Giving God the Crayon

Today was Sabbath. What a blessing it is to have the Sabbath! There are several different small churches in Pohnpei, and the principle of the school goes to a different church then most of the other student missionaries. He wanted to take me with his family, to his church this Sabbath. So we all climbed into the van; the principles family (5 children currently at this school) and one other student missionary. The church was a beautiful 1 hour drive away from the school. It was exciting to see more of the island. Apparently the island is only about a 2 hour drive long, so we basically drove about half the island to go to church. The church was beautiful! There are two things in particular that made it extra beautiful to me... 1. It had air conditioning... 2. Everyone took their shoes off so that meant I could go barefoot... two things I love! Air conditioning, and going barefoot :) The sermon was preached in Pohnpeinease first, and English second. While it was being preached in the language that I could not understand, I kept the principles youngest daughter busy. She was sitting beside me and we were coloring her new coloring book together. I was coloring the trunk of the tree while she colored the green leaves. Soon she stopped and just watched me color...then she took the brown from me and gave me the green crayon and pointed to the leaves. She wanted me to finish the green leaves and color them like I was coloring the brown. She just sat and watched me for a little while, and then took the green crayon again and tried coloring more green. She soon gave the crayon back to me and asked me to finish it. As I finished filling in the empty white spots between her attempts to stay in the lines, a thought came to mind. My life is like that picture. God is coloring part of it, and I am trying to color part of it..but God's "part" of the picture looks so much better then mine, and no matter how hard I try, I can't get it to look like His. After stepping back to look at the picture, I can clearly tell which part God colored. Something inside me longs for the whole picture to look as beautiful as God's "part" does. So I willingly hand the crayon to God and ask Him to take control. Then after a short while of watching God color, I decide that it doesn't look to hard and I want to try coloring again. So I take the crayon back and work on getting the picture just right. But for some reason I can't seem to stay in the lines. After figuring out that there is no possible way for me to color like God, I hand the crayon back and ask Him to please finish and make the picture look beautiful. All I need to learn, is to leave the crayon in God's hand, because the picture will be more beautiful if He doesn't have to fill in the spots where I was attempting to color inside the lines.