The reason I'm worrying, and the reason I'm going to stop

Confession: I obsess over endings.  When I read a book or watch a movie I have a hard time enjoying it because I am too busy wondering how it’s going to end.  The anticipation kills me.  I hate the surprise; I wish I could just know how it’s going to turn out so I can stop stressing about it.  Who cares what’s happening in the middle, I want to know how it’s going to end.  The problem, however, is that when it’s over, I am always left a little disappointed.  Not at the ending.  In fact, I usually enjoy the way things end and I am typically relieved at how things turned out.  No, what I am disappointed in is the fact that the story is over.  Done.  No more adventure, no more emotion, no more intrigue.  It’s finished and I’m a little bummed because I was too worried about the ending to enjoy the whole story while I was in the thick of it.

Confession part 2: Every time I do anything that has to do with the World Race I get a little nervous.  And by “a little nervous” I really mean that I have a mini panic attack.  Every time I start thinking about it, I quickly try to distract myself from the reality of what these 11 months will mean for me.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited, but I am without a doubt incredibly nervous as well.  And I am realizing that my worries about how things are going to turn out might cause me to miss the adventure.  But here’s the bottom line: I absolutely do not want to miss this adventure.

Tonight I sat in a WyldLife club of 300 middle school kids and listened to the camp speaker tell them about the cross.  He told them the best news they will ever hear in the entire lives—that Jesus finished the story.  He told them that Christ died for them so that they might know that they are loved, wanted, thought of, and known.  He told them that they don’t have to worry anymore because the God that loves them and knows them simply wants to be with them.  I don’t know if they realize the major spoiler they heard tonight, but they just got hit with the entire ending.  It is finished.  On the cross, Christ made it known how the Author always intended things to end—reconciled and redeemed.

You see, it’s ridiculous to worry about the end of the story because there is nothing anyone can do to change it.  The princess is going to get rescued if the author wants her too.  The war will be won by whichever side the author desires.  The journey will take as long as the author thinks is necessary.  There is nothing the characters can do about it.  They didn’t write the story.  And neither did I.

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”  [Psalm 139:16]

What matters is that my story has been written by the author of the world.  He knows the ending to this story.  Shouldn’t that be good enough?  Do I really need to know the ending if the ending has been written by the loving creator of the universe?  Do I really want to miss what’s right in front of me because I can’t handle not knowing how things will turn out?  Am I that faithless that I can’t trust that the Lord has things under control?

No.  I am going to start resting in all the truth that I’ll want to be bringing to people over my 11 months on the World Race.  I am going to try to live out all the things I want to be preaching.  I want people I encounter on the Race to hear the news that we are free, we are loved, we are not alone, we are provided for, and that there is nothing, and I mean nothing, to fear.  And I want them to hear that all this is true because it is finished.  So I’m going to start living as if that’s true, because it is.

So I am putting on my big girl pants and calling it quits on the worrying, because things will turn out exactly as the Author intends, and I have decided that I really don’t need to know any more than that.

http://pattyreed.theworldrace.org/