God's Participation

This weekend, we have a long-standing camping trip with my two sisters and their respective other halves (one husband, one husband-material). We are really excited- the 6 of us get along great, and we are so thankful that we all live within a 3 hour drive of each other so we can do things like this! It will be Banana's first camping trip (with us)- we hope she likes it!

Of course, since it is right around my projected peak time, I am mildly worrying about how we are going to time things right in the baby-making department with only a thin layer of tent material separating us from them!! HA!

So last night, I am having my nightly conversation with God and making sure He knows that He has to bring me and Mr. A together at exactly the right time if this is His month to bless us. Duh, I think He knows! But this got me thinking even more about the age-old discussion about when we should take charge of a situation and act, or when we need to wait on God's participation. Of course there are extremes to this discussion: people who are sick but don't take medicine because they believe God will heal them without it....then way over to people who live their life as if God has no participation in it at all. I think the rest of us find that we'll struggle at least once in our lives with where we sit on the continuum of this concept.

I think most people would like to be squarely in the middle. You know, they would like to pray about what to do, God gives them some kind of nudge in a certain direction, and off they go skipping down that road. For myself right now, though, I feel myself tilting towards the end where I can't find God's participation and I'm tempted to act all by myself. The problem with that, though is that just because I can't find God's participation doesn't mean He's not here. It is like having my own personal Ci.vil Wa.r in my head: one side says "hello, you believe that God is acting, whether you can see it or not!" and the other side says "nevertheless, you can't sit around doing nothing, waiting for God to sweep down like Sup.erman!!".

The local Christian radio station is having their annual fundraiser this week, so every time I'm in my car, I hear them saying "You know, we just ask that you pray about how much God would have you give. Just ask God, how much would You have me give to this ministry?" And every time, I can't help but wonder what kind of preferred customer of God these people are, that they can ask God for a specific dollar amount to give, and He gives them feedback!!! Wow!!! How do I sign up for that?!

So anyway, back to the camping situation at hand, I think this time trusting that God has it all under control will win out. I don't want to come up with some convoluted, complicated plan for how to insure proper and exact timing because deep down, I don't want that to be the focus and concern of our weekend. (And, really, who am I to decide what is proper and exact timing anyway? I have thought we've done well so far in this respect, and no baby yet!) God has blessed me with two beautiful, wonderful sisters and the men in their lives, and a phenominal husband, and a peaceful, amazing place to live. I think He'd want me to immerse myself in all of this, and if He chooses to participate in a baby-creative way this weekend, then that's His prerogative.