By Danny Minton

Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam in June of 1945, having lost his wife and friends during their imprisonment in Nazi work camps and having no knowledge of the fate of his two daughters, Margot and Anne. He moved in with Jan and Miep Gies, two of the people who had cared for him and his family as they hid for two years from the Germans. In July 1945, Otto received the devastating news that his daughters had both died of typhus earlier that year while prisoners at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. Miep approached Otto and handed him a diary and some documents, saying, “This is the legacy of your daughter, Anne.” 

Having been introduced to the story of how Miep Gies and others helped the Franks and their friends in hiding, I decided to reread Anne Frank’s diary. I found a copy of the definitive edition online, which included passages previously deleted from the original published version. The diary covers a little over two years of Anne’s life, primarily covering the almost twenty-five months the families spent in hiding in a place Anne called “The Secret Annex.” Her story shares the day-to-day life, ups and downs, and stress of living in a small space with seven other people, unable to go outside or be seen by anyone but those hiding them.

Anne Frank in May 1942, two months before she and her family went into hiding. Wikipedia photo

However, this time, when I read the diary, it was not the events that took place in the Secret Annex that got my attention but rather what was happening inside the young girl’s mind. She was struggling with her relations with adults, especially her mother. She expressed how she yearned to be just a teenager. Anne had dreams of being a writer and traveling the world. Her memories were filled with times when she was in school, time spent with friends, and longing for a boy named Peter. Anne talked about being a mother and how she would be a better mom than her mother and the lady in the annex with them. Where she would be when she was eighty was in her thoughts. In her next to last entry, she heard the war may be close to an end, which made her excited that she may be back in school with her classmates in October 1944. 

After hearing a radio broadcast asking people to keep anything they had written for historical purposes, Anne thought how great it would be if she wrote a novel about the Secret Annex after the war. However, she had written a few times, wondering who would actually want to read the musings of a teenage girl. Her final entry, dated August 1, 1944, relates the feelings of a fifteen-year-old who has grown from a child to a young woman in two years. She wishes people could see the side of her that she felt she was down deep. She was more than the child that people saw on the outside. She had a deep desire to be understood and appreciated. Her tomorrow and future would change three days later, on August 4, 1944, when the hiding place was discovered, and the family was sent to Nazi concentration camps.

As I read about her dreams and desires for the future, I felt sad for her. It was sad because I knew the end of the story and that those dreams would remain mostly unfulfilled. I already knew what her unknown tomorrows held for her life and beyond.

Like Anne, we all have times when we set out with dreams for the future. We dream, plan, set goals, and are excited about what lies ahead. However, our tomorrows are unknown, and along the way, plans change while goals fail as dreams fade and other things in life pull us in a different direction. Sometimes, we accept the changes and move on in a new direction, while other times, we question God and ask, “Why?”

One thing we should learn about our tomorrows is always to remember to leave room for God to take the lead. God encouraged his people living in exile, telling them, “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NASB) The writer of Proverbs told us, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.”  Proverbs 27:1 (NASB) No matter how much we plan, what goals we make, or what dreams we have, tomorrow may change everything.

James wrote, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” James 4:13-15 (NASB) Sometimes it would be nice to see tomorrow and prepare for what lies ahead. However, as long as we remember to let God take hold of our lives, we can handle whatever comes our way, good or bad. No matter what our unknown tomorrows hold, there is one thing we can be assured of. God will be there waiting for us. If we trust in God and leave our tomorrows up to Him, we can live in peace today.

Anne did have one of her dreams come true, although she would never live to see it happen. She did become a published writer. Her “Secret Annex” diary would sell over 30 million copies and be published in seventy languages. “I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me. I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear; my courage is reborn. But, and that is the great question, will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?” (Anne Frank-April 5, 1944) 

Danny Minton is a former Elder and minister at Southern Hills Church of Christ