I’ve always been a planner. I like to know how things will turn out and the steps to take to get there. I love lists- checking off the boxes. Being a planner and loving a list isn’t necessarily a bad thing until you start living your life with your own boxes marked.
The funny thing about being a planner is that my life has turned out NOTHING like I had planned for it to but I wouldn’t change a thing. I had my life all planned out when I started college. I would meet my husband in college (at the BCM of course!), be married at the end of college, grad school, first child at 25, etc. None of that happened. Instead, my world got turned upside down at 18 when my dreams shattered into a million pieces, I didn’t get married until I was 31 and then infertility. I had to realize that God’s plan doesn’t always fit into my pretty little boxes to be marked off- something I’m still learning.
I read something in the study that I’m doing Unexplainable Jesus by Erica Wiggenhorn that talked about this very thing. I couldn’t highlight it fast enough. “ The moment that I put God in a box of my own logic and reasoning, predicting everything He will and won’t do and why- is the moment that I have made Him too small. His purposes are beyond our reasoning.” (page 164, Unexplainable Jesus)
I’m in a season right of now of checking off boxes. This adoption journey has turned out to be more about my sanctification than anything else. I had this perfect timeline in my mind of when and how things needed to happen based on my plans, my time table. Every single timeline has come and gone- with adoption, you need to just throw timelines out the window! I’ve had some pretty specific things that I had been praying for but if I’m honest, they were “checking off boxes.” When I read this quote, I realized that I had made God far to small and I cannot comprehend His plans and ways- simply not possible.
It’s almost like I don’t trust God to do what is best for me so I need to give Him a little help. Really, the Creator of the Universe, who holds the whole world in His hands, does not need my help! There’s another quote in the book that spoke to me. “I don’t know about you but my problem most often isn’t that I don’t have faith. It’s that I don’t have faith in the greatness of my God. I have made Him too small. I’ve relegated Him to a Master instead of the majestic, magnificent Almighty. Could it be that when Jesus asks us to exercise faith before He steps in and works, He is asking us to remember the greatness of the One in whom our faith lies?” (page 166, Unexplainable)
I think that the problem isn’t that we don’t have faith, but that we tend to underestimate God’s power and His sovereignty. We try to fit our great big God into these tiny little checkboxes. It’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. No matter how hard we try, plead, or manipulate, it doesn’t work.
So let’s uncheck the boxes, throw away the pen and surrender our checklist to the Author and perfecter of our faith, who is continually writing the story as it unfolds, trusting that His ways are perfect (Proverbs 3:5-6)