Don't Get Ahead of Yourself

Elizabeth is one of my best friends ( (Elizabeth is not her real name, but I am going to call her Elizabeth because I didn’t ask for permission to share this story). We met in college. Friendship is based on mutual interests. CS Lewis has written that friendship is born when you meet someone and you say “you too? You like what I like too? Well, that’s what happened between Elizabeth and I. We both enjoyed reading, writing, history, and business—and our friendship has continued to this day. Despite her fierce intellect and progressive instincts, Elizabeth is, and always has been a quintessential southern girl. She has always been unapologetically old fashioned. Even in college, Elizabeth always wore dresses, always cooked, and always wanted to get married.

For as long as I can remember, she was always planning her wedding. Elizabeth carried around photo albums stuffed with pages ripped from the pages of various magazines of the types of dresses she wanted to wear, the kind of floral arrangements she desired, the various venues she thought were suitable, and the million other aspects of what she considered would be the perfect wedding. Year after year she collected these albums, and would daydream about what was going to happen at her wedding. One year I grew so exasperated by her daydreaming that I posed a question that almost ended our friendship. I said Elizabeth, shouldn’t you get a finance before you do all this planning? From my perspective, it seemed as though she was more interested in getting married than who she was getting married too. From my perspective, It seemed that she was getting ahead of herself.

And Elizabeth is not alone. All of us have a tendency to get ahead of ourselves. According to one definition, getting ahead of yourself” is an idiomatic expression that means “to plan or become overly excited for a possible future event.” According to another definition, it means to “to do something too early, or before you are ready or prepared.” According to yet another definition, it means “to focus excessively on one's plans or on prospective future events without paying adequate attention to the present.” All of these definitions revolve around the idea of focusing too much of our time, energy, attention and resources on a future outcome that may be at odds with and may limit the apprehension or appreciation of our current situation. In this regard, Elizabeth is not alone. All of us have a tendency to get ahead of ourselves.

This week I reread a story in the scriptures about a prophet who got ahead of himself. The prophet’s name was Balaam, and he was hired by one of Israel’s enemies to pronounce a curse on them. God warned Balaam to reject the offer, but Balaam decided to pursue it anyway. While en route to pronounce the curse, the donkey that Balaam was riding on would not obey his orders. If Balaam directed the donkey to go right, the donkey would go left. If Balaam directed the donkey to go left, the donkey would go right. Finally, the donkey stopped moving altogether. As a result, Balaam grew angry with his donkey. Then he yelled at the donkey. Then he walloped the donkey! Finally, Balaam realized that the issue was not the donkey. It was him. According to Numbers 22:32-34:

Then God helped Balaam see what was going on: He saw God’s angel blocking the way, brandishing a sword. Balaam fell to the ground, his face in the dirt.

God’s angel said to him: “Why have you beaten your poor donkey these three times? I have come here to block your way because you’re getting way ahead of yourself. The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If she hadn’t, I would have killed you by this time, but not the donkey. I would have let her off.”

Balaam said to God’s angel, “I have sinned. I had no idea you were standing in the road blocking my way. If you don’t like what I’m doing, I’ll head back.”

The donkey would not cooperate with Balaam’s directions because God was standing in Balaam’s way. And God was standing in Balaam way because God was opposed to Balaam’s direction. Balaam was moving toward an objective that was contrary to God’s perfect will, a will that had been previously explained and expressed . Some of the obstacles in our path are God sent. Some of our enemies have been handpicked by the Almighty. And some of our challenges have been divinely orchestrated to deter us from achieving an objective that may be contrary to God’s perfect will for our lives. Sometimes the issue ain’t the donkey. Sometimes the issue is us.

Question: are you sure that you want what God wants?

Elizabeth eventually did get married. I performed her wedding. But the wedding did not transpire when she wanted, how she wanted, or where she wanted. Interestingly, the wedding transpired after she stopped worrying about what she wanted, and spent more time praying and preparing for who she wanted.

Don’t get ahead of yourself.

Don’t invest so much time, energy, and attention focused on tomorrow that you forget about today. If you work on getting today right, tomorrow will take care of itself.