What's Your Problem?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how my ways aren't the same as God's ways.  I'm not sure if that is exactly what Einstein meant when he said that we can't use the same thinking to solve our problems as we did when we created them,but that's how it translates to me.  The root of ALL of my problems is my conceit.  It's the part of me that wants to play God in my own life.  That is the thinking I use, when I create my problems.

I know that people say, "God doesn't give you what you can't handle," but I don't believe that is true at all.  God TOTALLY gives me what I can't handle.  It's his only means by which to get me to rely on him.  I am only obedient and submissive to him when I realize that my life is not my own.  I walk in his way most readily when I can't see the path on my own.

I often say that God has to beat me over the head with a frying pan in order to get me to listen to him.  That's how it feels, at least.  He'll send me sign after sign after sign of what he'd like me to do, and yet, I still am so stubborn that I keep walking my own direction.  Often, I'll have to have a pretty blatant; sometimes painful, experience in order for me to see that he's been directing me down a different path all along.

A perfect example of this is my previous work experience.  For years I tried to fit my square peg of a life into round hole of a job.  I was burning out by trying to be a full time mom and full time administrator.  Add into that the passion I had for volunteering and I just couldn't keep going at that speed.  But I was too stubborn to say, "I can't work full time."  God had to set up an extraordinary set of circumstances to get me out of my career and get me to see that I didn't need  a "career" to measure up to the world.  I needed to measure up to God's plan for my life~He didn't, and doesn't, care how the world sees me. 

So, Einstein is right (otherwise he wouldn't be Einstein, correct?).  I can't use my same stubborn, self-righteous thinking to get me out of my difficult circumstances.  I have to prostrate myself to the God of my life; the one who's ways are not my ways; the one who asks me just to trust him and follow his plan for my life. 

What's my problem?  My problem is me.  

How about you?  What's your problem?