Agnostic here, and a scientist, but only a dilettante in physics and cosmology, but yeah, that's my understanding of cosmology. Time is a property of the universe, so before and after are reliant on the existence of said universe. Before the beginning of the universe is a null concept.

This does not lend itself to nice simple analogies, but neither does any of physics in the last century and some change. Even beginning physics books these days are full of things to which there are no good analogies in the macro-scale world. (Definitely in the micro scale, and I am pretty sure on the mega scale, there are things that don't fit cleanly into planet orbit and bread box analogies.)