The days that I remind myself that I am collaborating with God in his design for my life and ministry are the days when everything goes smoothly—often breathtakingly so. The days when I just cry “Help! Help!” are not so easy—I kind of bump and stumble and waste time and get delayed.
Yesterday was an example of a collaborate effort between myself, the all too human Karen, and the Divine, a great and transcendent and all-powerful yet intimate Heavenly Father.
Moved with compassion over the huge financial burden of my nephew and his wife after two premature births, both babies with allergies, and one with a twisted bowel (altogether some 18 weeks in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit), I have taken it upon myself to raise the amount to pay off the remaining medical bills that are sitting on this young couple’s credit cards.
Trying to be sensitive (sometimes, as we all are learning, helping actually hurts), I interviewed my nephew and his wife, consulted with my sister and brother-in-law, talked with a few close friends, wrote a draft letter, had it edited, ran that past everyone for suggestions or corrections, then sent it off to the designer via my son who manages our print projects through his company, Pathmaker Marketing.
Yesterday, when I came into the office, two boxes of No. 10 business size envelopes—100 in all— were sitting on my desk. It was my plan to print a tag line on them and hopefully, a photo of the for-sale sign on their house (due to the huge payouts for the extraordinary hospital bills, their out-of-pocket premiums that are now the equivalent of another mortgage payment).
I had decided that we could save funds and run off the envelopes and the designed letter on the color copier in our office, but I had never needed to learn how to run this kind of project through our copying machine. Searching through my computer programs, I found the one that teaches users how to run off multiple envelopes as well as the short lecture that teaches how to do your own design.
We decided that a tag line on the envelope should read: “Update on Baby Merrick: Kailey and Brendan Bell.”
Just as I was struggling with this, one of the faithful volunteers who helps out several hours a week (and without whom I could not be productive) came into the office. She is a retired home-economics teacher and used to office equipment.
“Oh, I know how to do that!”
Of course. I had prayed the prayer of collaboration. Our editor, who is part-time knew exactly how to manage the program when she ran into glitches and was available just when we needed him before he was called away because of an emergency in his family. I didn’t want to include a photo of the baby on the outside of the envelope and ship it through public mail, so I settled on what I felt was an even stronger image of the For Sale sign in front of the house.
Before my editor left, all three of us figured how to run multiple copies through the copier and how to make sure they were printed in color. My volunteer assistant and I stuffed the envelopes with a reply envelope on which I handwrote in red ink—“Baby Merrick Account”—and as she left the office, she took the envelopes home, packed them in a sturdy box and had them in the mail by 4:46 p.m. My sister could begin addressing envelopes while we waited for the letter to return from the designer.
What a collaboration!—done and out the door. Why is it I don’t remember to always get myself into this attitude and understanding that God is as interested in collaborating in my life as I need Him to do so? Not only that, I think He takes as much joy in working with me as I take in those days that go like smoothly oiled mechanics in some kind of master clockwork machine.
Perhaps this attitude of collaboration with my Heavenly Father is just not as yet a habit and the more I work at it, the more it will work in me to become a practice. At any rate, I strongly recommend that those who are not collaborating with God on creating their lives with him should try out this delightful practice.
“So he shepherded them with a faithful and true heart, and guided them with the skillfulness of his hands.” Psalm 78:72
I spy God!
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