When I was back home in Florida this summer I visited my childhood church in Apopka. I love that church and the people in it. It's always refreshing to go back and visit. This time the service, particularly the closing song, reduced me to sobs. I have recently absorbed the full reason for my emotional reaction.
Pastor Page preached that day about stress management. He said that God doesn't want us to manage stress; He doesn't want us to be stressed at all. We are to relax and trust in the knowledge that God can handle even our toughest problems. Why should we have anxiety when we have God on our side? We closed with the song "Learning to Lean." It was that point that I lost composure. I felt convicted not only for allowing stress to rule my life and mood sometimes, but also overcome with awe and gratitude at what God has handled in my life.
As I spend more time in this life as a Foreign Service spouse I see ever more clearly that God put me in this life so that I would learn to lean on Jesus. I have a history of impatience, pride, and a chronic inability to release my problems into the hands of anyone but myself. I make lists; I count minutes; I obsess. God always knows exactly where we need to grow and I made the "mistake" of asking him to help me overcome these exact issues. God answers prayers and he answers them quickly. He plopped me right in the middle of a lifestyle that requires me to have patience, flexibility, and let go of pretty much everything. Time and again I've had to wait, wait for things over which I have absolutely zero control.
I wait to hear about our next posting. I wait for our visas. I watch all our worldly possessions disappear down a half built developing country road and wait for them to (maybe) show up on our doorstep in a different developing country. I wait for bureaucracy crippled governments to approve all kinds of important issues of day-to-day life. I wait, wait, wait. And with all this waiting I am slowly learning to patiently do the most important waiting of all. I wait upon the Lord.
And with this waiting God has given me a serenity I could never have attained on my own. As I learn to lean I learn to give up the anxiety of the world. I learn what really matters. Even though I don't yet have all the supplies I need to make a home and create an orderly schedule, I spend the extra hours walking the mile to the grocery store at Gabriel's pace, listening to him sing. I sit in crowded traffic after picking Zack up from school and I really listen to his incessant questions. I *try* to stop bugging John constantly to get me answers that he doesn't have and I learn to trust and rely on my husband to a capacity that my control freak self would never make alone.
God knew what I needed. I prayed for patience. He's gifted me with endless opportunities to be patient. I am not always serene; I do not always remember to lean. But every day I get another chance to have and extend the grace God has given to me. I'm learning to lean on Jesus and I'm learning to be grateful for this unique opportunity to travel the world and relying on His power.
Pastor Page preached that day about stress management. He said that God doesn't want us to manage stress; He doesn't want us to be stressed at all. We are to relax and trust in the knowledge that God can handle even our toughest problems. Why should we have anxiety when we have God on our side? We closed with the song "Learning to Lean." It was that point that I lost composure. I felt convicted not only for allowing stress to rule my life and mood sometimes, but also overcome with awe and gratitude at what God has handled in my life.
As I spend more time in this life as a Foreign Service spouse I see ever more clearly that God put me in this life so that I would learn to lean on Jesus. I have a history of impatience, pride, and a chronic inability to release my problems into the hands of anyone but myself. I make lists; I count minutes; I obsess. God always knows exactly where we need to grow and I made the "mistake" of asking him to help me overcome these exact issues. God answers prayers and he answers them quickly. He plopped me right in the middle of a lifestyle that requires me to have patience, flexibility, and let go of pretty much everything. Time and again I've had to wait, wait for things over which I have absolutely zero control.
I wait to hear about our next posting. I wait for our visas. I watch all our worldly possessions disappear down a half built developing country road and wait for them to (maybe) show up on our doorstep in a different developing country. I wait for bureaucracy crippled governments to approve all kinds of important issues of day-to-day life. I wait, wait, wait. And with all this waiting I am slowly learning to patiently do the most important waiting of all. I wait upon the Lord.
And with this waiting God has given me a serenity I could never have attained on my own. As I learn to lean I learn to give up the anxiety of the world. I learn what really matters. Even though I don't yet have all the supplies I need to make a home and create an orderly schedule, I spend the extra hours walking the mile to the grocery store at Gabriel's pace, listening to him sing. I sit in crowded traffic after picking Zack up from school and I really listen to his incessant questions. I *try* to stop bugging John constantly to get me answers that he doesn't have and I learn to trust and rely on my husband to a capacity that my control freak self would never make alone.
God knew what I needed. I prayed for patience. He's gifted me with endless opportunities to be patient. I am not always serene; I do not always remember to lean. But every day I get another chance to have and extend the grace God has given to me. I'm learning to lean on Jesus and I'm learning to be grateful for this unique opportunity to travel the world and relying on His power.
2 comments:
On my better days I have found patience to be very active and lively where as resignation is not.
Thank you for this lesson.
Patience is my biggest daily struggle, especially as a single-mom-of-two while my husband is working on the road, and this is just what I needed to arm myself for tomorrow's battle.
Post a Comment