Writing in Pencil

Thanks to Jeanne Hewitt, I got my hands on a great book called Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist. I was able to finish it this weekend and wanted to share part of a chapter I read that both challenged and encouraged me. Hopefully it will do the same for you.

The chapter was called "Writing in Pencil" and here what really got me:

I (Shauna) just turned thirty, and I’m finally willing to admit something about life, or at least about my life, and it’s this: I should have written in pencil. I should have viewed the trajectory of my life as a mystery or an unknown. I should have planned lightly, hypothetically, and should have used words like “maybe” and “possibly.” Instead, every chance I got, I wrote in stone and Sharpie. I stood on my future, on what I knew, on the certainty of what life would hold for me, as though it was rock. What I know now is that instead of rock, it’s more like a magic carpet, a slippy-slidy-wiggly thing, full of equal parts play and terror. The ground beneath my feet is lurching and breaking, and making way for an entirely new thing every time I look down, surprised once again by a future I couldn’t have predicted.

At a certain point, I have to wonder about my judgment or my sanity. How can I continue knowing so definitely what the future will hold, and then continue being so totally wrong? This is my new thing: I’m going to write in pencil.

Life with God at its core is about giving your life up to something bigger and more powerful. It’s about saying at every turn that God knows better than we know, and that His Spirit will lead us in ways that we couldn’t have predicted. I have know that, but I haven’t really lived that way.

Everything is interim. Everything is a path or a preparation for the next thing, and we never know what the next thing is. Life is like that, of course, twisty and surprising. But life with God is like that exponentially. We can dig in, make plans, write in stone, pretend we’re not listening, but the voice of God has a way of being heard. It seeps in like smoke or vapor even when we’ve barred the door against any last-minute changes, and it moves us to different countries and different emotional territories and different ways of living. It keeps us moving and dancing and watching, and never lets us drop down into a life set on cruise control or a life ruled by remote control. Life with God is a daring dream, full of flashes and last-minute exits and generally all the things we said we’ll never do. And with the surprises comes great hope.

I can certainly relate to Shauna, for I too am a planner. I like to know details, to write things on the calendar so I can prepare for them and be ready when they happen. I don't really like surprises (unless it's like a surprise birthday party or something really happy). I kind of like (okay, really like) being in charge. I want to be in control. So I try to figure things out, and of course think my ideas are the best. I count on things happening exactly as I feel they will and should. But things don't work that way with God. He's the One who has the final say. Which is good because He's the One who knows best. And the sooner I accept this, the better.

God's challenge to me: Get rid of your pens and sharpies. Don't just put them in a drawer somewhere, because you will just keep getting them back out again and again. Throw them in the trash and then take the trash out to the curb. If you must write something down in your plans, do it in pencil. And have an eraser ready!