The art of wrestling

Right before bed, it is my habit to check if the outside doors are locked, lights have been turned off, coffee pot set up for morning, and alarm set on my phone.

But what I typically fail to do is to lay my concerns before the LORD, close all those apps so to speak, and switch my brain to snooze.

My husband possesses the amazing gift of falling asleep in three seconds or less, and staying asleep through the storms of life.  But I often wake in the deep watches of the night.  Most times, it is not God waking me for some urgent sacred need of praying for someone, but anxiety about fill in the blank.   At times, I lay in bed wide awake for hours composing scripts of what I am going to say, play by play diagrams for how I am going to handle a situation, unraveling every kind of possible and unlikely contingency, accident, blunder on my part, or unpredictable emergency.  Even those that have no relation to the problem at all.  Every single rabbit trail.  My imagination on steroids.  Trust me.

Anxiety is not a fear of the unknown, but the process of trying to figure it out on my own.  The stress I feel is carrying what God never meant me to carry.  Make that trying to carry it.  Attempting to stretch my finite brain and limited resources to come up with a one size fits all solution.  Am I struggling with a problem....or am I struggling with God's way in this?

Night before last, I was in a texting conversation shortly before I went to bed.  Instead of laying my cares about it before the LORD, well, those worries crawled into my side of the bed and crowded out any idea of me sleeping.  What is the right thing to do?  What if you did this?  What if that was the wrong thing to do?  Ahhh, you know the litany, over and over, wrestling with worries and inviting their friends to the match.

The truth is my lack of sleep contributed nothing to the solution.  I did not wake to a carefully wrapped answer tied with a bow.

I sat down that morning to read God's Word, but first scribbled down in my journal "Show me, O LORD, how to navigate this for Your glory and the well being of others."

No sudden neon signs appeared in the air or beams of light slicing through the clouds.  Just laying the situation on the altar.  I tied on my shoes and headed into the day.

Not an hour later, as I prayed my way on the treadmill, I received a text:  "No big deal.  Don't worry about it.  I'll just see you later."  Conflict resolved.  Game over. 

I lost sleep over that?  No big deal? But then again, why was I surprised at God's breaking through once I took His hand and bothered to ask His help?

God brings order out of chaos, sometimes in very unexpected, unorthodox and sacred ways, rarely on my radar, but smack dab in the midst of His intricate designs.  The chronicle of God's faithfulness in my life is an crazy map of illogical turns in the road and a history of wonders and oddities of which mostly made no sense at all to me at the time.  And He guides me in ways I do not know to the eye of the hurricane and through the jumble of absurdities, over and over again. "...the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day..." (Genesis 48.15)  Leading and redeeming.

Anxiety only makes the miry bog even thicker in mud.  Or am I allowing my life to be altered, changed and transformed by the reality of God?  Am I trying to figure it out on my own....and missing out on God's way and His glory in this?  Even in "impossible" situations.

Don't lose sleep over it, or worry into a panic, but  "...give God 'elbow room.'...Do not look for God to come in any particular way, but look for Him...Always be in a state of expectancy, and see that you leave room for God to come in as He likes."   (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 25)

Was it not You who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
Who made the depths of the sea a way
for the redeemed to pass over?

                         Isaiah 51. 10

And who expected that?