Should I Stay or Should I Go Now...

It has been another crazy week. Full of twists and turns and heart-rending circumstances and unexpected developments that have thrown every single plan we thought we had for a triple loop.

I haven't exactly handled it with grace.

I've blubbered to friends and railed against God and asked what the heck He means by all this and demanded that He be clear about His intentions...because in my current state of toddler spirituality, my illogic assumes that a tantrum will result in the answers I want.

I imagine Him regarding me with the same loving exasperation with which I regard my tantruming three-year-old, sighing and shaking His head at me while smiling wanly, knowing how very long it will take for me to grow up and get it, but loving me fiercely all the same.

If I try hard enough, of course, I can acknowledge the truth that my emotional state of affairs will not change reality, and sometimes God just has to wait till it's time to show me the answer. Yet that objective truth still does little to change my inability to control my frustrations, my fears, my knee-jerk reactions--or my desire to take matters into my own hands and, as my dear friend put it, attempt to "manufacture" His will.

I'm sure it's no coincidence then, that we've been studying Abraham lately as part of my small group Bible study.

The abridged version goes like this:
God loved Abraham.
He made wonderful promises to Abraham.
God needed Abraham to listen to Him and trust Him so He could make those promises happen.
Abraham's only job was to trust God and do what God said.
But Abraham couldn't do this one simple job.
Abraham got impatient.
Abraham didn't trust God. He didn't do what God said.
Abraham tried to take matters into his own hands.
Abraham's desire for control and belief that He knew better than God screwed everything up.
God cleaned up Abraham's mess as best as He could and gave Abraham another chance.

Rinse and repeat x 3.

Finally after many decades, when he was like 900 years old, Abraham gave up trying to do the control thing and trusted God.

God was like: "Dude. It only took three unbreachable covenants and a few hundred years for you to believe that I was making it happen?"
Abraham was like "Ehrmmm..yeah."
But God still kept His promises.
And God still loved Abraham fiercely.

Clearly, Abraham could be my middle name. (Thanks for deciding against that though, Mom and Dad).

Like Abraham, I can easily say, "Sure God, your promise to do what's best for me sounds great! High five!" Objectively, I can say that of course I believe in a God who keeps that promise. It sounds great talking to someone else. But when it's me, and it gets too uncomfortably personal--when my narrow-minded and ill-informed version of the perfect plan or timing flies out the window--it takes but a nanosecond for all the doubts and questions to surface and for me to start battling for control.

I want God to hurry up and move it already when I'm ready. I want Him to slow down and wait for me when I'm not. And while I've talked an awful lot this week about needing to follow His will, it's been lip service more often than not. Because really asking God what He wants, with the intent to actually surrender control, is honestly terrifying. Like Father Abraham, I let the fear get the best of me. I fail to trust that God is a God who keeps His promises. Or that He'll keep working as hard as He can to keep those promises, even when we go all bat-human crazy on Him and mess everything up and make it take three times as long as it needs to. And then God, poor God--He has to lovingly sigh in exasperation and wait on me again.


Thank God for His eternal patience. [Literally.]

A gift sent from one of my lovely voices of reason today.

And thank God for the voices of reason who accompany me on the journey, the people who are willing to spoon-feed me enough faith and perspective to break through my own din despite my best efforts to block them out and plug my ears and shout "LA LA LA LA LA this isn't what I signed up for LA LA LA LA LA!"

Yes, God bless their patience.

I've needed it. Because this week of craziness is very suddenly defining the start of a new chapter. And it's going to be a long ride yet--I can tell that much now. But when God starts opening doors extra wide and showing me He means business, it's time for me to stop playing the stalling game of "should I stay or should I go" and just jump on board already.

Yes, God's on the move right now [just as we thought things were settling down and we could breathe].
Yes, His timing is right now [even if I wish it totally wasn't].

So this time, for once, I convinced myself to catch up and hop on board to go with Him. And surprisingly, in the midst of it, things are turning out exactly as I would've hoped.

Of course, God's will won't always match my wants just because I started being a good little spiritual toddler and following directions. But I'm grateful that, this time at least, His will and our dreams seem to be aligned. At the close of another crazy day--one in which I really, truly have pushed myself to choose that radical trust--the light at the end of the tunnel actually looks pretty promising, if I do say so myself.

So here we go. If God wants us to move, then this time I'm going all in--on His terms, not mine.