knowledge

Over Thanksgiving my cousin recommended that I read "Having a Mary Hear in a Martha World" by Joanna Weaver. He even went to Barnes and Noble with me to get it. Both is fiance and I struggle a lot with feeling like we need to "do things" for Jesus, instead of letting Jesus do things through us. I had a great conversation with him about feelings so busy all the time, but I can't figure out what needs to go because everything is "good" and I'm trying to use the gifts that God gave me. Well, I've only read the first two chapters of this book, and I LOVE it. I would tell any woman I know to read it, and look at the 12 week companion study that's in the back of the book, the questions take you into scripture and are really thought provoking. This week, I actually laughed out loud reading one section.

"What is it about us women that creates such a desperate need in us to always "know", to always "understand"? We want an itinerary for our life, and when God doesn't immediately produce one, we set out to write our own. "I need to know," we tell ourselves. "No," God answers softly, "you need to trust." But like the original first lady (eve), we push aside his tender voice and head straight for the tree. Not the sacrificial tree of the cross, but the proud, towering beauty called Knowledge. Because, after all, knowledge is power, and power is what we secretly crave."

I'm embarrassed to admit I fall smack dab in the middle of that. If you only knew all the lists I have made of exactly what I'm going to do when, in what order, and how it will turn out. I want to know exactly where my life is going, and when I'm going to be there. I used to make calendars, probably monthly, planning out the next 10 years of my life. I'm learning slowly to relinquish my freakish desire to plan, and trust the one that God's got. What made me laugh about this paragraph in the book was that I know I would not have held out as long as Eve did. I hate not knowing everything, if there are things I don't know then I can be surprised or lose control. Some people call it nosy and controlling, I like to think of it as inquisitive. I would have been sprinting towards that tree, because there was something I didn't know and therefore someone else was in control of the situation. Good thing the future of the human race wasn't on my shoulders, it could have been uglier.