The two hardest things about being a Christian:
- waiting and
- getting out of God’s way
I don’t make New Years Resolutions. Everyone knows they are a setup for failure and feeling awful about yourself. Instead I make goals. At the beginning of every January, I get out my journal to review my last year’s goals and assess how successful I had been at achieving them. And to laugh. Then I pray for God’s guidance for the coming year. And I try to listen.
Something rather interesting almost always happens. I find the goals I made at the beginning of the previous year have become completely without any relevance, thanks to the unexpected lurking around every corner of my life. Almost every year the journey I have walked has veered completely down an Alice’s rabbit hole into a place I could never have imagined existing. I have learned to stop viewing this fact as a defeat or failure on my part. Rather, it is often quite amusing. And, of course it reminds me once again, that without God I can do nothing. It highlights for me that most of the time I can’t even make sense of my current circumstances, let alone have the slightest notion what lies ahead for me. God indeed holds in His hands everything. Everything down to most minute details we often deem insignificant. He is sovereign. Nothing can disrupt His purposes. Believing this Great Truth is the doorway to a life of childlike trust and freedom. I can be certain, even in the midst of the most terrifying circumstances, that it’s going to be okay. Even when I don’t understand. Whether in this life or the next, I know I will be safe. I will be safe because my Daddy is here. During the course of my rather eventful life, God has asked me to let go of many of my own hopes, dream and plans. And even my own 18 year old son.
I am very close to 60 years old now. One would think I would know something about living life. Maybe I have finally somewhat realized that stubbornly struggling to ignore God and make my own plans into the script of my life is a bad idea. Not only will a successful outcome be impossible, it will be a futile and possibly painful waste of life. And worse yet, this willfully rebellious path will also bring harm to those around me.
Control freaks never get their way.
Plus nobody likes them. They are obsessed with what they desire. The are unhappy and they don’t know why. They cannot see the big picture… the picture that includes other people. Unfortunately, I am well acquainted with these things– because I did them.
Seemingly overnight, around the age of 12, my beloved son Joel changed from the adorably winsome and irresistible child he had been.
As he approached adolescence, a spiritual darkness began to overshadow him. He became depressed and very angry. There was a continually worsening torment within his soul. He began to listen to music with satanic, suicidal undercurrents. Although he never attempted suicide, he engaged in regular cutting and other forms of self harm. Extreme substance abuse also became a large part of this nightmare.
Joel changed from my magical Peter Pan boy into a manipulative, abusive and just plain terrorizing and terrifying teenager. I could see it happening, but I didn’t know why or what to do. My husband, Steve, was traveling internationally for business rather extensively during the time when Joel and Heather were 14 through 18 years old. Joel was regularly sullen, withdrawn and depressed when his father was at home. But he stored up his terrifying outbursts of sheer rage for when Steve was absent. Only then would the fullness of Joel’s fury boil over and be directed completely at me.
It was a puzzling dynamic. Joel and I had always been close. He and I had similar personality types. We understood each other in a way I knew was unusual for a mother and her teenage son. His friends hung out at our house. They seemed to feel completely comfortable there, some even called me “Mom”. And I had struggled with some of the same issues Joel did when I was a teenager. But even so, there were many things I could not even begin to understand.
On February 5, 2011, suddenly and tragically, Joel was killed in a senseless, drunken car accident. My questions would never be fully answered; not in this life anyway.
This is my attempt to survive this unimaginably hellish nightmare, to recognize my own helplessness and to give all my tears to God.
dissolution
Don’t work so hard not to work.
Don’t try so hard not to try.
For life is but a limp,
learning to fly.
Our little plans must fall to the ground and die.
So don’t cling to them so tightly–
God puts His gifts,
not in clenched fists,
but into open hands
that make no demands.
My only task is to trust Jesus; even though I forgot
freedom and joy–
I think they are real.
I just can’t remember
what they are like,
— — or how they feel.
~~tricia woodworth september 21, 2014
