We didn’t even have to discuss it. We wanted to find out the gender of each of our babies after the stick turned pink. I like to know what I’m in for, be ready for all the contingencies before they happen.
But this projecting into the future, it goes beyond having the nursery ready. I rehearse what I will say or do when planning mission trips, preparing for family getaways, my children’s activities, when thinking about my daughter going away to college. I find myself doing it often in this new writing life.
I want to know the outcome of my investment before I make it.
And this self-sufficiency, trying to be adequate in my own skin, it’s like sneaky Leviathan resting there just under the surface of the deep. I don’t notice the ugliness of it all until he cranes his neck, emerging steely eyed, dripping grins about drifting into his territory when I was napping on the stern of self-reliance.(Psalm 104:26)
Do I call on Jesus when I feel competent? Or just in my inadequacy?
Because I’m comfortable resting in my row boat, pushing the oars when I’m ready, using the meager map of my experience to get to the place of imagined destiny. And Jesus, he wants to sit there with me too, not just when I need a new map and help pushing oars through molasses on a cold day.
I’ll keep an open seat on sunny days when the channel is clear as well as the rainy midnight of the soul when I’ve forgotten my umbrella. Who wants to wade in adequate when miraculous is just over the horizon?
Have you ever thought of letting go of self-sufficiency? I admit, this is a hard one for me.
This is #16 in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up any
post you’ve written on the theme of letting go in the comments here on Friday. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.
