_______________________________________________________________________
So much--yet so little--has happened since my last entry. Each passing day of waiting--ambiguous, bureaucratic, paper-chasing, email-anticipating, no phone-ringing, advocating intense--type of waiting comes with ample opportunity to nurture mutant strains of anxiety I never knew were possible to grow.
Philippians 4:6 struck me between the eyes this morning as I walked the familiar route to Tim Horton's with my Forever Families of Canada office on my back. My mind was racing, plotting, worrying, creating to do lists, going through the "what ifs", busy, busy, busy... Me, anxious?! It seems so un-Wendi-like! ...so vulnerable. ...yet so validated in our chronicles of adoption narnia. The anxiety bug was biting at my soul and biting hard. Chomp, chomp. Evidently, I am not immune to this rampant pandemic of anxiety. I need to check in with my Great Physician. I need to get a grip, his grip...
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil.4:6-7)
I've heard this verse countless times - usually like a cute Hallmark reminder that makes me feel cozy. As I pounded the pavement with driven determination to my destination, I was not feeling cozy. I was feeling challenged. I was challenged to choose -unnaturally I might add - to give everything over to God, my heart's desires and all --not an easy feat for a, shall I say "driven", person like myself, ah em. But somewhere in the mix, I think "driven" surrender will find its rhythm when I allow God to be my Lord, like really, not as a cliche. I figure God must have made me feisty for a reason, and to give up on causes for justice and transformation would be to cut me off from breathing. He didn't give me a pink slip to my role in being a voice for the voiceless. If anything, He has been swinging open more doors, huge gates really, of opportunity to speak up. So why am I anxious?
I never noticed until today that this passage in Philippians does not promise our desired results, but promises God's peace to guard us. This passage God brought to mind was not my invite to play the "gimme gimme" game with Him. It was my invite to be more eager to be in a position of peace with God than for my desired outcome to come to pass. This is hard, especially when the pursuit is, well, worth fighting for. It is so easy to equate the two, rather than pursue God as being enough.
I want both God and genie; his peace and my answered prayers. Today I can't have both. As I sip my Tim's dark roast, one cream, one sugar, I also brew over my options. So I am choosing God. I choose him in prayer, in petition, and in thankfulness for being my Lord in a depraved and suffering world.
Jesus come! Come into our crooked and backwards foster care and adoption system. Come to our authorities and use them to bring transformation. Come speak life and vision to your Church so she might rise up against injustice or more so rise up against internal hypocrisy and indifference. Come set captive children free into loving families. Come to waiting families. Come to struggling families -- and be our peace, our Prince of Peace. Thank you God that you come to us and guide us, you fill us and you inspire us, you love us and you are in control.
I'm not backing down. I'm not giving in. God's biting back at my anxiety with an anti-retroviral peace that goes deeper than pathetic circumstances. Short from breaking out into a Kumbaya in the coffee shop, I am choosing to give it up to God and peace out in the waiting room of my soul. My soul is not pacing around anxiously any more, it is quietly doing push ups - getting ready for my turn to arm wrestle the enemy into submission.
I think it will be worth the wait!
No comments:
Post a Comment