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Friday, September 10, 2010

"Everybody's changing and I don't feel the same"

I can't handle it, okay?

I made a tricky voyage to Newport with one of my friends recently, and I was telling my mom how every time I merge I feel like the hand of God is ordaining traffic flow, because an ordinarily stressful and dangerous activity is made magically effortless. She laughed at me and said, "God never gives us more than we can handle!"

From this I conclude God must think I'm a wuss who can't drive.

So when I started work last week I had one long and somewhat trying second day which involved much getting lost and many aching muscles, and around 10pm when even the GPS couldn't deliver me to a recognizable route, I pulled into a shopping plaza and resolved to have a pity party. Until I realized that I was overreacting. This wasn't too hard for me. Clearly God thought I could handle it. So I wasn't going to indulge any wimp-like behavior.

And that kick in the pants attitude got me through a week of the unknown, and carried me through the first three days of classes. As I prepare to move half of my life to South Kingston, and evaluate how college has the potential to reroute my whole future, I'm weirded out by how fluidly all these changes are coming: not just in what I do each day, but in my relationships and in the way I think and in what's required of me. The changes are sneaking up on me and convincing me things have always been this way, and nine times out of ten I find myself unprepared.

I can't handle it, okay?

Except that, clearly God thinks I can. My life has been so easy to this point, and I mean, heart-breakingly, couch potato-y easy. I fussed over what this meant about my faith: is it really so small and weak and unstable that God is saving me from the storms to keep me close to Him? On one hand this thought hurts my ego, and on another hand, it freaks me out. But here it comes, all these changes, still nothing big of course, but enough for me to handle. I am not a pansy. He has blessed me with an opportunity to learn it: greater is He that is in me.

3 comments:

Art said...

earnest affirmation.

this is a good thing.

L.E. Fiore said...

Amen, Hayley. I feel as you do- about my life being so incredibly easy. I have to laugh (derisively) at myself when I complain. I have no idea what hard is. And I'm so *GLAD* God is stretching me- so I can take stuff that's *harder*. ;)

Kristen said...

"On one hand this thought hurts my ego, and on another hand, it freaks me out."
:nods:

and, wow, so much of life depends on trusting in God, his timing, and who He is.