Getting Out of the Way

Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24

            Every Saturday I play basketball with a group of women who live out on affluent suburbs of Philadelphia.  We get together every week and spend about an hour together.  I am the only one who lives in Philadelphia proper.  We play at a Catholic church where one of the women attends.  They are all such nice women and several of them are juggling both careers as well as family obligations.  I’ve gotten to know a few of them over the course of the last few months since I have started playing.  They are pretty successful but rarely ever talk about their professional lives while we are on the court.  During that hour it is just about basketball.  Then afterwards, we occasionally share more information about our personal lives.  Most of the women already knew each other, and I was the newbie.  This past Saturday as we ended our game, one of the women was extremely stressed out and needed to talk about it for a while.  A few of us stuck around afterwards to hear her get some things off of her chest and a couple of the women gave her some advice.  As I listened to her source of stress, I realized that what she is struggling with was not the circumstances that she was dealing with, but the mindset of having to do it all on her own. 

            She was a successful research doctor and was recently given another position in a different state.  Both she and her husband are in the medical field and they were preparing to move them and their two small kids to a new world.  The stress of having to pack up and move was one thing, but the constant thoughts she was having about things not going her way and messing up her children’s lives and losing her job and nothing going as planned was another.  And the latter is what caused her the most stress.  Her friends around her consoled her by saying that the worry and stress that she puts herself under is the main reason why she is so successful.  Because she will work hard, success will come, even if she never learns to rest.  I listened to the advice being given and realized that her issue was actually not related to her move or her job.  Her issue was that she thought she did it on her own.  If she did it on her own, then she has to maintain it on her own and as a result, there is a chance that she won’t know how or might mess it all up.  As I walked out of the gym that day, I wondered to myself, where is God in her life?  Does she give God any credit at all for where she is in her life?  Maybe if she did, she wouldn’t be so stressed. 

            I thought about the above scripture as I drove home that day. Jesus told his disciples that it was easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than it was to get a rich person into the kingdom of God.  And I think this woman is a perfect example of why.  The amount of pressure we can put ourselves under in order to position our lives exactly the way we want it can drive us nuts! We do not possibly have the level of control we want over our lives because there are too many outside factors to consider.  But what if we are under the illusion that we got to where we are on our own and God was just some background entity in our lives doing what we want Him to do? Well, then that is a lot of pressure to put yourself under and what happens when you fail? But living as a citizen in the kingdom of God does not have that level of pressure because you recognize that all things belong to God anyway.  Our success, our failure and everything in between is a part of our journey, and it is a journey that God knows the beginning, middle and ending of.  We are actually pretty clueless until God clues us in.  But, amassing so much success on our “own” without acknowledging God can lead us down a road that ends in stress and sometimes even death.  Think of all of the people who commit suicide because of their inability to maintain control over their lives. I know a few of them. Or how about the strokes and heart attacks people get when they stress themselves out about a lack of control?  If you let go of having to control every aspect of your life and allow God to have His way, then maybe the pressure can come off of you for a while.  But you cannot see the kingdom of God if you are standing in your own way. If you want to play God in your life, then you have to be in control of everything.  However, if you want to let God be God, then you have an opportunity to let go of the need for control and you will actually see the truth:  God has always been with you.  It was not just you doing it on your own.  He didn’t start being God when you acknowledged Him.  He has always been and will always be.  The illusion is that you alone have been responsible for your own success or even failure.  But God is always there.  The moment we recognize that, then we receive the grace that He promised to give to handle whatever comes our way.  We learn to rest in Him and not to have to control everything.  We can truly let go.

            I wish I would have been able to say something to the woman on Saturday about her faith. Her other friends continued to talk to her about practical suggestions for getting things done.  But I wanted to tell her to stop and acknowledge the One who has made her life possible.  The One who gave her the mind to be a doctor.  The One who blessed her with two beautiful children.  The One who gave her a wonderful husband. The One who gives her life everyday. I pray for another chance to see her again before she moves.  She doesn’t even know how much God loves her and has already taken care of things, even when she is working to make them happen.  She can trust God with her job, her house, her marriage and even her children.  But she has to see the kingdom of God first.  And to do that, she has to give God the glory for her life instead of taking it for herself.  Only then, can she be free from the pressure of being her own God.