Check Mate

Spirituality can often feel like a losing game of chess. You plan your moves carefully and then there is one move that you didn't see coming. Boom you sit at check mate and there is nothing you can about it. That move that rips into your heart and forces you to start to question it all. Question what is going on and how you ended up on the path that you are. You are in church, you know the truth, you know how to guard your heart and yet you don't. Then when you are caught off guard because you are not paying attention you want nothing more than to blame God for the whole mess that you find yourself it.

After a weekend full of traveling and not knowing what types of conclusions I may reach...I stood facing the enemy. Then I heard it...I felt it...I knew it...One more wrong move could very easily put me in the position of check mate. My "game" as it were was about to change. I need to change direction. I need to change goals, I need to reorganize, Yet I don't know to what.

--I had it all planned out.
--I knew what was going on.
--I had this one figured out.
--I was finally in control.

And that is where the problem really started. I was finally in control not God. I had it I really knew what I planning, knew where I headed, I had this one, I didn't need God to show me what I really needed to be doing! I Knew this was right and I was very happy with the choices I was making. Now I am in complete limbo again. WHAT NOW, WHAT NOW GOD. I know that there is so much ahead of me and I sit here cornered. I sit and stare at the face of the unknown and the over planned and wonder where it was that I went oh so wrong and try to think of the various ways I plan to get myself out of it. Not once thinking that perhaps I am not the one to get myself out of this one. Maybe, just maybe, I need God to reach in with His long arms and help me, but no I didn't want to consider that. I want to be in control and know where this path that I am walking on is headed.

I stare at the enemy and ponder, watching his every move more carefully than the next. Studying his face and seeing his nervous ticks knowing that there is a possibility that if I take my eyes off of what is the ultimate goal then I could loose and be trapped in a cycle that I have been in so many times before. I watch and wonder, still not thinking about the love and grace that is mine if I simply take it and hold it in my arms.

Then I hear the words that I feared the most, 'check mate.' Now I am trapped and start to panic, trying to find my own way out and then I realize, for the first time in a long time, that I can not get out of it on my own. It is going to take someone much more powerful and all knowing than I to get this mess cleaned up. Realizing I am cornered I look up at the hand that is stretched toward me and reach as far as I can to grab it. As I am pulled from the situation that I find myself in, I make a promise to not be taken back there again, but silently wonder if it could happen.

As with chess there are times that you can see the enemies next move and it is easily avoidable with a simple side step that makes things in your path appear much clearer once you return to the path that you were to be on in the first place. As I step back over onto my path I am starting to question the plans that I have been making over the last few months, and I start to ponder what is going on in my life. I know that as long as I play the 'game' as the Master has designed it I will come out victorious.

Returning to the path will not be easy. Getting my life back in order will hurt. Often change does but I know it is what I need to do. I know that this is how it should be done. I also know that it can be easy to stray and I need to watch very carefully when I am making plans and trying to control it all on my own that God has his hands on it all too.

I know that I can do this, I know that I can. I also know that there are those who will support what I am trying to do, and there will be those who are hurt or even left behind as the changes start to take shape. I am grateful for the opportunity to change and to make things right. But first I must close some doors, if for no other reason than to keep unexpected moves from cornering me again.