"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to him, and he will make your paths straight". Proverbs 3:5-6
A couple of weeks ago, I was driving to work. It was an ordinary day, and as I was driving, I reached out and changed the music station on my radio. A little feeling of relief surprised me, and I quickly realized how I was appreciative that in my own car, the radio stations had not altered from the buttons I had preset them on. It's a little thing, I know.
At work I drive a company car. I used to be the primary driver, however, I now share it more with 3-4 other individuals. Their listening preferences have made their way to what had felt like "my" radio dial. Once I even tried to find my station only to realize that someone had changed 3 of the presets all to the same radio station. I sent an email to two of my coworkers, telling them to "rest assured, radio fan, that you have a button", and that one's enough. They both thought it was funny, but it hasn't stopped the fact that my favorite radio stations keep getting reprogrammed over.
So it was funny when in my little car, I pressed the button and felt the relief of getting what my listening ear had ordered. Then I quickly had to question, as I'm sure you have done by now... what's the big deal?
This little moment of sunshine reflected something a little bigger to me that I hadn't been as aware of. The reason I liked it so much was over a sense of control. Remembering what it was like to be a little kid an not able to listen what you wanted to, unless you had your Walkman, and at that the batteries had to be good, and you'd still have to rewind and replay to hear that favorite song as much as you wanted. Its another one of those moments that remind me of the perks of adulthood- I control my radio.
I was persuaded to consider the topic of control a little more. I think about the political games, why most people want to move up in their careers, why people want to be the boss, why do I feel called to leadership like a bug to a light? I know in so many of these area's its the chance to be the rule maker... the chance to see really how life would work out if everyone had to play by your/my set of rules.
I began to question how much of our identities and self worth we wrap up into this idea of control. What would it look like if I had no control? I began to think of a childhood friend who had a motor-bike accident, leaving him paralyzed. How would I feel about me, if I had to base it off of absolutely nothing that I did, I couldn't make the rules, and I had to just "be".
Over the last few months I feel called to a word that really had no attraction to me before- ABIDE.
I have to know this is one of those "God Calling" moments, because for something to come into your life that you wrestle so much... if it were up to me, I would just make some quick decisions, try something out, and if it worked, great- if not, no big deal. However, I've been called to abide, and I'm not even fully sure what that means. A calling to "just be"? A conscious effort of pulling my weeds of need to control, and remembering God? Remembering who He is, and just because He is that He is, I am in His image, so I am that I am in Him? What does that even mean?
I felt before that God was calling me to be prepared for His work. I got my MBA. Its been a bit of a struggle for me mentally/ spiritually to feel like I'm sitting on it. Yet I know that in my story, God comes. In a world that says career ladders are the way you play and rungs are a sense of your self worth and accomplishment, I struggle. I've been with the same company for five and a half years and was promoted once. That may seem a disappointment only to the short-sighted, but its my generation too... they move, they shake. And I have to know that in abiding, I am not being left behind. That in abiding, I can trust in the Lord with all my heart. I have to abandon my way of understanding. He is the director of what I hope to be an unbeaten path... so I can trust for Him to make the way straight.
I encourage you. Consider what you control. What have you got authority over? Do you let that define you in any way? What would it look like if you weren't in those positions? What would be different?
I don't have the answers...............but I don't have to. And for me to make that statement... well that's simply a big thing. I will continue to wrestle to abide for as long as God is calling me to it. Some my exert their energy to move, to go. The crazy thing about God is that He is a separate being. I feel His calling, and it doesn't always make sense to me... and it doesn't have to. If He wants me to push this kind of energy to wrestle out who I am, I'll consider it my 40 days in the desert, and trust him for the life that is currently happening, and that which is to come.
