What a mess! And I feel yucky!

I want to start with a story before I get to the heart of this post. I have a dear friend who is a Sunday School teacher for kindergartners at her church. Last month she sent me the following text:

Out of the mouths of babes:

When we had our lesson on Ezra, we saw that before they began rebuilding the temple, they first honored God in sacrifices and keeping the holy days He'd instructed. Then we spoke of our holi-days and how God should be most important. When Christmas was mentioned, they were enthused about gifts.

I asked if any of them gave Jesus anything. One raised his hand. "I did."

"What did you give Him?"

"I gave Him Joy."

And I thought, what would it be if each week or morning I consciously considered such a gift to Him.

I thought a lot about what she said and decided to add a “My gift to God today” portion at the end of each morning’s list of things I am thankful for (I keep a daily Thankfulness Journal).

So, that is context for my purpose in writing this post.

Yesterday (Sunday), my gift to God was “surrender” and I wrote that without understanding what that might mean specifically for my day. But as I lived through my day I realized there were big areas where I have been trying to take back some of the control I thought I had given the Lord. I found myself trying to influence certain situations that I don’t have the wisdom or understanding to meddle with but God knows all aspects of each situation and the hearts and minds of those involved and He is infinitely more qualified to handle every situation without my interference.

The first such situation deals with my son and baptism. I found myself trying to convince my son that he should overcome his very real fear of dunking his full head in the water and be baptized at the next baptism service in March. Our son had a very traumatic experience in a swimming pool as a toddler and has been terrified of submerging his face in water ever since. We are working with him and a counselor on this issue but March is probably too soon to expect him to be able to conquer that fear. The Lord brought my “gift” of surrender to mind last night and I realized I needed to leave my son’s baptism decision in God’s hands and let Him prompt our son in His time. There is no rush. God’s timing is always perfect.

In a completely different area that came up yesterday, I found myself exerting my own will on our daughter in her choice for who she would like to date once she is allowed to start dating. She has had someone in mind for the past 2 years and we don’t have a particular problem with the boy but he comes from a particularly troubled and very manipulative family background and we just want to protect her from a potentially very painful - or at least a very difficult future which seems unnecessary. But, again, her future is in God’s hands and she must make her own choices as she matures. She will have to make mistakes because that is how you grow and learn. It is not my job to exert my will on her life choices. As long as she is walking with the Lord and doing her best to follow His will for her life (and I believe she is), I need to surrender her choices to His will and stop trying to influence her to make the choices I would prefer.

And finally, as I went to bed last night I was reminded (and I wont go in to detail here) that I need to surrender my marriage to the Lord. I need to stop praying for specific changes I would like to see in my husband and just surrender our marriage to the Lord and do whatever He tells me to do. That is the ONLY way to have a Godly marriage and that’s what I want.

So, as I was praying in bed before drifting off to sleep, I pictured these 3 members of my family and the mess I had been making of the current circumstances. I was feeling pretty yucky and defeated and I just prayed that the Lord would take these people who are so precious to me and fix my mistakes. I laid my anxieties about them at the foot of the cross and prayed for the strength not to pick them up again. I fell asleep with the hymn “I Surrender All” going through my head and my sleep was sweet - knowing my family is in God’s loving care.