Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Peace and PacMan


If you want the peace that surpasses understanding, you have to give up the right to understand. - Bill Johnson

Don't you know that's what it is that hinders my peace the most.  The need to understand. 

It's the wrangling and the wrestling and the attempts to understand why this is that and that is this and why this doesn't look like that or that like this.

And my mind goes round and round and round with peace gobbled up like dots on PacMan except in this game I want the peace to line my path, saturate my path, flat-out overtake my path.

Not get eaten up in a mindless, or, rather, mind-full attempt to get some understanding.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6


So, I keep asking Him...can I fold the laundry now?

And He says, Not yet.

I say, Why not.

He says, Just trust.

Just trust?  Just trust when to get the laundry folded?  How does that work?

And in trying to wrestle with my own thoughts and limited understanding to try to grasp this bigger-than-me plan, I whiz by peace and pick up worry and stress and anxiety.

Oh.

That's what PacMan is eating.  That's what feeds the frenzy and the panic and the irritation and the shortness and the wild-eyed momma that sometimes appears at the slightest provocation.  He's not eating peace: life-giving, abundant, protective, warrior-like peace that God has designed to stand guard over my heart and mind.

I, in my own effort to run from the "ghosts" (or gobble them up if I've eaten a really big dot that makes me momentarily invincible), am trying to hurry and scurry and get it all done so I can...what? Clear the board and go to the next round?  Isn't that an endless path to only more to do?  Where's the life in that?

Obviously, God is not against me folding my clean laundry, but He is teaching me about a pace of life that sees, truly sees, what is really important.  I still have children at home.  I can, right now, avoid a large trunk-full of remorse and regret if I grasp this concept sooner rather than later...if I can hand over to God my right to understand so that, instead, I can be guarded and enveloped by His peace.

Peace that says that today I hear the birdsong and see the sky-tinged pink in early morning hours and chat with friend and stop and hold my littles and connect with my olders and realize that what I'm doing in this moment is where I am and to be fully present right here right now, not rushing and missing all this life that surrounds me.

"Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in wake of all the rushing...Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away." ~Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Your Sabbath, 45.
No advantage at all. 

So, I'm dumping this PacMan game, this "right to understand."  I'm giving that up to God.  No more going after the high score of achievements and successes measured in clean floors, laundry folded, and lessons planned, my life measured by some arbitrary yard stick of things done instead of people loved.

Want to join me?

Father God, I hand to You this right to understand, this need to know what all of this means before I can trust You.  What do You have for me in return?

(I know what He told me, but what did He show you?)

And, God, can I go fold my laundry now? ;-)

~peace

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