Packing Trust

I had meant to write sooner, but the last week has been a whirlwind of last-minute Walmart runs, dinners and coffee with friends, family time, sorting and packing and discarding and packing.

On Monday, which is two days away, I will be leaving Danforth and driving to California on a cross-country roadtrip with Jess, with varying stops at IHOP-Kansas City, Denver, Rifle, Sedona, Fresno, and San Francisco.

Right now my “life,” which is really just stuff, is stuffed (appropriate) in my trunk with the remainder strewn about my room. The car has been vacuumed and washed, per my dad’s instructions. I have had a lesson on changing tires, the oil has been changed, and the tires filled with air. My mom has requested a list of the names, phone numbers, and addresses of the people we will be staying with on the way. Various people have told me “be careful” about a million times. Only my grandma, who is not quite with it anymore, told me “have fun!” Google Maps has kindly assisted with directions to get to somewhere, hopefully the places we intend to go to. A Trader Joe’s bag is packed with snacks for the road. It seems I am adequately prepared. As my dad says, proper prior planning prevents pathetically poor performance.

Planning runs in my blood.

But this time, I would rather not be so prepared. I would rather throw the minimum of stuff into my car, take the road map, and set out. Some friends are traveling around the country this summer to various national parks and ministries, on their motorcycles. Wind in their faces, small bag and tent on the back.

My grandpa told me a few days ago about my Aunt Beth on her roadtrip from Illinois to Santa Fe when she had just graduated college. She packed her tiny car and the big swerving attached U-haul, complete with her plants, cat, and kittens. As she crossed through the states, the plants slowly died and the cat lost its voice from meowing too much. She slept in her car at truck stops, and when she needed to back up she asked the truckers to do it for her, since she hadn’t learned to back up a U-haul.

This version of travel, the unplanned, spontaneous, simplistic journeying (which brings with it many surprises) is much more attractive to me. It is wild, unbridled, carefree. It carries with it a load of freedom, instead of the burdens of expectations and control. The sojourner is expectant and eager to see what happens (because anything may happen!) in contrast to holding her expectations so tightly that they eventually bind and control her instead.

I am annoyed that my car is so tightly packed and that I will be referring to step-by-step directions. What’s more, I am annoyed at all the invisible baggage I am packing: worries about starting my new jobs, getting comfortable with my host family, making friends, fitting in with the church staff, missing friends, being wanted. I want freedom, but I am so scared to trust God with working out the little details. To put it bluntly, he isn’t enough for me. I want the acceptance of people and the ease of happiness. And I want the control to make these things happen. Uncertain of my ability to do so, I would still prefer not to let God have control. Who knows what might happen then!

Throwing out the clothes and photos and shampoo isn’t really an option. I am too much of a packrat, my parents would throw a fit, and I just don’t feel like carrying everything back upstairs. But leaving behind the addiction to control, the weighty expectations that everything must live up to (including me), is a viable option. It even looks attractive. If only I can stand to give it up.

This morning I read Isaiah 56. I am coming to love this chapter for how it affirms the place of foreigners and eunuchs in the house of God. Outcasts, orphans, loners are welcomed and provided for just as the people who already made the cut. The childless eunuch will have his name carried on forever, and the foreigner’s sacrifice will be accepted. The conditions, however, are placed high. Those who wish to dwell in God’s house of prayer, his perfect home, must hold fast to the covenant and keep the Sabbath without desecrating it. The LORD repeats this over and over to his people. We can’t have God on our terms.

What stuck out to me today was the command to keep the Sabbath. I think the Bible’s version of keeping the Sabbath is different than ours. Keeping the Sabbath in the Old Testament included leaving the crop fields fallow every 7 years, canceling debts every 50 years, and sacrificing firstfruits of crops to God while leaving behind extra for the widow and alien. A person had to rely on God for only a portion of their crop to be enough, and for the first 6 years to be enough for the 7th. If a person gained land or money through another’s debt, they could not keep it after the Year of Jubilee. Working on the Sabbath was forbidden so that people would be reminded weekly that their labor, crops, and therefore their very lives were in God’s hands, not their own. Trust was vital.

I believe that God’s insistent call to keep the Sabbath without desecrating it means to give to God what is God’s. He asks, historically, for the first, the best, the 10% tithe. But to give God what is due him, well, that is everything. That means, for me, giving him my desire for control. To keep the Sabbath, to trust God, to release control, is to find freedom and joy in God’s house of prayer. I may get lost, I may not find a second job, I may have no friends and be cast out on the street by my family (some outcomes less likely than others), but I dwell in God’s hands. Though I become a foreigner, an outcast, God will welcome me into his home.

Pray, oh please pray, for trust and the freedom, rest, and peace that follows. Pray for a joyful, reviving trip for Jess and me and all the people we meet.