The Ride

Your righteousness reaches to the skies, O God, you who have done great things. Who, O God, is like you? Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter,
you will restore my life again….Psalm 71:19-20

     “What if I was on a plane with someone, and it was their time to die?” My boss posed this question one day, half-joking, half-serious. “I don’t think it’s fair that, just because it’s his time, everyone on the plane would have to die.”

     That question reminded me of an old commercial. There was a family on a roller coaster, looking totally frazzled, and when the car arrived back in the unloading zone they were desperately trying to scramble out, but the bar wouldn’t come up and the car began to move forward for another ride. The looks on the faces of the frantic family were wild with panic.

      I remember that commercial, not because of the product it was advertising, but because, at the time it was airing, I completely identified with that family. I felt like my family was trapped on a never-ending roller coaster ride due to someone else’s choices and actions. I was full of self-pity and resentment. I did not want to be on that ride. I thought my children and I did not deserve to be on that ride and I wanted to get off!

     You might be wondering what the question about the plane has to do with that commercial. In both scenarios there is the idea of innocent bystanders being caught up in someone else’s chaos and having to suffer the consequences. That concept strikes us all as a gross injustice.

     But, the truth God has taught me is, if you are on the ride, it is your ride. You cannot be taken on someone else’s ride. You may be riding with others, but each one of you belongs there.

     Would you like to see some scripture I found which backs that up? Proverbs 20:24 says, “A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way?” Jeremiah 10:23 states, “Lord, I know that people’s lives are not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps.” Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” There are many other verses but, bottom line, God made it plain to me that wherever I found myself, no matter how it appeared I had gotten there, He had directed my steps to that place and desired to reveal himself to me there.

     He showed me that the problem with considering myself to be an innocent bystander was that it allowed me to stand by, placing the blame for my circumstances on someone else. It kept me in a place of bitterness and excused me from asking the important question, what is God trying to show me, to teach me?

     As I embrace this truth, I am learning that I was never trapped; that blame is pointless and that I can trust the God who is in control of my ride, and any who journey with me.

The God Box

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. --1 Peter 5:7

I am a worrier by nature.  Both of my daughters frequently thank me, with sarcasm, for passing on that trait to them.  I tend to work myself up into a frenzy by imagining the very worst possible scenarios and then try to calm myself by figuring out how I will handle them if they happen.

 Years ago I attended a weekly support group.  Inevitably, when one of the group members shared that he or she was worrying about something, someone in the group would speak up and say, “Put it in your God Box.” I had never heard of a God Box before, but I deduced that this was just a way of telling the person to stop worrying and trust in God.  As time went on, however, I began to realize that the people in the group were speaking of a literal box.  The idea was to get a box, like a shoe box, and create your own personal “God Box”, as plain or as fancy as you desired; then, you were to take a piece of paper and write whatever was bothering you on the paper.  If you had more than one thing troubling you, you were to write each issue as specifically as possible on a separate piece of paper and deposit it in the box.  This represented letting go of your vain efforts to control whatever was worrying you and releasing the problem to the control of the One who actually had the power to do something about your situation.  Then, whenever you found yourself starting to worry about one of the problems you had placed in the box, you were to stop immediately and remind yourself that it was in the God Box and it belonged to Him now and you could not touch it. I agreed with the notion of surrendering troubles to God but I admit I thought the literal box idea was silly and unnecessary.

I decided that I would practice my own mental form of the God Box.  I was certain it would work just as well. I simply pictured myself putting the thing that was troubling me into an imaginary box. If I was fretting over finances, I put it in the imaginary box.  When I was troubled by a relationship, I conjured up the image of dropping that worry into the box in my mind.  I felt smugly superior to those who felt the need to have a literal prop.  And it worked, for maybe the first hour. Then I was back to worrying as obsessively as ever.

Pride kept me resistant for quite awhile. But one day, when I felt the world was falling apart around me, I decided it might be worth a try.  Since I still wasn’t totally on board, I searched for the smallest box I could find and came up with a ring box.  Then I cut tiny strips of paper and in my smallest writing I wrote my worries on them, folded them, dropped them in the tiny box, snapped it shut and hid it in my nightstand. 

An hour or so passed and I found myself thinking about one of my problems. Suddenly, I remembered placing that piece of paper in the ring box – the GOD box – and I firmly reminded myself that the problem was no longer mine, it was his, and I couldn’t touch it.  Then an amazing thing happened. I suddenly felt a tremendous sense of relief! I truly felt that I had given that problem to God in some kind of a binding way; that the issue was his to handle now, not mine.  I was flooded with a peace I hadn’t experienced in quite awhile. God had everything in his capable hands, I could relax.

I can’t say I was perfect after that, and never worried again. There were many times, especially when things weren’t going the way I wanted, that I would struggle, but at those times the God Box served another purpose.  I would open the ring box (yes, I kept that box as a reminder of how arrogant I had been) and pull out some of the older slips of paper and read them.  Time and again I would be reminded of how faithfully God had dealt with each one of those issues and my trust in his love and power would be restored.

At the start of this New Year, if you struggle with worry like I do, I encourage you to create your own God Box.  Let me know how it works for you.