Let Me Write this Story

I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. —JEREMIAH 29:11

God whispers to me as I lie down for the night, Let me write this story. I’ve been wrestling with him for days. I don’t want to get ahead of him but he is leaving me no choice. Everything seems unclear and so I want to slyly and subtly take some control. I doubt he’ll even notice. He might even bless my efforts, right?

But I can feel the dis-ease in my spirit. The nudge that says, Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. It won’t produce what you really want. And yet I don’t know how to tolerate the churning inside of me.

I have so many questions about my future. And I told God in church a couple days ago that if he wants me to keep my grabby hands off my own life then he is going to have to help me tolerate the runaway train that is my mind, the swirling and solving I can’t control in my own strength. Is there a story in your life that you are trying to write? You are trying to turn the narrative or resolve the plot? You are trying to control the characters or manipulate the setting?

Is there a story in your life that you’d like to author, and God is asking you—gently, quietly—for that role? I want to take control of certain areas of my life, create opportunities, wedge my will into the unfolding. God will let me do it. I have free will. He will let me choke and manhandle my life.

But as I put my head down on my pillow last night, he whispered, Let me write this story. And I knew, immediately, that this was the better way. The narrow way, the trusting way, the surrendered way, the way of relinquishment, to be sure. But also, the better way.

Some—not all—of the churning quieted. Perspective returned. Sometimes God is asking us to move, move, move. But most often, for me anyway, God is saying, Breathe, breathe, breathe. Let me write this story. (I promise it will turn out better than you can imagine.)

What story are you trying to write that God may be asking you to let him create?

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