Roughly sixty days from the time of this writing, I’m going to be a grandfather.
Everyone I’ve shared this news with who is already a grandparent has assured me that it will be not only one of the happiest moments of my life, but the beginning of one of the most joyful seasons. I have to admit, I’m excited. It’s a blessing to watch my son and daughter-in-law prepare their home to make room for their son.
I get a little teary-eyed thinking about his first steps, his first smile, his first laugh, his first prayer. It also makes me laugh, and cringe a little, when I imagine the first time he calls me by my grandfather name: “Papi.” It just goes to show that you have to be careful what you joke about with your family. I once said I wanted to play the role of an elderly Latino gangster. Apparently, they took me seriously. My daughter-in-law has even given me a few T-shirts to make sure the name sticks.
But I have to confess something.
I’ve already started worrying about him.
I know I’m not supposed to worry. Jesus said that more than once. But I worry. I ruminate. It’s what I do. I can take a perfectly good moment and, if given enough time, imagine a dozen ways it could all go wrong.
I worry about the people he’ll meet. I worry about the things he’ll face. I worry about the day he realizes that his parents, and his grandparents, are far from perfect. And if I’m honest, I worry about what kind of grandfather I’m going to be.
It’s a strange thing. The more we love someone, the more vulnerable we feel.
The only way to avoid heartbreak would be to refuse to love at all. But that’s not really an option, is it?
To love is to open your heart. And once it’s open, you begin to realize how little control you actually have.
Maybe that’s why the words of Paul keep coming back to me:
“What then are we to say about these things?”
These things. The disappointments. The pain. The uncertainty. All the things in life that don’t go the way we hoped.
What are we supposed to say about those things?
Paul doesn’t leave us guessing.
“If God is for us, who can be against us?… Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
That doesn’t mean life will be easy. It doesn’t mean nothing bad will ever happen. It doesn’t mean I won’t still feel the urge to worry.
But it does mean this:
My grandson’s life is not held together by my ability to protect him.
It’s held in the hands of a God who loves him even more than I do.
And that changes things.
It means I can pray for him without needing to control everything around him.
It means I can show up, love him well, and be present in his life.
It means I can trust that God will be at work in ways I will never fully see or understand.
I have a feeling I’m still going to worry from time to time.
But maybe, just maybe, I can learn to place those worries in better hands. Not because they disappear, but because they don’t belong to me in the first place.
