The Shopping List

My daughter works at a discount retail store. Often, she is there at night when they are sweeping up and if she sees an abandoned shopping list on the floor, she’ll pick it up and bring it home to share with me. If we had to file these lists into a category, it would be titled, “People Are Funny.” The lists are often silly, confusing, witty and sometimes downright hilarious. There are also poignant moments. For instance, one list read, “interview outfit, something to settle stomach.” Another time the paper contained a list of children’s party supplies and at the bottom of the long list, “Advil.” Priceless! Scraps of unidentifiable paper, notebook pages, post-it notes, paper from “list” pads, the inside of a piece of cereal box; we’ve seen it all—well, I thought we’d seen it all.

On this particular night, the list she brought home was written on a regular 8.5"x11" piece of paper that was folded into quarters. My daughter had been working when she found it and so she had slipped it into her pocket unread. We unfold it together. On the back of the paper (in what I believe was female handwriting), was a pretty mundane grocery list: milk, bread... those kinds of things. Then I realized that at least half of the page was also covered with more personal content including the words, "Let go, let God." When I flipped it over, the front of the paper was a page from an Alcoholics Anonymous workbook. There was no name or identifying information on the page. The person had been working on, “Step Three: Deciding to Turn Our Will and Our Lives Over to the Care of God.”

There were printed questions and in the spaces below the questions (and on every blank space where writing would fit) there were lists of things this woman thought she needed to change in order to succeed in her sobriety and in her new walk with God. The words “make myself a better person” jumped out at me.

She described the new perspective she needed to cultivate, the areas in which she needed to take more control of her actions, and the steps she was going to take to change her negative thinking. There was also a list of medical bills she needed to pay related to becoming sober and the need to find a job. However, there was no indication that she understood anything about turning her will and life over to the care of God. Instead, her lists indicated she was going to try her hardest to gain even greater control over her life, the complete opposite of “Let go, let God.” The only other reference to spirituality were the two final lines on the page:

“Remember to pray. Continue to pray.
I need God's help.”

It was only after I looked at her responses that the first printed question on the workbook page caught my attention, “Am I willing to turn the things I cannot control over to the care of my Higher Power?” This was accompanied by a small admonition saying that in order to achieve successful sobriety you needed to turn the control of your life over to God. Yet, there was no indication that this person had any belief other than that she needed to try harder and grasp tighter to the things she thought she could control.

I turned the page to the back again. In the spotty ink of a pen that is failing she had written, “My Prayer: God, please give me the strength to face these challenges, the power to overcome my weakness and the courage to change myself and my circumstances.” From my perspective, this was not the prayer of someone who had learned to put their trust in God, to lay their burdens at His feet. What she was asking for was to be turned into a superhero (faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound), when what she really needed to do was to humble herself by admitting she was helpless over her addiction and to confess that only God has the power to implement these kinds of changes in her life. He is everything we are incapable of being on our own.

Why does this story make me so happy? It is because she prayed for God's help and He provided. Psalms 55:22 reads, “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you.” In His mercy and grace, God took her “to do” list for living a more wholesome, sober life, a huge step in her relationship with God, and delivered it to me, someone He was in the process of making a Vessel of Prayer for others and, therefore, could be assured her troubles would be delivered to Him in faith. He literally had her "let go" (of her list) and "let God" (answer her prayer by putting her list in my hands). Every day I pray for the shopping list woman. With her trials spelled out for me on that piece of paper, one-by-one I hand them over to God in prayer, fully trusting that He alone is the answer to her sobriety and her salvation. God is good.