What to do when you don't know what to do...

Have you ever been overwhelmed by a situation where you literally don't know what to do? I think 2020 helped us ALL relate to that feeling one way or another. For the last 2 months, my family has been going through a very hard, unexpected, all-at-once kind of time. It created a chaotic atmosphere where our emotions took the main character's role and everything else became secondary. I felt I was in autopilot and my attention span would dissolve as quickly as a piece of paper in a fire.

With whipped cream on top, hurricane Zeta left us with a stormy treat. The aftermath was awful and again, unexpected. After having to deal with the lack of power for 2 and a half days, on top of my previous stress levels, I started feeling the weight.

Here and there, through all these times, I had a song in my mind that we used to sing at church back in the day. The lyrics go, "when I don't know what to do, I lift my hands, when I don't know what to say, I'll speak Your praise. When I don't know where to go, I'll run to Your throne. When I don't know what to think, I'll stand on Your truth." It also has the perfect, sweet melody to complement the song.

This particular year created many circumstances that exposed our character and our go-to mind-sets when we don't know what to do. We were exposed to a virus we had no idea how to deal with. We were exposed to in-your-face racial injustice. We also had to deal with voices louder than we could handle. We were faced with the thoughest presidential elections for a very long time. We were exposed to two old polititians acting like little kids while asking us to trust them with our future. We were faced with death, fear, hate, loss, desperation, frustration, and feeling impotent... worldwide. We were shaken!

All this reminded me when the prophet Amos spoke to the people of Israel regarding similar situations. "Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, destroying them with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you have not returned to me, declares the Lord." The prophet goes on and on about the things God allowed to happen to His people in order to wake them up. Still, when they didn't know what to do, looking up wasn't ever their first option.

We are so used to playing God. We're used to analizing everything, even trying to find answers to things we have no clue about. We're all scientists. We're all doctors. We can all predict the weather or just about anything. But looking up is never our first instinct.

I remember a few years back, I got so mad at a Latin christian artist for something she said in a YouTube video. Someone had asked her some questions about music theory. This artist explained that she never studied music theory but she was going to do her best to "help". By the way, she never "helped", she probably produced more confussion to her fans and frustration to the people that actually took the time and money to invest in some education.

We need to practice recognizing that we don't know it all and that it is ok. We need to start organizing our opinions in different files acording to the actual knowledge we have about the subject. Some files could probably be buried.

However, there's always something we can do when we feel we don't have it all together. That is looking up.Your faith levels or opinios about God don't matter at this point. At the end of the road the big bang theory only tells the how, not the who. I can guarante that God doesn't care what you believed so far, but He is hopeful you'll look up and find Him in the near future.