The Waiting Game
The Waiting Game…
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company… a church…. a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so, it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.”
― Charles Swindoll
We are entering into week number two of waiting for our household goods to arrive from parts unknown. My wife and I have talked numerous times about when or if our stuff will come. We are more than confident that it will show up someday; however, it is the waiting that is the hard part. This is where the quote from Charles Swindoll comes in; it is a demonstration of one of my favorite sayings to the teenagers I used to work with, “The only thing you can control is… yourself.” This concept may be one of the hardest lessons that we ever have to learn; it takes a lifetime of work and reflection to realize this point. This attitude is where I have personally reached for our household good situation; I can’t make a truck show up any faster whether I worry or not… it will get here when it gets here. This is life. Life happens precisely at the same speed it is going to happen; there is little I can do to change it. So, what I can control is my attitude. I can manage my actions. I can adjust for the future but, I can’t make it manifest the way I want it to, so we wait. It reminds me of the beginning of Israel wandering in the desert; we read, “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him”” (Exodus 32:1). Here are the people who have just witnessed the power of God, and yet they grow impatient that things are not happening on their timeline. What is their timeline? We have no idea… they had just grown impatient with Moses and with God. They want a god that will lead them when they want to be led. We should take note that God is the One who is in control… when we being to impose our timeline into God’s, we are in essence saying, “We don’t trust you; we will create our own god to lead us.” So we adjust our attitudes, we control our reactions, and we trust God. Things will all work out the way God wants them to, and I am just fine with that.
Tom
Moving to the Tri-Cities
Moving to the Tri-Cities-
Let’s talk about moving… it is not fun. Exciting? Sure. Intimidating? I’ll agree to that. Exhausting? Absolutely!
There is just so much that has to be done in order to replicate the world that we once knew. Maybe that is the problem. We prefer to have things to be like they once were. We love these little pieces of our lives that give us comfort because it makes us feel as if we are in control. We do this in little ways, moving from New Mexico, perhaps I will try to find a “piece of home” here in Washington; maybe it is a restaurant or a particular view, perhaps it is just a picture I look at fondly and remember what used to be.
Back to the problem. Things that once were can never be what will be. That is the condition of moving. No matter how much we try, we can’t replicate it, so instead, we should embrace the new. We should embrace the new experiences and see what is right before us; living in the past is comfortable, but it is still the past.
In this regard, I think of Lot and his wife. In Genesis 12, Abram takes his nephew Lot to a new place… this is Abram’s first failure, “The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1). Abram wanted to keep a little bit of his former life with him; God explicitly instructed him to leave his father’s household behind… yet Abram takes Lot. This problem multiplies in Lot and Abram’s life. Lot moves to be among the cities in Genesis 13; this would have been familiar to Lot, the land of Ur would have been more accommodating for city life… and Lot missed it.
In the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot is given a test to see if he has learned his lesson of wishing things would stay the same… in other words… would he trust God? “As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away! ” (Genesis 19:17). Don’t look back, and don’t stop. We see how this plays out in the tragic tale of Lot’s wife. This passage is not a condemnation on reflecting or thinking about the past; however, it is a cautionary passage on trusting and relying on God.
As I settle into my new place here in the Tri-cities, I should reflect on this and realize that God has brought me here. And although returning back to the comfort of the known would be easier and safer, it is not where God has placed me… so I should pause and trust that God is in control.
Tom