person. Jesus told His disciples the night before He left them, "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NKJV). He did not promise the tribulation would skip my daughter's exit ramp. He promised He had already overcome whatever waited on it, and that His peace does not require the danger to be zero before it will sit down with me.
David found the same posture from underneath real threats, not imagined ones, and he did not arrive at it by figuring anything out. "My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him" (Psalm 62:5, NKJV), he wrote, and then went further. "Trust in Him at all times, you people; Pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us" (Psalm 62:8, NKJV). Pouring out my heart is a different motion than checking a screen. One hands the fear to Someone who can actually carry it. The other just keeps the fear in my own hands, rehearsed and heavier every time I pick it back up.
Paul closes the loop in a way I am still learning to trust with my whole chest instead of just my head. "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28, NKJV). That verse does not promise she will never have a flat tire or a bad night. It promises that nothing on that map, seen or unseen, falls outside a purpose He is already working, with or without my watching it happen.
I still have the app on my phone. I am not going to pretend I deleted it while writing this, because that would not be honest. But last night I felt the old urge to check it at midnight, and instead I sat with it for a minute and prayed for her by name before I ever touched the screen, and something in my chest loosened that had nothing to do with where the blue dot actually was. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which road your loved one is on right now. He has a plan for them that your watching was never able to secure in the first place, and He will never leave either of you to travel it alone.
---
Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 19:21; Matthew 6:27; Job 42:2; 2 Timothy 1:7; John 16:33; Psalm 62:5; Psalm 62:8; Romans 8:28.
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