July 4, 2007

I worry a lot. The air conditioner on our van was making an almost indiscernible “sphwiit” sound about every 10 minutes, and I began to worry. My four kids went swimming on their own (out of sight of Sherry and me), and I began to worry. Gas prices inch higher and higher… and you guessed it… my worry increases as well.
Today I worried about getting just the right spot on the beach for our Scott family enclave. We need more space than the average couple with 1.3 kids. There are six of us.
Yesterday I found just the right spot, but had my space invaded by obvious beach rookies who did not know the legal, non-familial proximity you can get to someone’s beach chair. When I can smell the scent of someone’s SPF, they’re sitting too close.
So my new plan worked like a charm. I took Lauren and Morgan with me in the morning, and had them spread their sand toys out and make sand sculptures. Turtles, alligators, cakes, umbrellas… it didn’t matter. What did matter was how the sculptures around my temporary sand spot residence became holy ground. No one would walk near them, let alone place their chair on them. Everyone stepped lightly around my kid’s works of art as if the ground had been deemed a natural sanctuary. Even as the crowds came and filled up the rest of the hot sand, my spot remained secure, open, and worry-free.
I know I worry way too much. Some call this fretting.
Oswald Chambers says fretting comes from our determination to have our own way.
Yep… that seems about right. Oswald has penned a very honest estimation of who I am and how I operate. I’m determined to have my own way.
I want just the right house. I want specific and certain ideas to unfold at church. I can see them… sometimes even taste these thoughts. I want a certain path for my family. I have my own ideas about how the future should unfold.
And so I fret. Worry.
Oswald goes on to say, “Our Lord never worried and was never anxious, because His purpose was never to accomplish His own plans but to fulfill God’s plans.
Uh oh, I feel my own sermon coming on. It’s about that “coming to the end of yourself” thing, isn’t it?
Honestly, I wrestle with thoughts of plans and ideas. I question things like: If God has given me my desires, then why can’t I pursue them with all I have? Is it unholy to be aggressive? Is type-A a genetically disposed type of sin?
Reading more of the Psalms struck a chord with me. David has been struggling with enemies and struggling with God. He needs rescued. He’s depending on God one minute and unsure the next. Then David, like a soulful riff on a Les Paul, hits this amazing rhythm of cognitively stating things like: “All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful… The Lord is my light and my salvation… Wait for the Lord… The Lord is the strength of His people… I will exalt You, O Lord… In You, Lord, I have taken refuge.”
It’s as if David is force feeding God to his own brain because he knows his own diet of worry and fretting is killing him. He must know … cranially and cognitively … who God is, and then simply BE.
David doesn’t dive into programs or activities or religion like most of us would.
Donald Miller (“Blue Like Jazz”) says that the Devil’s best success is when he can get Christians to be religious. When we sink our minds into habits, our hearts are prevented from engaging with God.
David focused on God. With great discipline and in the middle of fights and doubts, he kept reminding himself of God. This brought about great peace, and probably, I’m assuming, less worry.
This morning… playing directly in front of my beach front property (that I had ruthlessly and fretfully claimed with asserted squatters rights), was a little girl who had definitely not seen the light of two years. She was probably a few months over one. With pigtails bouncing and sunscreen smothered on her frowning face, she hit the ocean with her brand new boogie board. I have never seen such a small boogie board. (Boogie boards are those pieces of cheap foam shaped like miniature surfboards, covered with colorful cloth, and sold to gullible tourists at outrageous prices) I’m pretty sure she got her boogie board at the beach shop that was advertising with a giant banner being pulled behind an airplane. “Boogie Boards Just $2.99,” was waving in the wind above the beach and forcing vacationing moms and dads to discuss savvy marketing techniques with pre-schoolers and teens alike.
This young girl’s name was Annabelle. I don’t know that to be true, but it makes my story all the more believable. Annabelle would take her midget boogie board, Velcro it to her arm, and then pull it in the shallow water. That’s it. She pulled it like one of those Fisher Price squeaky, slinky dogs. That’s not how you use a boogie board! I wanted to leap out of my chair and correct her flawed technique. You’re supposed to take your piece of over-priced foam and ride the waves, baby! That’s what I wanted to tell her and her grossly naïve parents.
I didn’t say anything. I just worried and fretted.
But Annabelle didn’t … worry that is. She didn’t care her boogie board only cost $2.99. She didn’t care about riding the crest of crashing waves. She didn’t fret. She just pulled her boogie board behind her, and her parents beamed smiles of money well spent.
I started enjoying her child-like, uninhibited, carefree playing as well.
And then tonight, I sat back and simply, uninhibitedly, and carelessly enjoyed some fourth of July fireworks. I didn’t worry about a thing. Somebody somewhere had laid out a well-thought-out design of pyrotechnics, but I didn’t care. I just was glad to be a part of their finely executed plan. Boogie-boardin’ Annabelle would have been proud of me. Jesus, I’m reasonably sure, wants me to be more like this with his well drawn blueprints. Maybe tomorrow I will worry less and cognitively know the Lord is the strength of His people… including me. Maybe then I could focus on fulfilling God’s plans and not my own.