Surrender.

Lately it’s been difficult for me to gather my thoughts. I feel like I’m running about a million miles a minute and doing everything I can not to get burnt out. God has been teaching me again about what it means to trust him. It’s easy for me to trust and believe when everything in my life is going well. In fact, usually when life gets “easy” I try to take control of things for myself. I like to be in control. I like to think that I am the one with the wisdom and knowledge. But then God reminds me, sometimes painfully, that my plan is worthless. I am immediately forced to place my trust back in him and realize that I am nothing without my Savior. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to remember that.

I don’t want to be the kind of person that pushes God to the side when things are going well and only calls on Him when my circumstances get difficult. The thing is, you’d think I would have learned my lesson by now. I’ve been through some difficult “lean-on-God” type of moments and yet I continually forget that God is there everyday, even when I think I have everything under control. I guess this is where His grace comes in. I am so incapable of being perfect. The beautiful thing is, my God knows that and He loves me anyway. He doesn’t expect me to have it all figured out. He doesn’t want me to be independent. He wants me to surrender my desires and live totally, completely, entirely dependent on Him.

So why is that so hard? Why do I want so badly to take control?

I guess the time that this is most difficult for me is when things happen that I have no control over, when people in my life make decisions that I hate but can not change. I’ve realized more than ever before that just as much as I can not control everything about my own life, I also can not control the hearts, actions, or wants of other people. It’s a challenging thing to surrender relationships and expectations to God but I KNOW that that is exactly what he is asking me to do right now. It’s hard to make boundaries and it’s even more painful to stick to them. And yet I know that without certain boundaries in my life I can not function the way that I am supposed to. Sometimes I wonder why God allows certain things to happen in our lives. Why does he allow people to die unexpectedly? Why does he allow our families to fall apart? Why does he allow us to love people that don’t love us back? Why does he allow us to have faith in people that don’t deserve it? I have so many questions that I’m not sure will ever be answered. The only thing I can think to bring me comfort is the fact that if I didn’t have all of these questions I would not need God. If I knew the answer to everything, if I was capable of keeping everything under control then God would be worthless. However, my lack of knowing, my lack of perfection and my incapability (as incredibly frustrating as they may be) keep me humble. These things remind me that God is totally, absolutely, without a doubt in control. He is the same always, never changing and always loving. I am so undeserving of His grace and yet he continues to shower me with it. Now there’s a lesson in humility.