Years ago, my young daughter and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. Since we didn’t have too many items, I decided to go through their self-checkout. I figured it would be much quicker since the store was very crowded. Ordinarily I might have been right, but I forgot to figure my little “helper” into the equation. As soon as we got close to the self-checkout, she stood up in the buggy to help me scan the items we were purchasing.
She was so eager to help that she scanned one of the items twice and we had to call for assistance. Then, she pushed down on the register causing it to stop and try to figure out what her weight was and what was causing it. It then told me I needed assistance, but thankfully, I was able to figure out how to clear it out. She was so eager to scan the next item that we ended up scanning it twice and having to call for assistance…again.
Thankfully we got a very sweet young girl who thought it was funny and did not get upset with us. We began trying to finish scanning our items and she once again leaned on the register causing it to stop again as it tried to figure out what was going on. I’m gonna be really honest with you. At this point, I was so stressed I didn’t know whether to get mad or to cry. I pleaded with my daughter to either sit down or just help me by giving it all to me.
She decided to just “help” me by giving the items to me and allowing me to scan them. We finished and paid for our items. On the way out, the young cashier that had helped us was smiling really big and I’m sure doing all she could not to laugh at me. My daughter, of course, was pretty much oblivious to how much she had stressed me out and caused our transaction to last twice as long as it should have. She had no idea what her “helping” had really done.
As she chattered away the whole way out of the store, I tried to calm myself down a bit. At that moment, the Lord felt it necessary to point out how often I, in fact, act just like my four-year-old. I cringed inside myself as He pointed out how I often feel like He needs my “help” to deal with things. My daughter had thought that she was helping me and the whole time she was making things much more difficult than it should have been.
He gently reminded me that when I think I am helping Him, more often than not, I am making things more difficult than they have to be. When I hang on to things in my life and insist on doing things my way, I am only making things harder on myself. I think I know what I am doing, but the truth is that most of the time, I don’t know what I am doing anymore than my young daughter did. Why on earth do I think that God needs my help or that I can do it by myself?
I thought about how quickly we had finished checking out when Georgia had stopped helping and just handed it all to me. Boy, if ever there was a lesson to be learned, this was it. If I will simply decide to give up “helping” and just give it all to God, things will go much smoother. Instead of trying to do it myself, I need to learn to hand it all to Him. One by one, I need to give Him each and every problem that I face and let Him take care of them.
Honestly, I don’t know why I would ever try to do it on my own when He has proven time and time again that He can handle it all. How many times has He proven Himself faithful! He has never failed me yet and I know He never will. I have seen Him take care of me, meet my needs, and show me how much He loves me over and over. He is amazing and I was grateful that He took this opportunity to remind me that He doesn’t need my “help”.
My friend, I hope that the next time you are tempted to “help”, you will remember my story and decide to just let it go. I hope that you will remember that God is big enough to handle it all. He can take care of you and whatever you face, He already has an answer for it. I pray you will realize that you can’t do it on your own and you will give it all to Him. Put it into the hands of the One who loves you and can take care of you better than you can imagine.
Katrina Douglas
