Letting Go

I was telling one of my friends during the semester that it's really hard for me to actually let go of stuff. It's easy for me to say okay, God, I'm letting go of all of this. But then, I turn around and find myself thinking about it within two seconds. It's really hard to just say, "here's the situation, and I need You to come through because I can't do this by myself- and then leave it at that." I always want to follow it up with one of my "solutions" which often ends up either making matters worse, or leaving me extra stressed rather unnecessarily. This isn't to say in any way that we shouldn't do our best, or that we can neglect our responsibilities. That's part of the challenge- knowing how to balance responsibility with trust.

I think it's kind of like when we were young and we tried to do something that our parents asked us to do. We did the task as well as we could and we looked to our parents to do the things that we couldn't. My parents didn't criticize the job that I'd done so long as I had done the best that I could, even though I realize a lot of those jobs that I did as a kid probably meant extra work for my parents. And as a kid, I always trusted that my parents would take care of making sure that things came out all right in the end. Our parents challenged us to do our best and try again when we messed up- because that's how we learned. 

I think it's similar to the way we learn now. We try to obey God, but we're not perfect and so things often don't go the way they should. But He's patient with us, and He wants us to learn, much as our parents did when we were younger. However, now we're older, and unfortunately oftentimes that means that we're also a lot more self-conscious. We care about making our work perfect and we feel like we're responsible for how it turns out. That's not entirely a bad thing, especially since adults are supposed to be responsible. It does turn into a bad thing when that desire to be responsible prevents us from trusting God. Let's face it. We're human, and we're not perfect. We'll never achieve perfection on our own. We can try for a million years and never get there. Or, we can trust in a perfect God to take care of the problems that we can't take care of on our own. Not to mention that trusting Him is part of what He has called us to do.