“Let us not grow weary or become discouraged in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap, if we do not give in.” Galatians 6:9 AMP

Do you ever feel like a car with four flat tires, just riding on the rims and hoping they don’t collapse under the weight rolling along above them? With one flat tire, you’d probably be okay as long as you have a spare in the trunk…but if all four tires go flat at the same time, you’ll have quite the kerfuffle on your hands, because who keeps FOUR spare tires in the trunk?? What our humanity makes it hard to comprehend is that we don’t actually need our tires…when we keep our focus on God, He keeps us completely gassed up and moving forward under HIS power, not our own. Life with God at the center is like having built in hover power, but we have to choose to use it or we’re always going to end up riding on our own rims.

Something my sister and I have always done in times of difficult is remind one another to get out of God’s way. We all have this unending impulse to try and “keep a handle on things” or, in other words, stay in control. We buy into the lie that we are in control to begin with, so we’re trying to hold on to something we never had in the first place. The times in my life that have been the most blessed are the times when I relinquished my grip on things and allowed myself to trust the path God was laying out for me, one step at a time. Interestingly enough, it takes focus to be successful at this.

It’s sort of like trying to see one of those hidden pictures, you know the kind I mean? Where you have to allow your eyes to fall OUT of focus just enough to have the picture come IN to focus? Well, that’s how life feels to me sometimes. The harder I work to get things in focus, the farther out of focus things seem to get. But, just like those hidden pictures, the key is to stop trying so hard and just let yourself relax, and things will come to the surface of their own volition. We have to accept the fact that we will continue to slip up and find ourselves trying to take control once again. When that happens, it is so important to recognize it, rectify it, and keep moving. We can waste a lot of time and energy berating ourselves for getting off track, but all that will accomplish is keeping us off track even longer.

When a toddler is learning to walk, they spend a lot of time plopping down on their tiny bottoms and getting back up again. If they sat there crying over every loss of balance, unable to get back up on their feet through the tears, think about how much longer it would take them to become proficient walkers! Instead, their primary response to falling on their butts is to simply stand back up again. They don’t typically waste a lot of time bemoaning the fact that they fell back down. They just get up and move on. That’s exactly what we need to choose to do when we fall…get back up and move on. There is a lot of ground to cover in this life, and like it or not, we’re going to spend most of our time like full grown toddlers, constantly losing our balance and taking another tumble. This means we need to adopt the mindset of the toddler and use our energy getting back up, not crying in the floor because we fell.

The most beautiful gift of all is the fact that we are blessed with people in our lives who are there in just the right moments and able to offer a helping hand when we are in the process of getting back up on our feet. We’re all given individual strengths which often act symbiotically with another’s weaknesses. That’s part of what makes God’s design so perfect…He knows who is going to need what and when they are going to need it, and is thus able to orchestrate our lives in a way that puts everyone in the right places at the right times. Of course, this is only successful when we allow Him to do the orchestrating. It is why we must always do our best to trust God and get out of His way!