86: let it go and do right

Purely by God's grace, I think I've stopped holding onto the "This is what is fair and this is how life should happen" obsession.

I love listening to audiobooks and audiodramas during my short commute to work. Recently I listened to Into My Hands, the true story of a young Polish girl who helped Jews during the Holocaust. Horrid things happened to her. Things that were not fair.

What would her life have been like if she never "let it go"? I know what would have happened. She would have been an embittered, angry woman in her old age (definitely not who I want to become). Instead, she said on the audiotape (because at the beginning and end they included her actual voice!) that she did not know why God let her save lives.

Not why God let her be raped. Not why she was forced to choose between becoming an old officer's mistress and still being able to protect her Jewish friends or refusing him and having to force them out of their hiding place. She didn't ask why God did not allow her to see her family until 30 years later, after her parents had already died.

When I focus on what is fair, I begin valuing my comfort. When I value my comfort, I forsake the concept of "do right until the stars fall." I cannot hold on to fair and my comfort and still do right no matter the cost, because then I don't want the cost, I don't believe in the cost, the cost is unfair.

And pretty soon, not only have I resisted the sovereignty of God, but my basis of morality becomes shaky as well.

Thank God, He saved me.

As my kids belt out "do right til the stars fall!" with gusto during chapel, my soul is stirred.

Do right. Even if what I have been dealt is too hard. Do right. Even if other people are sinners deserving of God's wrath. Do right. Even if it's just not fair.

So, I'm once again asking God to forgive the sins of the school day, even though I'd rather not think about how I've failed. Because how can He change me unless I admit that I need Him?

So I'm asking God to fight for me and those I love who are being hurt. Because no, it's not fair, and it's not right, but I really can't change people's words and actions. But God is mighty and just and can mete out any consequences He chooses.

And, as always, I'm resigning myself (again) to the thought that my plans, and the plans of the girls around me, to marry (young) and have (large) families, may not be how life happens for us. And that when I'm 86 years old, I will still be singing that He is good.