2 – 9 – 17 Abdication

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I think I might have actually believed it when I was saying “let Thy will be done” last night. It was a very refreshing moment, it took all the weight of the world off my shoulders. To detach from the outcome and know that whatever will be, will be, is so freeing. I don’t feel the same pressure to do well anymore, I feel pressure to do my best, but that doesn’t make me nervous.

Surrendering my will is my goal because it is the most liberating thing that I can see happening to me. A while ago I think I got a glimpse of it when considering my vocation. Now, if a vocation is whatever you feel called to do, whatever truly satisfies you in and of itself, then I’m in a tough spot. I like doing a lot of different things, I’m talented at a lot of different things, and a lot of those areas overlap. The decision would be pretty hard for me to make. It’s a decision I’ll still have to make and it will be hard, but less so in the right frame of mind.

It will be a less stressful decision because if I say “let Thy will be done” and mean it, try to follow what I perceive as God’s plan for me, I can have infinitely more faith in any decision I make, because I will see it as a decision following God’s will. I won’t have to worry about whether this field is really quite my favorite, whether I would have made more money or been able to work less in a different field because I’ll know this is where God wanted me to be, and that’s all that matters. Additionally, when we are focused on God’s will being fulfilled these other factors of wealth and free time mean less.

Now that doesn’t mean I won’t be disappointed if this tryout goes poorly. I’m not going to out and out lie. There are sometimes we say things in prayer that we don’t quite feel in an effort to really feel them and believe them. But I know in my current state of obedience my trust isn’t strong enough to shake off something so lightly. But I’ll have solace in that disappointment, I’ll know that God wants better, different things for me that football would just get in the way of.

Another nice thing which I’ve already touched on is that I just can’t doubt my decisions in the same way if I’m focused on following God’s will. A lot of decisions required in my life would require a lot of introspection, a quite deep knowing of myself that I don’t think I, or many nineteen-year-olds, have. This is worrisome, because I can’t know myself just by sitting in a room and thinking about myself, the only way to expose new facets of who I am is by encountering scenarios I haven’t dealt with and seeing how I respond. And being nineteen, I haven’t encountered all that much to think that my self knowledge is good enough to base a major life decision on.

But if I dedicate to hearing the Lord, and really believe He is pushing me in a certain direction. I have no need for doubt. I have it on the authority of the best planner and the all-knowing what I am to do, allowing for my failures in interpretation.

Lewis mentioned something in his essay On Forgiveness that I thought was probably universal. It is the restraint we bring to prayer. The desire to splash around in the sea that is God, but not without losing a foothold on terra firma. I think there’s a couple variants. One I can think of immediately, only because I’ve been guilty of it so often, is that prayer that is no prayer at all but an argument. We come to God not seeking help to reform a sordid habit, but rather defending it with every point we can muster. I don’t know who we’re trying to fool. God? Well that wasn’t very wise, it surely didn’t work. Ourselves? I think very rarely indeed can we rationalize ourselves into believing what we know to be a falsehood to be truth. We can adopt the belief assuredly, but it won’t be as a result of our reason. It will be comfort, or practicality which drives us.

Another variety is the “Thy will be done, but please try to make Your will not so uncomfortable or difficult for me this time.” Depending on the nature of the past few months of one’s life this prayer can almost feel justified. As though you’re one of God’s honest laborers, spent from toil, and just require a little bit of rest before you can go back to building his kingdom with a broken back. The issue with this is that God cannot give us rest except through us following His will, it is not in his nature to send peace of mind to the willfully deceptive while they are in the very act. His peace will only come through these difficulties as he tries to mold us into the type of people he wants us to be. Furthermore, this self-perception as a tired, but honest laborer is probably pretty far from the truth most of the time. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down in the late afternoon and said, “Wow, I’ve done so much good for people today I’m just exhausted.” I think doing kind deeds is generally energizing, not in the instant way as coffee, but as in something that makes you look at the future without blinking and gets you out of bed in the morning. I think God sees this too, so that when we think we are most in need of a break from God, God sees that the only thing that will help us in our current state is deeper service.