One of my children has been going through a very rough time lately. Part of what makes the situation bumpy is that the child wants me to fix things… and I can’t.
One day, after a seemingly endless bout of trying to help the child, I blurted, “Honey, help doesn’t mean I’ll do it for you. It means I’ll give you the tools and support so you can do what you need to do!”
That night, during the 2 AM time slot that God created especially for worried mothers, I reflected on how to get my child to understand what I meant. It occurred to me that even grownup children of God sometimes have the same problem as my struggling child. We cry out, Help me, Lord!, but what we’re really saying is, Make this problem go away!
I stared into the darkness and thought of Christ agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew the desperation of having to face a problem he didn’t want. He cried out until “his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground,” asking God to take away the cup of his suffering. Yet he asked for relief on one condition: if it was the Father’s will.
This tells me that sometimes, no matter how fiercely we want God to do something for us, what we really need is to know his will instead. For when we understand that he is asking us to drink of the cup of suffering or to carry a cross, we can make a choice. We can choose to fight him, or follow him. And really, that’s not a hard choice to make.
