Last week, I looked behind, viewing 8mm family films from the early-to-mid 60s when I was between the ages of ten and sixteen. I saw my parents, grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, many now empty chairs. The girl I was couldn’t see the woman she would become, but the woman can see that girl behind.

Thou hast beset me behind and before

Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Psalm 139:5 KJV

Children look to their parents for protection but only people of faith understand the “behind” in the psalm quoted above. God’s presence is all-encompassing and protective—like parents protect their children. Looking at myself at age ten, all dressed up for Easter, the older me sees the context behind the picture. My family’s atheism notwithstanding, we often went to church on Easter in those days and always the Christmas Eve service. Mother wanted us to be socially acceptable. 

In Josef Pieper’s famous treatises on the three theological virtues, Faith Hope Love, about faith, he wrote, “…belief in its relation to incarnation, grace, baptism, church or belief as a foretaste of the future vision of God to be vouchsafed us when we leave this world behind…”

The girl in this picture already knew her parents couldn’t fully protect us. When I was five, a man came to rob our house and, surprised to find my mother home, shot and beat her. An event we never talked about, nor did we talk about the incarnation, baptism, resurrection, or God. Ironically, we didn’t attend funerals either—too depressing, Mother said—but we did attend the biggest funeral of all, an eternal celebration.

The woman I am wants to tell that girl: don’t worry about leaving this world behind, because in faith what comes next is amazing!

Forgetting those things which are behind

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, Philippians 3:13-14 KJV

In his letter, Paul encourages the Philippians to press forward on their spiritual journey and focus on the heavenly prize. But the berry-picking twelve-year-old girl in this picture only thought about forgetting her clubfoot—surgically corrected that summer—putting that past behind her, entering junior high minus crutches and casts. Her hope was to walk without a limp.

Josef Pieper’s Faith Hope Love: “Christ is the actual foundation of hope. In a striking sentence, the letter to the Hebrews speaks of the hope we have ‘as a sure and firm anchor of the soul, reaching even behind the veil, where our forerunner Jesus has entered for us’ (6:19)”

The woman wants to encourage the girl to “reach behind the veil” toward the greatest hope of all.

And thine ears shall hear a word behind you

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isaiah 30:21 KJV

Here, the word behind speaks of divine guidance. The capacity we have to walk that ‘way’ comes not from us but from God. The girl in this picture knew how to walk but not the “way.” She listened not to the guiding voice behind her but to the father beside her. At least when she was not being a surely and shy teenager, clutching her transistor radio before grins of honest adoration betrayed her façade.

Josef Pieper’s Faith Hope Love: “What is the ‘nature’ of love?” Pieper’s tentative answer is that love signifies approval. Loving someone or something means finding him ‘good,’ as in turning to that person and saying, “It’s good that you exist; it’s good that you are in this world.”

Reading through my father’s papers while working on a new essay, I found this note: “Carole, you have your own special brand of goodness. Treasure it always, and grace the world with it for that will bring good things to the world and to you in the end.” 

The girl understood those words and loved her father’s ‘it’s good that you exist’ approval. To the woman those words are grace. An echo of the Father’s love for the girl behind, the woman in the present, and in eternity ahead.

Linkup with Five Minute Friday.