When I was fifteen years old, something very special happened to me. It was Christmas morning, and after we opened our presents I was feeling a bit disappointed because one little thing wasn't included in the loot. But then my parents directed me and the boys to the basement, where we were greeted with a foosball table - which I'll be honest, was a pretty major letdown for me. Until the foosball table rang. Following the sound of that blissfully tinny little ringer, I pulled from said foosball table, in all it's glory, a sparkly blue Nokia cell phone. My very own little dream come true.
Last week, eleven years later, something very awful happened to me. I had to change my phone number.
This might not sound like much to you, fine, but to me it was sort of earthshattering because ever since I pulled that sparkly blue Nokia from the foosball table so many years ago, I have had the same phone number. It was my number, and now someone else is going to have it, and this devastates me. One of my oldest friends, when I texted him my new number, told me that he would now have to save my number to his phone for the first time ever. It is the end of an era. There's a lot attached to those 10 digits and on a Friday morning in July I gave all that away for some Colorado number that means nothing to me.
As I approached the AT&T store that Friday morning, having done all my research and thusly prepared to rip off the band-aid of abandoning the 316 and adopting a 303, I started to panic. I thought, what if my future husband tries to call me and can't get me because of my new number? What if someone else super important wants to reach me but can't? WHAT WILL HAPPEN?! I legitimately almost didn't go in the door. It was at this moment I realized that I have some pretty significant trust issues.
This might sound like a stretch, but the thing is, it's a symptom of a bigger issue. It's a microcosm of how I approach everything else in my life. In a matter of seconds I had become convinced that big, important, worthwhile things wouldn't come to be in my life... because I changed my phone number. If the italics didn't tip you off, I'll just spell it out for you: that's completely insane. I worked myself up into believing - on some level - that God is not bigger than my telephone number. Oh me of little faith.
I spend a lot of energy worrying about a lot of stuff. I worry about saying the wrong things, about figuring out what I should do to get the outcomes I want from a given situation. I worry about messing up the plan with my silliness. I worry about missing out on important things and people and never even knowing it. I worry every time I have to make a choice that I will make the wrong one and thus alter the course of history and my life as I know it. I worry about controlling for every possible outcome, and when things go awry I can think of 29 things I should've done to prevent it.
Do I really believe that by changing my cell phone number [or any other host of things I could do under the reign of my little tiny power] I can actually alter the outcome of the life that is ahead of me? Sometimes I live like I do.
But you know what?
Phone numbers may come and go. I will say yes and say no a million times. I will say a lot of dumb things and make some really bad choices. On days when those things feel catastrophic, and those days will come, I will take a deep breath and trust that God is faithful. Even when I'm not.
please forgive me for time that I've wasted;
I'm a doubting Thomas
I'll take your promise
though I know nothing's safe
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