Trust in Adonai with all your heart,
lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight. – Proverbs 3:5-6 (TLV)
I started my week off with a tick bite. Not exactly the way you want to start the week. Really, tick bites are not generally that big of a deal. This one, however, immediately swelled. That was the alarming part, as it had never happened before. It is not necessarily anything major, as some people can have a minor allergic reaction to some types of ticks. However, it can also be a sign that the tick has transmitted an infection. So too can fatigue, sore muscles, and several other general symptoms. The thing with most of the symptoms is that if you stop and ask yourself, “Am I tired?” or “Are my muscles sore?” you can almost always convince yourself that you are fatigued and your muscles are sore. Perhaps it’s a signal of something, or perhaps what is needed is a little time off.
In other words, the stress from a tick bite is that it is so uncertain. There’s a chance of something serious like Lyme Disease, but nearly every symptom has other possible explanations. How do you know how to respond? Eventually I decided to go to my doctor’s office. They took a look, decided it was most likely nothing to be concerned about, and gave me some preventative medicine just in case. Yet isn’t that so true of so much of life? If we just knew how to respond, what was worth our worry and what was not, and what the best next step should be, how much more at ease with life would we be? If we didn’t feel like we were continuing throwing darts in the dark trying to figure out what we should be doing, we could rest easy knowing that we had done our best, no matter what happens. But we don’t know what we should do or shouldn’t, and so continually feel like we could have done more.
The good news of God’s grace is that we do not need to do more. God’s love for us is not dependent on making all the right choices. It does not depend on us knowing exactly what we should do and then executing that plan perfectly. To trust in God is to know that we are always looked, regardless of whether our dart throws in the dark hit the right target or clanged off the wall. That allows us to breathe easier and keep trying, knowing that we are never alone in our decision-making, even when it is sometimes unclear what would be best to do.