Letting go, letting God

Most people know me as a fairly resourceful and independent sort of person. I love adventure and I don’t think twice about jumping in with both feet into a new and exciting experience. In fact I see myself that way most of the time, so you can imagine how surprised I felt this week with what happened.
My first semester in Antigua I didn’t have a car and my adventures were confined to the very small university campus; the odd weekend trip out with all the other students and walks to the bat cave. The next two semesters I shared a car with my housemate and I sat in the passenger seat while we drove all over the island for all our adventures, and I let him do all the navigating. When we went out he paid for everything; when the car needed filling up or backing down the steep driveway, he did it. He did the barbequing and lit the pilot light on the stove and took out the garbage and dealt with the landlord and locked the house up when we went out and hooked up the internet and bought the groceries and in general just looked after me.
But then he left this week and I was here alone with Miriam for a few more days and suddenly it hit me. I had no idea how to light a barbeque. I struggled to make a pile out of briquettes and doused them with lighter fluid and blew on them for ages and finally gave up and fried the chicken.
I had no idea how much groceries cost. I bought way too little the first trip and way too much the second trip and now I have so much extra food I don’t know what to do with it.
I forgot to lock the house up and it rained while we were out and the beds got wet. I couldn’t get the car down the driveway and had to leave it on the street. I accidentally unplugged the internet and couldn’t get it to go back on. I forgot to take the garbage out and it’s still rotting in the carport. I decided to go to the beach and realized I didn’t know how to get there and Antiguan streets don’t have names; you just turn at the second donkey with a blue rope standing in front of a rock and then make a left at the tree that looks like a person and then a right at the yellow house with the fat lady on the porch.
I felt strangely lost and it was disconcerting to think that I’ve been here three semesters and I still feel like I’ve just arrived.
But there is nothing to be done, is there? I love having someone look after me. But when there is no one there I have to ask God for extra strength and somehow summon the creativity and the courage to be brave by myself. It’s not easy. I’ve finally come to the place in my life where I realize that I need looking after and I’m willing to let go of control to someone else; and suddenly I am thrust back into the cold reality of having to fend for myself again.
But it’s even deeper than that. How much do I trust God? I thought I had learned to trust God when I was all by myself on my adventures- and let’s face it, when you’re all by yourself in an African jungle or a French supermarket or an Antiguan bat cave, there’s nothing else to do but to throw yourself on God’s mercy and pray that he works things out. But then I had to learn to trust God by trusting another person. It’s one thing to trust God when you know that he’s always right and doesn’t make mistakes. But what about when the person you’re trusting in is just that, a person? Is my Dad capable of leading me the right way? Can I trust my professor to give me the grade I need to graduate from medical school? Can I relinquish control of all those little details to my housemate and not be afraid of what might happen? Can I sit in the passenger seat and not stomp on the imaginary brake every time we go around a corner?
The short answer is, yes. The big answer is, if God has ordained that situation or that relationship or that chain of command, then he is absolutely able to see that the outcome is exactly the way he wants it. I can demonstrate my trust in God by the trust I put in another person. And this is not foolish, blind trust: it is a conscious choice made with wisdom and courage, a choice to let go of control.
Having to do all these little things for myself again has been driving this lesson home. The big picture is that God is everything I need. The fine details of the picture are that God sometimes chooses to provide for us by allowing another person to fulfill our needs. But if we lose sight of the big picture we handicap ourselves and become unable to stand firm when we have to.
I’m pleased to tell you that I have been rising to the challenge- today Miriam and I drove to a hidden beach that is accessible only by a road that doesn’t look like a road- and I followed the vague directions of ‘follow the road to the end, turn left, go until the road ends and then turn down the road that doesn’t look like a road and just keep going until you can’t go any further’. And I fixed the internet connection and spoke with the landlord and backed the car down the driveway myself and figured out how to light the stove. And I made a wise decision not to swim in a rip current or jump off a cliff into the ocean, and I met an acquaintance and invited him to join us for dinner, and I talked intelligently at the American recession and the Canadian health care system.
I still may have no clue what to do with the barbeque, but I’m beginning to prefer the taste of fried chicken anyway.