The Ride of My Life

Do you ever have one of those days when you feel quite certain that if you were to pay a little visit to a psychiatrist they might not let you go home because you’ve completely lost it and my in fact be a threat to yourself and others? Or, at the very least, they’d give you some frightening diagnosis and send you home with some doozy of a prescription? Or how about this question…do you ever NOT have one of those days?

Can I tell you that you are blessed to not be a part of my brain? It is one crazy, stressed-out, wildly distracted place to be most of the time. I feel like I’m on a runaway roller coaster with no emergency break and the prospect of jumping off doesn’t seem like a good option. And so, in the midst of what I know are piddly little trials compared to most, I fight the temptation to think, “If only I could get away for a little while. I just need a break.”

Sweep crumbs. Make phone calls. Run errands. What’s for dinner? Nothing artificially flavored or preserved or overly processed or that takes less than 5 ½ hours to cook, please. I need more milk. Make it chocolate. Fix your hair, or at least wash it. Answer emails. Fight off the laundry monster with a huge bottle of detergent. Keep your temper after days on end of fighting children. Sweep crumbs. Honey, can I possibly get a little attention, too? NO! How dare you ask? Schedule appointments. Register for soccer. Sweep the crumbs. Throw together some lunch. Wipe the lunch off grimy faces. Another poop? Seriously? Have you read your Bible? Get the homework done. Sign 15,000 sheets of paper. Write more checks, but check the account first. Give some hugs. Share some wisdom. Clean the tub. Sweep that God-forsaken floor.

You get the idea.

A break from life sounds so refreshing that I can’t think of an analogy relaxing and refreshing enough to describe it. I imagine sitting on a couch, surrounded by silence, with a good book in my hands and nothing on my schedule. And it sounds like absolute bliss. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be pretty nice for however long it lasted, but it would not last. Life is waiting. The crazy runaway coaster will catch up with me and I’ll find myself right back where I started.

It’s so easy, when our life seems like one endless, frantic, out-of-control trial that we can’t possibly hope to come out of in one piece or with our sanity intact, to wish for, cry for, and pray for deliverance. We want what we call a blessing. We want the easy life, the selfish life, the high life. We want happiness and freedom from the endless demands on our time, talents, brainpower, finances, and energy. We want the hard stuff to just go away! And, when it does, we say we’ve been blessed.

But what if it’s all a lie? What if what we’re begging to be released from is the actual blessing? What if the Lord has given us the one thing or the set of things that will drive us to the ultimate blessing of living in the sufficiency of Christ and we’ve traded it in for trash?

This runaway roller coaster is the answer to my prayers, not the thing I should pray to be rid of. What has my prayer been these last weeks? Humility. The key to the Kingdom of Heaven. And how am I supposed to get there but by continually recognizing my own weakness and nothingness and hopelessness without Christ? If I were to receive the easy life I asked for, the easy life that I so often envy in others, would I ever be able to abide in a place where I constantly see my need for Jesus and cry out to Him for His presence, strength, power, and grace? How would He ever answer my prayer for more of Himself if I was never in a place where I needed Him?

So I am beginning to see that when I am my weakest, my most desperate, I should cry out in praise to the Lord because He is ready to show up and show His sufficiency. He is ready to give me all that I’ve asked for…more of Him. When I am truly a humble person, my first reaction to the trials of life, both big and small, will be to give thanks and praise to God because I actually believe what He says: That in my weakness, He is strong. That His grace IS enough for me. If I want to experience His strength, then it follows that I must continually be in a place of weakness.

My trial. My weakness. My need. My desperation. All the very answers to my prayers. For humility.

And so, when the roller coaster is flying out of control and your heart is overwhelmed by fear, anxiety, or weakness and you’re tempted to think you just want off, throw your hands up. Embrace the wild ride. Praise the Lord for the things that will draw you near to Him. Submit yourself to Him, trusting that His plans really are the best. Scream with wild abandon, knowing that the greatest danger is not in staying on the ride, but in getting off.