I'M QUITTING FOR THE LAST TIME

Did the headline catch your attention?  Were you curious what the heck I meant?  I know I was when I first saw the headline forwarded to me by my new motivational friend, Rick Nielsen.  He has uncanny timing.  Or with the help he gets from God, he'd tell you, it was right timing.  

It's no secret I've experienced about every emotion imaginable trying to put together the prayer vigil for this coming Sunday for our Iowa National Guard troops and families.  I've so wanted this to be an event the entire state can take part in.  And I've hoped for a big crowd to pray and pray and pray.  It might happen and then again, it might not.  And that's why I'm quitting.  Because it's the right time. And the time is now. I've had this prayer vigil as a vision for several weeks.  I've made a run doing some of the work, but now it's God turn to show me the way.  Here is the message Rick shared with me. 

"God, there's just not enough room for the both of us to be in charge of my life.  It's not that I haven't taken the job seriously, mind you!  I have fretted, laid awake nights, and worked out the most detailed and wonderful schemes.  The problem is not with the planning and scheming.  It's with the "control" thing.  Or perhaps I should have said, the lack-of-control thing.   

Oh, I know.  You have repeatedly told me that You are competent to be in charge and that putting You in charge would relieve me of worry.  But I seem to enjoy it.  The fact I'm worried about tomorrow seems to tell my sick soul that I somehow have a semblance of control over it.  But I don't.  I just don't.  

Then there's the mess I make of things.  The worried-over plan begins to be put in motion, one of those things or people I can't control comes into play and the bus runs into the ditch!   I try to press on.  I try to force outcomes.  The ditch gets deeper, and the pain begins to come. 

Even so, You show up and offer to take control.  You ask me-without ever forcing things-to turn loose of the wheel and trust You to steer.  Sometimes I want to let you have control.  I really do.  Then something wells up inside me that makes me push You away-to tell You I can do it all by myself.  Truth be told, I'm often thinking that just as soon as I get this thing out of the ditch, then I'm going to ask You to drive.  Unfortunately, I never do. 

Then there are the people on the bus with me.  They are always the people I love most and for whose welfare I care about most passionately.  When I drive, then wreck, then push You away, I sense their disappointment.  Even that, however, hasn't been enough to this point.  It kills me to know I'm hurting them, but I still want to steer.  I want to be at the controls.  I want to be in charge. 

The time has come to try another approach.  Oh it's not that I want to be heard saying that Your way is the way of last resort for me.  Or maybe it is?  But I'm just so tired.  And banged up.  And You and I both know things aren't getting any better with me in charge.  So that's why I've made up my mind .  

God, I'm quitting.  No more Mr. Know-It-All.  No more having to be in charge.  No more playing like I know more about myself than You do.  You're in control from this point forward.  Heart and mind and body.  Family and personal.  Career and social.  Thursday as well as this coming Sunday.  It's all yours now."  

Because I quit.  At least I'm going to quit trying to have control over things that I can't..  

So in the matter that I can, here is a song I'd like to share with you from Avalon.  It's about our freedoms and our troops.....and it's a tune you're liable to hear come Sunday, May 15th at 2 p.m. at the State Capitol in Des Moines, Iowa.  Cue the song...

YGG,

John