Mar. 18, 2014
“I don’t want to and you can’t make me.” It’s a short little sentence and I remember
it verbatim. It came from the mouth of
my strong-willed, sensitive child some 10 years ago. I don’t have a clue what it was I had told
him to do. But I remember vividly that
we were in my bedroom and he was standing in front of the armoire. I remember, too, the visual image in my head
of seeing smoke shoot out both my ears, much like in the cartoons. I was so angry that all I could manage to say
was “You may have won this battle but tomorrow I will win the war. Go to your room.”
The next day, I called him to the breakfast table and
informed him that we were going to do a Bible study. We read the book of Jonah together aloud,
discussing it as we went. I don’t
remember exactly how long it took but it was around a couple of hours. At the end, I asked him, “Why did we study
this?” “Because Jonah told God, ‘I don’t
want to and you can’t make me,’” he said.
Mission accomplished. As with all
successful missions, you need to write a report on it, so he did.
From time to time, that insolence, I mean independent
spirit, would rear its head and all we had to say was, “What did Jonah tell
God?” and he got the message. It was a
lesson well learned. For him.
For the last nine months or so, and for the last two months,
I have felt like Jonah in two different areas of my life. So much so that for the longer one, I am
still not prepared to discuss it. I’m
still holding out hope that I am misunderstanding God. So, I will let this one be. The other one, for the past couple of months,
is a huge stretch for me personally and professionally. I have thought a lot about whether to write
about this because I really don’t want any added pressure or well-meaning
kudos.
When I first started thinking about this, actually it was
more like God saying, “You should do this,” it scared me bad. It is so far outside of my box and fear of
failure is screaming at me. In fact, the
first couple of times I talked to select people about it, I cried. I know what God is telling me but I am
telling Him, “I don’t want to and you can’t make me.” As coincidences go (there are no such things
as coincidences), Kelsey sent me a video of Sophie, our dog, getting in trouble
for getting into the bathroom trash. She
is so pitiful and it is funny from that standpoint. But as I heard Tim commanding her to “Come
here” and then saw him gently drag her passive resistant body to the trash can,
I thought, “That’s me and God right now.”
I have prayed a lot about all of this.
Surprisingly, my prayers have not been me trying to talk God out of
it. No, rather I have been asking for
equipping, peace, and excitement. Lord
knows (and He truly does!), that I can’t do this well without being excited
about it.
The truth is that in the last week I have been feeling just
a bit excited about it. The video is
more accurate for me a week ago. Now, as
I am writing this and analyzing it more for myself, I am realizing something
else too. When I told someone near and
dear to me that I was feeling like Jonah, she asked, “So what’s your Ninevah?” I told her and she encouraged me in it. In thinking about it more now, I am not sure
if my Ninevah is this “project” or a fear of failure. I am not used to feeling that fear. I don’t think I have ever really stepped out
to try something that I didn't first feel reasonably assured that I would succeed. Ever since I completed my internship, I've
been praying for a new long term goal/challenge. Maybe this is it.
God is working and I am okay with it.
