Sometimes God reminds us who is in charge

By MARY JANE HOLT
Contributing Writer

Sometimes I think I must be the most arrogant human being on earth. I use arrogant for lack of a better word, or perhaps I know there are better words, but using them would be even more painful than using “arrogant.”
I have this need to ask “why?” about nearly everything. Oh, I ask how. I ask when. I ask what and where. Sometimes. But mainly I just have to ask why?
Now that I think about it, how is definitely a close second. Close meaning about 60 to 70 percent of the time, I may ask how. Yet, almost 100 percent of the time, in nearly every situation, I ask why.
So how does this make me arrogant?
You see, it’s God I keep asking. You name it and I’ve asked Him “why?” about it. Like if He would just tell me why, then I could understand and fix it. See what I mean. I somehow have gotten it in my mind that if I can understand what makes a thing, event, person, circumstances as they are, then I could make “needed” changes.
Now if that’s not arrogance, I don’t what is.
But it gets worse, because I’ve done my share of asking “why me?” as well.
Seldom do I now say “why me”” when it comes to bad things happening. I have learned that the trials, the pain, the utter misery that life can fling in your direction from time to time are great teachers. So, though I long for these experiences to come to an end, and celebrate a return to health or a “change in luck”, the truth is I slowly have come to be somewhat thankful for such experiences.
Why? Because such experiences help me with the “whys”.
So today, I’m sitting in front my friendly keyboard wondering why I always feel like I need to know and better understand the whys of my life before I can just let go and let God.
It’s like I, on some level, try to second guess God Himself. Yep, I’ve wondered a million times why He puts up with me. How He could love and tolerate such questioning, such lack of faith, such impudence (see there’s one of those other words - now you know why I much prefer arrogance).
What’s bugging me is the plain and simple fact that about all any of us can really do is just bloom where we are planted. Some days, I suppose I rejoice over that fact. I rest in it. I gain much peace and joy from knowing that all I have to do is bloom where I’m planted.
It’s other days, like today, when I wonder why someone would or could enjoy my blooms at all. Why (and how) they came to be in a position to even see or smell that I’m blooming.
I have two sisters who are great examples for me. They have faith. Real faith. The kind with which I imagine God does not get exasperated. The kind that just accepts.
I would cut to the chase and tell you what’s bugging me today if I could. It’s really a lot of things, like terminally ill friends, the preacher’s death over the weekend, a novel I’m writing, along with a thousand situations over which I seem to have no control.
See how I subtly threw that in about the novel. It caught me by surprise, too. Yet that is probably the main thing behind this column today. You would think that when one takes it upon himself to write a work of fiction there would be total freedom to do anything one chooses. To ask every what, when, where, how and WHY that can be imagined and answer at will.
Yet, even there, caught up in the evolution of something I think I am creating and controlling, God’s gentle presence shines down upon me and reminds me that I’m only blooming where I’m planted. And there, in the scent of what I mistakenly assume to be my own personal blooms, I wonder how many flowers I would destroy in the Garden of Life if I could foolishly make what I perceive to be needed changes among God’s fragrant, and oh so delicate, handiwork.