God vs. the control freak

This past Friday, Megan and I went with the entire secondary school (about ~70 students) to Parque Nacional La Tigra in honor of the "Spring Festival" theme at the school. Megan and I (and I assume some other teachers as well) were really kind of dreading the outing, as we've seen how some of the kids behave in class. The thought of letting them loose in a cloud forest did not conjure up good images in our minds. In addition to this, many of the kids were complaining about the long walk they would have to endure as a result of coming on the trip, in spite of the fact they would be missing school that day. Basically we had our minds made up that it was going to be a disaster. The principal at the school kept reminding the teachers during the week that we need to pray for the trip, that everything would go well. And so we prayed even though our hearts were pretty hardened to the whole idea.

So the day of the trip comes along and it was cloudy and a little rainy. "Perfect!" we muttered to ourselves. We were supposed to leave at 7:30 from the school, but 7:30 came...then 8:00...then 8:15 and still no bus. At this point I was thinking that someone had forgot to tell the drivers we needed the buses THIS Friday. In the middle of all this impatience and worry, it somehow dawned on me that I should probably pray instead of getting all bent out of shape. So I did.

When the buses arrived at 8:30 I was relieved, but only for a little while. These were full size school buses, and the roads we were going to be traveling on were unmaintained gravel roads, complete with deep ruts, large rocks and hair-pin turns. Plus it was still raining - just enough to make the road wet enough that a bus might not be able to make it up a steep incline. So I started to worry again. My excessive worry receptors somehow switched on my "better pray again" receptors, so I did.

After we loaded all the kids up and prayed yet again before we took off, we came to the entrance to the main highway. Conveniently enough, a traffic jam awaited us there! So I prayed again, mostly just to keep my anger from boiling over at this point. Eventually the traffic cleared and we were on our way.

Amazingly enough, on our way there the rain stopped falling. Both buses loaded with 40 kids each made it up the mountain in spite of the less than ideal road conditions. The kids enjoyed themselves even though they had to walk a lot. And to our surprise, not one kid was hurt when it was all over.

This whole ordeal reminded me just how little control we have in our lives, even though many of our modern conveniences lead us to the false assumption that we do have control over things and circumstances. It reminded me how simple (simple - not easy) it is just to ask God to take care of those things I can't control. To rely on him instead of my own timing, planning, ability, strength, whatever. There's a lot of freedom in that I think. And it's definitely something this anal-retentive, impatient, chronic-worrying control freak needs to do more of.