Thursday, July 25, 2013

A Fickle Heart

I have a confession to make: I have trust issues. I've always been that way, even with group projects in middle school--you know, where everyone is supposed to take a certain task, but you're not confident in anyone else's abilities so you end up just doing the whole thing on your own. I'm a control freak at heart, because I want things done right and the only way I can be positive about that happening is by doing it or overseeing it myself. I wouldn't say that I have trust issues necessarily in simply believing what someone else may tell me, but it's just always been difficult for me to have 100% confidence in something I don't have a hand in at every step in the process. Which of course doesn't bode well for life, because a) it is literally impossible to do everything on this earth entirely by myself, and b) when it comes to faith, I actually have very little say in things. Nonetheless, I still grasp for control, and when I can't reach it, stress and panic tend to take over.

Let me tell you a little story about how we got our visas for India. As many of you know, India was kind of a last-minute God thing. Things fell into place around two or three weeks before we were to leave for Europe. Which gave us very little time to get things in order. As we were frantically trying to move all of our stuff across the state, pack, re-pack, spend some quality time with friends and family, and get everything squared away for backpacking, Tyler studying in Bulgaria, and working in India, we were bound to forget something. Unfortunately, that something that we forgot was kind of important. Every American going to India for any amount of time, even for tourism, needs a visa before arriving to the country. For those of you who don't know, that means a special detailed visa sticker stuck to one of the pages in your passport to show upon arrival to India. We discovered this little fact approximately just one week before we were supposed to leave. Do you think this sat well with Dani "Control Freak" Jackson? Um, no. Cue stress and panic.

We were a week away from needing our passports to leave the country and were about to send them to Chicago. We jumped on the process as quickly as possible, but nothing seemed to be going our way. We found out on a Friday, meaning all we could do was get the application ready and wait to send it in Monday. Except, oh wait. That Monday happened to be Memorial Day, so we couldn't send it in until Tuesday. From there, things were a little haywire on the Post Office's end (aka they took away another day of potential processing), and I must have called the Chicago Post Office and the visa office at least 32 times (I'm seriously not exaggerating. Diane Washington, the lady who helped me at Travisa Visa Services, and I are practically best friends). By the time it finally got there on Wednesday, we still didn't know if we would have them in time to leave for Iceland the following Monday (we were even prepared to drive to Chicago to pick them up, although that didn't prove to be necessary).

Long story short, everything worked out and Travisa got us our passports with the visas in them on the Saturday before we left, but not without great expense. Sure, it cost a pretty penny to expedite everything, but that's not the expense I'm talking about. I'm talking about sacrificing a precious peace from God that comes from trusting in Him wholeheartedly. I lost sight of faith and, as a result, forfeited peace. You wanna know what worrying and stressing about getting our passports back in time got me? Absolutely nothing. Except maybe an ulcer. By panicking through the whole process, I did not speed up USPS's delivery system. I did not telekinetically push our application to the top of Travisa's pile, and I certainly did not magically make visas just appear in our passports with a poof or teleport our visas back to us from Chicago. Instead, I let stress and panic deprive me of peace, faith, and contentment.

And you know what's crazy, it's not like I learned my lesson quickly from it. The first couple weeks of travel were equally filled with stress, with feverish attempts to make everything go smoothly and according to plan. I just had to know exactly how and when we were getting somewhere, where we would be staying and how to get there, and what we would be doing once we were there. And it led to more unrest and dissatisfaction, all without really accomplishing anything purposeful. Yes, we got places according to schedule, but what was the worst that could happen if we'd missed a train? Catch the next one? Stay one more night there? What's the worst that could happen if I didn't write down and memorize perfect directions to our next hostel? Stop and ask how to get there?

What makes this an even sadder situation is that stress and worry eat away at more than just your peace; they affect every part of your life, including your attitude, your joy, your mood, everything, meaning it makes it that much harder to get along with your husband or actually enjoy the cool things you're seeing everyday. So why worry or stress if it does all of those bad things but absolutely nothing good? Because I have a fickle heart. I know deep down what is good for me: Jesus. Period, point blank, it's that simple; He's all I need. But I forget that far too often. I am swayed by my sinful desire for control, and Satan convinces me that worrying or stressing over something is the best way to get that control. I flip-flop back and forth between my soul's desire to trust the Lord and my nature's desire to do it all on my own.

A little while back, we were on a train for several hours, and out of nowhere I started singing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" to myself. I couldn't get the words, "Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear," out of my head, and I took a second to thank God for putting that on my heart. How true it is! I couldn't agree more from my own personal experiences that we often forfeit peace, bring pointless pain upon ourselves, because we try to do it all. We are blessed to have a faithful friend that will share in and even take away our worry and suffering, but we oftentimes don't let Him! Another lyric from that hymn says that it's a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. We have the freedom, the liberty, the privilege to put it all on the Lord: all our sorrows, all our griefs, all our sins, all our stress, all our trials and temptations. So why not take advantage of that? God desires for His children to be free from tiresome burdens and asks for us to lay it all on Him. After all, it's not like we can accomplish anything by worrying anyway.

Here are the lyrics to "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." I hope that, as you reflect on them, you can think about what area of your spiritual walk suffers because of a fickle heart. I pray that you will give your stress to the Lord and let Him fill you with His peace.

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!

Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful,
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy-laden,
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He’ll take and shield thee,
Thou wilt find a solace there.

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