Chutes & Ladders

I absolutely hate the game Chutes and Ladders. It's annoying, ridiculous, and the worst way to teach a 3 year old patience. Unfortunately, the kids I sit for love it, and think it's hilarious that I get mad.

The other day I was cleaning up a few toys with the youngest 2 of the 4 kids I watch. The youngest (Nicholas) is 18 mo; the other (Mark) is almost 4. The scenario went something like this:

Me: Nicholas, let's put the blocks away please.
N starts putting the blocks in the wrong tub
Mark: Mel! Nicholas is putting them in the wrong box!
Me: It's ok Mark... we just need to teach Nicholas how to clean up first. We can move the blocks to the right box when he's not looking.

I love working with children. I love their quirks, and how they are constantly learning and discovering the world around them. I love their laughs and their "tired eyes". I also love how God weaves these visual pictures of his character through their lives.

I often suffer from self-inflicted guilt trips that if I don't make the right decisions or treat people with a genuine and perfect love, everything will fall apart. Aside from that being a ridiculous thought, it's also an incredibly conceited and prideful idea. The funny thing, though, is that I never thought about it as a haughty thing... which just goes to show that by nature we are prideful. Different topic though.

The point of all of this is to say something very simple: God's big enough to handle my best efforts. This goes into so many details of life- my job, my aspirations, my friendships, my worship, my prayers, my thoughts, my actions, and much more. It's often quoted that God will not give you more than you can handle. That is often piggybacked with a witty comeback of "well, God must think I can handle a lot". No, not really. Again, it spins it back on us...that we're the ones that can handle it. I know this off-hand comment is meant to make light of a situation, but it often follows that when we say something enough, we tend to believe it.

I just finished reading an article on Relevant's website entitled "5 Keys for Making Big Life Decisions" (written by Adam & Christine Jeske), and this one sentence stuck out to me over everything else:

"Let’s knock out the basics first: God knows you, loves you a lot and wants to lead you."

I'm absolutely TERRIFIED of making the wrong decisions. But as I watched the interaction between these 2 young brothers, I realized that I don't trust God. Maybe it's not an intentional distrust, but it's still there. I don't trust Him to handle my mistakes; my best efforts.

As I learn how to really love people, how to not judge people, how to encourage a friend, how to make life decisions, how to be a responsible adult, etc, I need to trust that God is big enough to fix my mistakes. Now, this isn't to excuse the things that I do understand: If Mark (4) were to put the blocks away in a completely wrong box, I'd say: Mark, you know better. Please put them back where they belong. (you can see where I'm going with this.)

The article ends with this, and I can't help but post it:

St. Augustine put it simply: “Love God and do as you please.” Make your decisions with God-given sense, with an honest goal to pursue Him and “commit to the Lord whatever you do and your plans will succeed” (Proverbs 16:3). God’s in the business of redeeming even our worst choices, and every highway has off-ramps to other choices.

I'm realizing life is a little bit like Chutes and Ladders. Fortunately I like my life better than the board game... but the idea is that we roll the dice, make decisions, and roll with the punches. As the article suggests, there are decision-making times and waiting times. But no matter where we are, if we feel like we are slipping down the ladder, or trying our best to put blocks back where they belong, God loves us. He is on our side, and as long as we are wanting to love Him, I don't believe that any mistake will keep us from Him.

Actually, He promises it won't (Rom 8.37-39).
He's big enough.