“Your girl keeps failing, Abba. I can’t make this work. I’m done.”
Sometimes I get frustrated when I’m doing all that I can do on my end and it doesn’t seem like God is holding up his end of the deal. So I stop handing over control to him and I start doing everything in my power to get things on track. It’s at this point that I fail over and over and over again. I lose track of all the things I need to get done. I get laser focused on just one or two things and everything else gets pushed to the back burner (no matter how many lists I make.) I try to take control of everything and inevitably I fail at getting it all done. For example, lately I’ve undergone a lot of changes in life to prepare for the race, (as I talked about in my last blog post.) I have a huge list of things that still need to get done in conjunction with those changes and the upcoming ones as well. God and I had been doing a pretty good job keeping up with everything until these last two weeks.
You see, when I moved to my new place the enemy launched a major attack on my finances. Everything went wrong. My truck got towed from my apartment complex, then I had to get my truck worked on, my bills went up unexpectedly, my bank account got overdrawn due to a miscommunication, and it took me a lot longer to find a job than I expected. On top of all of that, fundraising is not going as well as I had hoped. I still have a LOT to raise and a very short amount of time to do it. (That’s not to say I’m not thankful for the donations I’ve received so far, because I definitely am.) So, understandably, my main focus lately has been money. I know that God is bigger than any amount of money, and I know that he can provide for all of my needs. I don’t doubt that, but I unknowingly felt as though I needed to take control of this situation because, as I said earlier, it didn’t seem as though God was holding up his end of the deal. So I finally got a job, and I’ve been focusing on that and getting the word out about fundraising for the last couple of weeks.
Now, remember earlier when I said I have a tendency to get laser focused on just a couple of things when everything starts going wrong? Yeah, I did that these last two weeks. I focused on my new job and getting the word out about fundraising because those were the only things I felt like I could control. As I focused, other things fell to the back burner, including my only remaining requirement in getting my college degree. I participated in commencement in May, but I still have one remaining requirement to finish up before I officially own the most expensive piece of paper of my life. I failed. I failed to remember this one very important thing and now I will not get my degree until after the race. On top of that, funds for the race are not coming in like I need them to, even though I’ve done everything I can think of in order to get the word out about what I’m doing. I failed. I can give people all the information in the world, but I cannot make people give. Only God can do that.
I did not realize I had tried to take this much control back from God until I was scrolling through Facebook this evening and came across a post from one of my fellow World Racers about how God has provided enough donations that she is now most of the way funded for the race. When I read the post I felt nothing but jealousy and anger as I questioned why God wasn’t providing that way for me. My next thought was, “Wow! What is wrong with you, Danielle?” I typically love celebrating and encouraging people around me. It is a huge part of who I am. So when I reacted the exact opposite way to that Facebook post, I knew I needed some fixin’.
So now, after the bad news of today and finally realizing all that I have done wrong in the last two weeks, I laid facedown on the floor, cried with my Father, and bowed out. I cannot control when money will come in, how much or if people donate, if I will meet my fundraising deadlines, when/if my truck will breakdown, or if I will get my degree before or after the race. The only thing I can control is not being in control. I let go and I placed all of this at the foot of the cross knowing that God is the only one big enough to handle it all. So now, I’m going to play the background, let the Lord take the lead, follow wherever he guides, and crush the lie that I could possibly do things any better than God. Only he, in his infinite power, wisdom, and love can work all this out, and I trust his promise to do so know it won’t look like I think it should. I trust his promises. I trust that he wants me on the race. I trust that he will always provide for all of my needs. I. trust. him.
