As I sat down yesterday to study for my upcoming Statistics final, I was confronted with one of my greater nemeses in life: the printer. Trying to get things to print from my ancient computer is usually a crap-shoot at best. So, as I tried to print review materials, the first few pages print, and then... nothing. I don't know where the print jobs went - next door, maybe? As I tried, with increasing frustration, to figure it out, one thought kept growing in my mind: God, where are you right now? Can't you see that I'm trying to study, here? Don't you care that I'm working my butt off to go to school and make a better life for my family? If you're not going to give me a new car and a new house and an island in the Pacific and bring back my parents from the grave for Christmas, couldn't you at least just make the stupid printer work? Can't you see how I feel as though the whole world, electronic equipment included, is conspiring against me? Don't you care about me at all - not even just this one little bit?
As my wise husband pointed out, the whole thing wasn't worth making into a big deal. I could still study without printing anything. "Just use the computer and look at the stuff on there, instead," he told me. Which seems perfectly reasonable, but in my now completely worked-up state, that sounded like the stupidest idea in the world. Because it wasn't MY plan. MY original plan was, is always, in my mind, the best. The most efficient. The plans I make for my day, my week, my life, always seem, in my mind, to be the best and most logical and most appropriate way for things to go. How dare God, or anyone else, interfere with them? It sounds so warped, so self-centered and arrogant, when I put it down in writing, these thoughts. And yet, when I am thinking them, don't they just seem like the perfect truth. In that moment yesterday, there was a whisper coming through my mind that I didn't want to listen to, didn't want to accept. It said, "Even this tiny little frustration in your day, there is a reason for. You don't see it now, but soon you will understand." What?!? How in the world can God use this moment to teach me something. And, by the way, I don't want to learn any more of your lessons, because they usually involve some kind of difficulty that I then learn from. No thanks, I'll just keep throwing my tantrum, because I'm angry things aren't going according to plan.
Of course, God was right, as He always is. That frustrating half-hour of trying to get the printer to work, failing, and refusing accept anything other than my original plan, was a moment he used to show me just how intent I am on making my plans work, no matter how small or big, and what an obstacle this independence creates in my life. It bars me from accepting God's perfect plan, and from receiving His perfect peace. It keeps me locked in a padded room, padded with my expectations for minutes and years and decades. The walls feel nice and comfortable, soft to the touch, and yet I pound on them, longing to get out. It's the independence that comes naturally for me, and has been added to by loss. No thanks, I'm on my own now and I'll figure it out. No thanks, I don't need any help. No thanks, I can do it better and faster and more accurately myself. It keeps me from accepting help, friendship, blessings, from friends and from God alike.
All of which would still be eating away at me, if I did not have a God who watches my tantrum, knows my heart that lies underneath it, and speaks into my madness. Let's face it. We don't always understand, or like, or want to accept the way God works. We think our plan is much better, and find it hard not to get frustrated and discouraged when we don't understand what He is doing. As I go through this Christmas season, it is hard for me to understand the point of all the pain and loss in the world. Things happen in our lives that seem so wrong. Marriages end. Loved ones get sick. Children die. And for all of it, for all of the pain of this world, it is very easy to ask the question why. And where. Where was God? Why did He withdraw or withhold His safety, His healing touch, His grace?
Asking these questions, in the dark of night last night, I ended my prayer of frustration with "I don't know what else to say - I don't have anything left to say." I ended my prayer with a bunch of questions. Or at least, I thought the prayer was ended. And then, as I tried to drift off to sleep, something great happened. The voice of God, continuing our conversation, answering my questions, at least in part, with the only answer He can really give, the only one I would understand. Into my mind, He spoke these words:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Translation for me: "My plans are better than yours. Chill out and go along with it."
There is that part of me, of all of us, that wants God to just hurry up and reveal the inner workings of His plan, the reasons why, the "big picture". "If only we could understand, if only we could see the 'why'," we say. If only we could see the end result, at the end of time, how our suffering will be turned around and included as a part of making all things right. Then, we think, then we would believe. Then we would worship. Then we would be able to have faith. For this thought, God reminded me this morning of Thomas. Surely, Thomas thought these same things. "God, I don't understand. How could my teacher, my master, my Messiah's horrible death be anything more than a moment of your abandonment. How could it ever be part of your plan? If only I could see Him, I would believe that all He told us was true." And upon seeing our Lord, in the flesh, and touching his wounds, and receiving thereby relief and comfort and the ability again to proclaim 'My Lord and my God', Jesus said to him, "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." (John 20:29)
Blessed are they. Not, "calm are they", or "comforted are they", not "no longer frustrated are they". Blessed. That is what I want to be. I want that blessing. I want to say, even though I don't see, don't understand, can't figure it out, that I believe. I have faith, without seeing, that God is doing what He said He is going to do, that he is in the process of turning the sin and sorrow of this world into glory and redemption. And that one day, when I sit at His feet in heaven, He'll show it all to me, how every moment, big and small, that here on earth make us want to sit and weep and scream and pull our hair out, was used by Him, became a part of the plan. I believe, on faith, that I'll see, someday, all the loose ends neatly tied, all the shattered pieces put back together, as if they'd never been broken. Today, with the help of His word, I choose to believe, even though I don't see, that His ways are higher than my ways, and His thoughts than my thoughts.
Now, assuming your printer works better than mine, print off a copy of this, and shove it under my nose the next time I tell you how frustrated I am with things not working out the way I'd planned.
- Susan
