Natalie Monk

That yellow plastic ball with its wiffle type structure shot up into the sky, slowed, was caught by the wind and took an unexpected left turn drifting further and further until it nearly went over the maybe 12-foot fence, dropping suddenly right at the fence.

“Out!” Yep, that pickleball I just hit was most definitely out.

Despite my hand eye coordination and spatial awareness issues, I have decided to take up pickleball as a new hobby…certainly not because fast thinking, instinct, and general sportiness are my forte. My goal in most games is to get to 4 points. Then, the other person gets to say “Ten, Four” right before they win. For those of you not geeky enough to know, “ten, four”, when said over a radio, usually means, “message received.”

Strangely, despite the ball careening to places I have no idea how it gets to, I really enjoy playing pickleball. My mistakes don’t bother me as much in a sport that I expect to mess up in. I have found that I have an irrepressible urge to emote and externally process every serve and return hit. When the ball unexpectedly goes precisely where I want it to, I cannot help but do a happy jump and maybe pump my arms a little. Sometimes I tell myself out loud, “Nice!” When the ball ends up in the neighboring pickleball court, I enjoy giggling and saying “Out” but in a long-exaggerated fashion.

I feel no guilt over missing a shot; I expect to get it wrong sometimes. I am amazed when I get it right, and I cannot contain my excitement. Sometimes I wish I could approach all of life a little bit more like pickleball.

“For by the grace given me I saw to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” (Romans 12:3 NIV)

When I flub a social engagement, maybe I can just say a long-exaggerated giggling “Out!” When I forget something that “normal people” would remember, maybe I can pretend that I simply hit the pickleball of life into the wrong side of the court on my serve. “Oops!”

I know that life has some essentials, and I don’t mean to make light of the things that you really do need to get right, but you do not have to get all of life right. In this game of life, you are going to mess up. If you never mess up, you have stopped playing the game.

I am starting a master’s in theology, and the vocabulary, writing styles, and discussion styles feel so foreign to me. I started studying nursing at 16 years of age and stuck with that scientific field for 20 years, and now for the first time I am attempting a brand-new subject…theology. I feel like I am going to hit that pickleball over the fence more than once before I start finding my way through it!

It doesn’t have to be that you are starting something new. Maybe you are just trying to live life, but you feel like that ridiculous ball of “doing it right” keeps drifting out of bounds. I would like to challenge you to just take a breath, relax a little, and be patient with yourself. When you do something amazing, try doing a happy jump, and tell yourself, “Nice!”

Life is an adventure, and those balls rarely go exactly where you expect them to, and sometimes they veer off course in dramatic fashion. God is not surprised or worried. Keep walking with him, submitting your life and choices to him, and see if you can have some fun along the way!

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8 NIV)

I still giggle when I look at this picture. Heights make me dizzy, and my knees buckle beneath me as I lose track of which direction is up versus down. Despite this, during a vacation in the stunning mountains of Canada, I was determined to get to the beautiful path on the other side of the stream. My friend walked easily over the stream on a thick steady log, but I chose the indignity of slowly scooting along straddling the log until I made it to the other side, wiped off my shaking hands, and dusted my pants. The winding trail was worth the effort, but it required a return scoot across the log to get back home.

As most of you know, I am in the process of publishing a book. It is called Missionary Ponderances, and it is a compilation of my thoughts and reflections regarding my 7 years as a medical missionary in Mozambique. It reflects on the hard questions in life, and how God is present no matter what and the answer to the hardest questions we can come up with.

What you may or may not know is that I am terrified. I am terrified not only of heights but of the unknown and terrified by my own vulnerability. Uncertainty looks a lot like that stream, and going forward is requiring some undignified scooting.

I won’t go into all the areas where my life is sitting before the unknown at this time, but I am so grateful that I am still fully known by a very good God. I am so grateful that He knows the future and can hold my present and my future without breaking a sweat!

I like order and plans, and my plans last year were disrupted. I had good plans. They were risky plans but well thought out and excessively prayed and stressed over. My plans did not fully happen, and a part of those plans got kicked down the road far into 2024, leaving me physically and emotionally in a bit of limbo.

We are now walking out of winter and into spring.  When you reflect on the last season, do you see it as successful or not? Have you taken steps of faith that did not produce the result you thought it would? Did well-laid plans end up scattered in well-meaning piles of rubble?

I have no assurance that the future will look anything like I think it might, but I have the assurance from Jeremiah 29:11 that God knows and that His plans are good. I have the assurance that He will work everything out for my good (Romans 8:28). I have the assurance that He will lead me and guide me, even if His leading looks different than my expectations.

Can you trust Him with your unknowns in this season?

I want to gently, humbly, and with great awareness that I am speaking to myself, say “It’s OK. It really is OK when things don’t go according to the plan.”

God is still here. He is big enough to sort through our mess of good intentions, fears, mistakes, insecurities, and stubbornness. I am very glad that I do not run my own life. I am very glad that God is bigger than me.

I believe in the mystery of His sovereignty, and I can rest in it. I do not believe in determinism, and I very much believe in free will. Yet, at the end of the day, God’s ways are surely higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). He knows everything that I do not know, and He will not leave my future at the whim of my own ignorance and feebleness. I believe He picks me up, He guides me even when I am not looking or even asking for it, and He most certainly knows the future. He can look down the road and see where everything is headed and what needs to happen to get me there.

I know that, in the end, I am headed toward God, and as long as I am headed toward God, I cannot get too far off the path. With this thought, maybe I can release a little of the illusion of control that I have over my life.

To that end, I will learn to be content sitting on that log, undignifiedly scootching along, believing that the path ahead will be beautiful.

May your spring season be filled with His sustaining presence. May your days be filled with His enduring love. May life be about walking with Him, loving those around you, and releasing the stress of orchestrating the future to Him.