Whack-a-mole

Did you ever play a game of whack-a-mole?

It’s an arcade game. To play, you hold a mallet and try to hit toy moles — which appear at random — and force them back down into their holes.

I haven’t actually played a real game of whack-a-mole, but this summer I felt like I was in some kind of battle with constantly surfacing irritations and problems.

Sometimes the irritations were as insignificant as gnats, but there were big problems too. Some days I felt like I was whacking away at problems the size of Volkswagen Beetles.

The problems and irritations seemed to keep surfacing, and not much seemed to be getting solved or resolved over the summer.

One day — thankfully — I had an “ah hah” moment. I realized that I wasn’t in control.

I wasn’t in control of the gnat-sized irritations, and I definitely was not in control of the larger problems.

When I realized that I had no control at all, I took a deep breath. As I exhaled, there was a kind of relief; a letting go.

A few days after that breakthrough, I sat down with my bible. I rarely do this, but I opened it randomly and took a look. There, right in front of me, the bible was opened to the Book of Proverbs. More specifically — staring back at me — were the verses about the Proverbs 31 woman.

You know her. She’s the one with “value far beyond pearls.” She is an “unfailing prize.” Her children “rise up and praise her,” and her husband, too, “extols her.”

For over a week, I kept the pages open to Proverbs, and I read the Proverbs 31 passages over and over. Eventually, in a Lectio Divina kind of way, these seven words began to stand out to me: She laughs at the days to come.

What? No worry? No fretting? No games of whack-a-mole?

No; the Proverbs 31 woman laughs at the future because she trusts in the Lord.

And that’s what allows her to take care of her household; that’s what gives her strength; that’s how she serves the poor; and that’s why she is clothed with dignity.

I was scrolling through Facebook pages early this morning and came across these words on my friend Cyndi’s page: “Embrace the imperfections, the chaos, the holy mess of your beautiful life.”

Good advice.

So is learning to trust. And walking away from the whack-a-mole game.