Needing to find someone to watch the kids for evening events for school used to really stress me out.  It was another phone call to make.  I worried I was inconveniencing someone, and I always worried that I wouldn’t find someone and I would not be able to fulfill my responsibility to be at the event.  I allowed myself to carry a huge mental-load with a task that most people would probably just see as routine.  I wished that we had family in town, so that I had some constant way to ensure that I would be able to be able to fulfill my responsibilities without needing to impose on others outside of my family.

It’s odd that I felt this way about needing to ask for help because I love to help other people, whenever I can!  I love my friends and if any of them came to me and told me that she needed someone to watch her kids I would gladly offer to have them over.  If she told me the things that I just wrote, I would lovingly look at her and reassure her that that is exactly what friends are for.  It’s not an imposition at all – it’s just life and it would be fun. And I would mean it – every word!

So where did my thoughts come from?  How could I feel so differently about helping others, but have such a hard time needing to ask for help myself?  So much so, that I would try to set up measures to ensure I wouldn’t have to ask for help again in the future.

Idolatry.  I had made an idol of being self-sufficient and capable. I love to help others, sure – it doesn’t require me to appear less-capable when I’m helping others.  But asking for help myself? Nope, that’s a hard one.  It means I have to admit that I can’t do it all.  I don’t have all the resources in my possession to meet my needs or my family’s needs.  It would require being in two places at once and although I can do a lot of things – I can’t do that. I had made an idol of myself and I was trying to play God and meet my own needs.

Last summer when I was very pregnant and trying to get my classroom ready for the start of school I got very sick.  I had a high fever, dizziness, and such low blood pressure that I could hardly get out of bed.  I had to get saline infusions a few times a week just to be able to feel like I could walk around without fainting.  I basically spent all of my time in bed for nearly three weeks.  I was living on a diet of saltines, and 3 Gatorades a day trying to get my sodium levels up.  I wasn’t really sure how I was going to be able to start off the year well with my kindergarten class, let alone take care of my family.

And then, right there in the middle of my incapability and weakness, God met me with his provision.  His timing allowed that my sickness started right after my husband finished his grad school classes for that summer, allowing him to be able to care for our three-year-old son and the house.  Friends at church and neighbors brought us meals as I had no energy to cook.  My wonderful job even provided me with a sub in my classroom the first week of school who was ready to take over the class if I couldn’t make it through the day.

It was amazing to see how God worked through his body.  He provided everything that we truly needed to make it through that challenging season.  Because I was in such a place of physical need and inability to meet my own needs it forced me to see how God was providing.  The truth is he provides for us all of the time.  Scripture says, every good and perfect gift come down from the father of the heavenly lights who does not change like the shifting shadows.

Sometimes though, when we are successful or feeling capable, it is easy to be fooled and to worship the idol of self-sufficiency.  The truth is that all of our gifts are from him.  Sometimes it takes times of great need to see that clearly.

Thankfully, God is full of grace!  He has forgiven me for trying to do his job.  He has so much grace that he will continue to forgive me when I mess up again and again.  I can turn to him and confess my idolatry every time I start to worry over not being able to meet my own needs.  It’s not my job to meet my needs.  Thank you, Lord for that!

In the Old Testament in the book of Genesis, Abraham finds God to be faithful.  God has provided Abraham with a son, Isaac, after so many years of waiting.  Then, God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to him.  That doesn’t look like provision, but Abraham loves God and knows that he can trust him, even when he doesn’t understand God’s plans.  At the last moment, God even sends a substitute offering of a ram so that Isaac’s life can be spared.  “Abraham called the name of that place, ‘The LORD will provide’” – Jehovah Jireh (Genesis 22:14).  The Lord will provide.

The Lord – not me.

And he does provide.  I can look back over my life and see how he has provided me with so many things.  Sometimes he provides practical things like food, clothes, or help for immediate needs.

Sometimes God’s provisions weren’t what I wanted him to provide.  Sometimes I wanted relief from heartache and instead God provided comfort and counsel.  Sometimes I wanted health and God sent people to care for me.  Sometimes I wanted healing and God provided endurance.  God always provided what I needed, even if it wasn’t what I wanted.

God has even provided for my greatest need – forgiveness and salvation.  That is something I could never even begin to make or fashion on my own, no matter how capable I might think that I am.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him, shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  The only part I had in that was that I was the sinner, and he washed me white as snow through the substitutionary sacrifice of his perfect son.  Thank you, LORD, that you provide!

So now, when I have an unexpected expense that comes up, or a date on my calendar where I need to call a friend to have them watch the kids I don’t go to panic mode.  I don’t go to Heidi-you’d-better-get-this-figured-out-quick mode.  I go to God.  I think, “God, I wonder how you are going to provide for this.”  It may be in a way that is easy to recognize or in a way that I don’t yet understand. One way or another though, God does provide and will continue to do so.